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Product Description
For centuries, the Celts held sway in Europe. Even after their conquest by the Romans, their culture remained vigorous, ensuring that much of it endured to feed an endless fascination with Celtic history and myths, artwork and treasures. A foremost authority on the Celtic peoples and their culture, Peter Berresford Ellis presents an invigoration overview of their world. With his gift for making the scholarly accessible, he discusses the Celts' mysterious origins and early history and investigates their rich and complex society. His use of recently uncovered finds brings fascinating insights into Celtic kings and chieftains, architecture and arts, medicine and religions, myths and legends, making this essential reading for any search for Europe's ancient past.
About the Author
Peter Berresford Ellis, is regarded as one of the pre-eminent Celtic scholars and has published many books on the subject. He is a Fellow of three Royal Societies in historical and antiquarian fields and the recipient of many awards and honours for his work. He is also, under the pseudonym Peter Tremayne he is the author of the bestselling Sister Fidelma murder mysteries set in Ireland in the 7th Century.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
9 of 10 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
When reading this book it feels as if Peter Berresford Ellis has been there and then, has met those kings and warriors and civilisation builders, has observed those men of art and craft and science, talked to them, asked questions, and then come back to our time to give us a stunning account. Not only that, but all the sources and sites and findings are cited along the way, so that we actually do the journey with him through time and space.
This book doesn't put the Celts in a Pantheon of mysticism and doesn't it bring them down to tribal societies. It shows you all along the pages what a prodigious civilisation they were.
It's not a big book but if there's anything you still don't know about the Celts after reading it, you've probably missed a page.
This book doesn't put the Celts in a Pantheon of mysticism and doesn't it bring them down to tribal societies. It shows you all along the pages what a prodigious civilisation they were.
It's not a big book but if there's anything you still don't know about the Celts after reading it, you've probably missed a page.
8 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is a fun and fascinating read but it does seem the Celts can do no wrong as far as Peter Berrisford Ellis is concerned! His partisan approach makes you wonder if what you're reading can really be relied on.
There are times when the author gets his facts wrong, too. The idea of the savage Anglo-Saxons driving out or wiping out the Celtic indigenous population of Britain has been shown to be false by modern DNA evidence. In fact, even the English today have predominantly pre-Roman genes, showing that the invading Anglo-Saxon and Viking minorities settled and interbred with the locals rather than simply slaughtering them all. No doubt the Anglo-Saxon invasions were a brutal affair, but the idea that England underwent some kind of ethnic cleansing has been disproven. It's none too impressive that Ellis represents this old myth as an indisputable fact!
He also claims there are only 18 million Celts left in Europe. Considering they once stretched right across Europe, that is very hard to accept. By what mechanism could ancient cultures have utterly annihilated such a vast population? Is it not more likely that the Celts' descendants still exist all over Europe?
Admittedly, Ellis does decide to define 'Celt' mainly as someone who speaks a Celtic language. Indeed, he uses this argument to dismiss any debate over whether the Celts were really the single ethno-cultural group that we imagine. But at the end of the book he completely contradicts his own definition by claiming there are 18 million Celts left, only 2.5 million of whom speak Celtic languages.
Well, if we define Celt as a speaker of a Celtic language, there are only 2.5 million left! If we define them as people with ancestors who spoke Celtic langauges there are probably hundreds of millions left, scattered all over the world. But the 18 million figure has no foundation at all, no matter whose definition you use!
Of course, the idea of the total 'ethnic cleansing' of this supposedly close-knit cultural group by the evil Romans and Anglo-Saxons is a popular romantic idea. But in truth, it is far more likely that certain early Celtic tribes imposed their language and culture on other non-Celtic tribes, and in turn had their language and culture subsumed into other more dominant groups. No doubt this would have been accompanied by a lot of bloodshed in both cases. But DNA evidence does not support the idea of 'ethnic cleansing' at all. It may not be such a romantic story, but it's much more uplifting, and probably more true!
There are times when the author gets his facts wrong, too. The idea of the savage Anglo-Saxons driving out or wiping out the Celtic indigenous population of Britain has been shown to be false by modern DNA evidence. In fact, even the English today have predominantly pre-Roman genes, showing that the invading Anglo-Saxon and Viking minorities settled and interbred with the locals rather than simply slaughtering them all. No doubt the Anglo-Saxon invasions were a brutal affair, but the idea that England underwent some kind of ethnic cleansing has been disproven. It's none too impressive that Ellis represents this old myth as an indisputable fact!
He also claims there are only 18 million Celts left in Europe. Considering they once stretched right across Europe, that is very hard to accept. By what mechanism could ancient cultures have utterly annihilated such a vast population? Is it not more likely that the Celts' descendants still exist all over Europe?
Admittedly, Ellis does decide to define 'Celt' mainly as someone who speaks a Celtic language. Indeed, he uses this argument to dismiss any debate over whether the Celts were really the single ethno-cultural group that we imagine. But at the end of the book he completely contradicts his own definition by claiming there are 18 million Celts left, only 2.5 million of whom speak Celtic languages.
Well, if we define Celt as a speaker of a Celtic language, there are only 2.5 million left! If we define them as people with ancestors who spoke Celtic langauges there are probably hundreds of millions left, scattered all over the world. But the 18 million figure has no foundation at all, no matter whose definition you use!
Of course, the idea of the total 'ethnic cleansing' of this supposedly close-knit cultural group by the evil Romans and Anglo-Saxons is a popular romantic idea. But in truth, it is far more likely that certain early Celtic tribes imposed their language and culture on other non-Celtic tribes, and in turn had their language and culture subsumed into other more dominant groups. No doubt this would have been accompanied by a lot of bloodshed in both cases. But DNA evidence does not support the idea of 'ethnic cleansing' at all. It may not be such a romantic story, but it's much more uplifting, and probably more true!
7 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
While I have great respect for the author on this subject and even met him once and know his enthusiasm for this area, I was a bit disappointed in some areas of the book. The most notable was that when talking about the Celtic aristocracy, warrior class and "druids" he discussed in a fair amount of detail the lives of individuals in these classes. When he comes to talk about the farmers - he does not talk about them at all but only about farming methods! This is very odd as this class would have made up a very large proportion of the population. Even more perplexing is that at no point does he mention slaves in this book. Slavery - or "the unfree" as they were known, formed a significant section Celtic society, as it did most if not all cultures at the time. It is not as if there is no evidence for them - there is plenty and we only need look at the ancient Irish Brehon laws to see frequent mention of slaves. This is all the more strange especially when Celtic Ireland's most famous slave was St Patrick, who became Ireland's national saint.
This could be due to sloppy writing, but I very much doubt this as the author is very knowledgeable about the whole area of Celtic studies. This can only make me feel that he has deliberately not mentioned slaves in Celtic society. This is very strange; Slavery was very common throughout different cultures at the time and not to mention them at all gives a very incomplete description of Celtic society. Additionally not to mention the experience of being of the farming strata and only talking about farming techniques is inexcusable.
It is unfortunate that I have to bring this up as the author is very knowledgeable in the area of Celtic studies.
This could be due to sloppy writing, but I very much doubt this as the author is very knowledgeable about the whole area of Celtic studies. This can only make me feel that he has deliberately not mentioned slaves in Celtic society. This is very strange; Slavery was very common throughout different cultures at the time and not to mention them at all gives a very incomplete description of Celtic society. Additionally not to mention the experience of being of the farming strata and only talking about farming techniques is inexcusable.
It is unfortunate that I have to bring this up as the author is very knowledgeable in the area of Celtic studies.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
A Brief History of the Celts
So much information packed into a little book! There's not much that the Author doesn't know about the Celts. Read more
Published 9 months ago by Linda Gibson
An understanding of Celtic culture that as yet no Anglo historian has...
I can't believe the review by Invotis, below. It's the first book on the Celts he has read, yet interprets world-renouned Celtic historian Ellis' account as Partisan and belittles... Read more
Published on 30 Jan 2008 by Celtic Cymro
Life among the "barbarians"
In the Western world no libel has endured with greater persistence than the one of "barbarian" levied against the Celts. Read more
Published on 26 Mar 2006 by Stephen A. Haines
Celts forever!!!
This book was the first book on Celts I've come across and read. It is a good introduction into the topic for somebody who has a very little previous knowledge of the Celtic... Read more
Published on 14 Jun 2004 by "invotis"
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