Timeline Celts
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The Isle of Man is named after Manannan, the
legendary
Celtic lord of the sea.
(SFEC, 4/25/99, Z1 p.8)
1000BC Oct 31-500BC Oct 31, As far
back as this period the Celts of Ireland, Great Britain and northern
France celebrated Oct. 31 as their New Years Eve. The pagan harvest
event incorporated masks to ward off evil ones, as dead relatives were
believed to visit families on this night. The Catholic holiday of All
Saints Day, set for Nov. 1, was instituted around 700 AD to supplant
this All Hallows' Eve. Halloween was transplanted to the US in
the 1840s.
(WSJ, 10/28/99, p.A24)
800BC-500BC The Celtic Hallstatt
Culture spread across Europe. It was an early iron-using culture named
after an Austrian burial site found in the mid-19th century.
(NGM, 5/77)
c600BC The Greeks established the trading colony of
Massalia, later Marseilles, and imported wine to the Celts in exchange
for iron, copper, tin, salt and slaves.
(NGM, 5/77)
600BC-500BC The nomadic Scythians bordered the
Hallstatt Culture in the East. They introduced to the Celts the custom
of wearing trousers.
(NGM, 5/77)
c400BC In a wave of Celtic expansion tribes poured
through the Alps into Italy.
(NGM, 5/77)
400BC-300BC The Greek writer Ephorus referred to the
Celts, Scythians, Persians and Libyans as the four great barbarian
peoples in the known world.
(AM, Mar/Apr 97 p.11)
387BC Rampaging bands of Celts
captured Rome and then settled down to a life of agriculture in the Po
Valley.
(NGM, 5/77)
279BC The Celts plundered the
shrine at Delphi and then retreated north to Thrace. The Thracians
later routed the intruders.
(NGM, 5/77)
230BC Celtic warriors were
repelled at Pergamon, on the west coast of what became Turkey. The king
of Bithynia had invited some 20,000 Celts as mercenaries and after 50
years of pillaging they were repelled and settled in Galatia.
(NGM, 5/77)
225BC Polybius, a Greek historian,
described the naked gaesatae, Celtic spearmen, at the Battle of
Telamon, northwest of Rome where the Romans defeated the Celts.
(NGM, 5/77)
52BC Caesar climaxed his conquest
of Gaul at Alesia where he vanquished Celtic forces under Vercingetorix.
(NGM, 5/77)
43AD British Celts battled the
Roman invaders in 2-wheeled chariots. The Belgae from northern Gaul had
settled in Britain and ushered in the concept of towns and the art of
enameling.
(NGM, 5/77)
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Subject = Celts
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