CELT WARRIOR WOMEN According to both Roman and Irish sources, Celtic society was divided into three groups: a warrior aristocracy, an intellectual class that included druids, poets, and jurists, and everyone else. Society was tribal and kinship-based; one's ethnic identity was largely derived from the larger tribal group, called the tuath ("too-awth") in Irish (meaning "people") but ultimately based on the smallest kinship organizational unit, the clan, called the cenedl (ke-na-dl), or "kindred," in Irish. The clan provided identity and protection—disputes between individuals were always disputes between clans. Since it was the duty of the clan to protect individuals, crimes against an individual would be prosecuted against an entire clan. One of the prominent institutions among the Celts was the blood-feud in which murder or insults against an individual would require the entire clan to violently exact retribution. The blood-feud was in part avoided by the institution of professional mediators. At least an Ireland, a professional class of jurists, called brithem, would mediate disputes and exact reparations on the offending clan. Even though Celtic society centered around a warrior aristocracy, the position of women was fairly high in Celtic society. In the earliest periods, women participated both in warfare and in kingship. While the later Celts would adopt a strict patriarchal model, they still have a memory of women leaders and warriors. http://www.wsu.edu:8080/%7Edee/MA/CELTS.HTM Óró, Sé Do Bheatha 'Bhaile (You Are Welcome Home) Traditional Irish song, sung in Gaelic by Sinnead O'Conner who writes: http://www.geocities.com/thehealingroom/nualyrics.html This song, for me, celebrates the return of any woman to her power, having lost it to invading forces. It is an honouring of the female warrior spirit and of the right of women to be true to themselves despite what the world dictates they 'should' be. A song celebrating the preciousness of female ferocity, strength and fire. It shows that a suppressed spirit only creates loss and depression and that only by being one's true self can one find joy. This is represented by the coming of summer in the song. It was taught to all young school children in Ireland until recently, but its meaning was never explained. We were taught it was a rowing song. In actuality it is a war song in honour of Grace O'Malley otherwise known as Gráinne Mhaol, a warrior noblewoman of Ireland who lived at the time of Elizabeth I, and whose ships were a formidable force on the Irish west coast. Se do bheatha a bhean ba leanmhar! (Welcome Oh woman who was so afflicted) B'e ar gcreach tu bheith i ngeibhinn (It was our ruin that you were in bondage) Do dhuiche bhrea i seilbh meirleach (Our fine land in the possesion of theives) 'S tu diolta leis na Ghallaibh. (And sold to the foreigners) Chorus: Oro, se do bheatha 'bhaile! x3 (Óró! You are welcome home!) Anois ar theacht an tsamhraidh. (Now that summer is coming) Ta Grainne Mhaol ag teacht thar saile, (Grainne Mhaol is coming over the sea) Oglaigh armtha lei mar gharda (Armed warriors along with her as guard) Gaeil iad fein 's ni Gaill na Spainnigh (They are Irishmen, not English or Spanish) 'S cuirfid siad ruaig ar Ghallaibh. (And they will rout the foreigners) Chorus >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Who were the Celts? The Celts were a group of peoples that occupied lands stretching from the British Isles to Gallatia. The Celts had many dealings with other cultures that bordered the lands occupied by these peoples, and even though there is no written record of the Celts stemming from their own documents, we can piece together a fair picture of them from archeological evidence as well as historical accounts from other cultures. The first historical recorded encounter of a people displaying the cultural traits associated with the Celts comes from northern Italy around 400 BC, when a previously unkown group of barbarians came down from the Alps and displaced the Etruscans from the fertile Po valley, a displacment that helped to push the Etruscans from history's limelight. The next encounter with the Celts came with the still young Roman Empire, directly to the south of the Po. The Romans in fact had sent three envoys to the beseiged Etruscans to study this new force. We know from Livy's The Early History of Rome that this first encounter with Rome was quite civilized: [The Celts told the Roman envoys that] this was indeed the first time they had heard of them, but they assumed the Romans must be a courageous people because it was to them that the [Etruscans] had turned to in their hour of need. And since the Romans had tried to help with an embassy and not with arms, they themselves would not reject the offer of peace, provided the [Etruscans] ceded part of their seperfluous agricultural land; that was what they, the Celts, wanted.... If it were not given, they would launch an attack before the Romans' eyes, so that the Romans could report back how superior the Gauls were in battle to all others....The Romans then asked whether it was right to demand land from its owners on pain of war, indeed what were the Celts doing in Etruria in the first place? The latter defiantly retorted that their right lay in their arms: To the brave belong all things. The Roman envoys then preceded to break their good faith and helped the Etruscans in their fight; in fact, one of the envoys, Quintas Fabius killed one of the Celtic tribal leaders. The Celts then sent their own envoys to Rome in protest and demand the Romans hand over all members of the Fabian family, to which all three of the original Roman envoys belonged, be given over to the Celts, a move completely in line with current Roman protocol. This of course presented problems for the Roman senate, since the Fabian family was quite powerful in Rome. Indeed, Livy says that: The party structure would allow no resolution to be made against such noblemanm as justice would have required. The Senate...therefore passed examination of the Celts' request to the popular assembly, in which power and influence naturally counted for more. So it happened that those who ought to have been punished were instead appointed for the coming year military tribunes with consular powers (the highest that could be granted). The Celts saw this as a mortal insult and a host marched south to Rome. The Celts tore through the countryside and several battalions of Roman soilders to lay seige to the Capitol of the Roman Empire. Seven months of seige led to negotiations wherby the Celts promised to leave their seige for a tribute of one thousand pounds of gold, which the historian Pliny tells was very difficult for the entire city to muster. When the gold was being weighed, the Romans claimed the Celts were cheating with faulty weights. It was then that the Celts' leader, Brennus, threw his sword into the balance and and uttered the words vae victis "woe to the Defeated". Rome never withstood another more humiliating defeat and the Celts made an initial step of magnificent proportions into history. http://www.lycos.com/info/roman-gaul--celtic-gaul.html

In English the word Gaul ... commonly refers to a Celtic inhabitant of that region in ancient times, but the Gauls were widespread in Europe by Roman times, speaking dialects of the Gaulish language. Besides the Gauls living on the territory of modern-day France, there were the Lepontians who had settled in the plains of northern Italy (Gallia Cisalpina), and the Helvetii who settled to the north of the alps, in Raetia.

http://www.ibiblio.org/gaelic/celts.html

There was a unifying language spoken by the Celts, called not suprisingly, old Celtic. Philogists have shown the descendence of Celtic from the original Ur-language and from the Indo-European language tradition. In fact, the form of old Celtic was the closest cousin to Italic, the precursor of Latin.

Scientists Find 1.8-million-year-old Homo Erectus Skull By Associated Press posted: 22 August 2005 03:43 pm ET TBILISI, Georgia (AP) -- Archaeologists in the former Soviet republic of Georgia have unearthed a skull they say is 1.8 million years old and part of a find that holds that oldest traces of humankind's closest ancestors ever found in Europe. The Homo erectus skull was found earlier this month about 100 kilometers southeast of the capital, Tbilisi, in the same area where a jawbone believed to be the same age was found in 1991, Georgian National Museum director David Lotkipanidze, who took part in the dig, said by telephone. Lotkipanidze said that the skull, which was unearthed on Sunday and sent to the museum for further study, was in the best condition of any of the five bone fragments that have been found in the area, called Dmanisi, in recent years. "Practically all the remains have been found in one place. This indicates that we have found a place of settlement of primitive people,'' he said of the spot, where archaeologists have been working since 1939. The findings in Georgia, which researchers said were a million years older than any widely accepted pre-human remains in Europe, have provided additional evidence that Homo erectus left Africa a half-million years or more earlier than scientists had previously thought. Million-year-old fossils of hominids -- extinct creatures of the extended ancestral family of modern humans -- have been found in Africa, the Middle East, Asia, but not in Western Europe. Georgia is south of the Caucasus Mountains and northeast of Turkey, but is considered part of Europe.

******* I find the mtdna studies fascinating, bringing to life the origins, migrations, mutations and adaptations of peoples. It is exploding onto the scene, shaking up 'racial purists', 'white nationalists', and others with vested interests. They are spinning frantically ... and in the process happening upon some truths of explosive proportions themselves ... Disclaimer ... I don't support this site nor its intentions, nor its derogatory tone. However, their scrambling to account for genetic data is worth observing ... g

http://www.jabpage.org/posts/whiteorg.html

Races in America.

Some of the “Native American” tribes in the eastern part of the continent were markedly more fair-skinned than their neighbors—for example, the Iroquois—evidence of a surviving White population

Disclaimer ... I don't support this site nor its intentions, nor its rqacist tone. However, the racists scrambling to account for genetic data is worth observing ... The Solutrean hypothesis seems to have some merit if white supremacists (oops! 'nationalists') are now . .. wait for it ... trying to cozy up to 'Iroquois' land rights. Just a little humour ... g