What IS A Celt?
Actually the term “Keltoi” is of Greek origin, not Julius Caesar ( by Hecataeus of Miletus, in 517 BC ) but i still feel that this kind of “antiromanticism” is important.
Using the term “Celt” makes things easier but one should be aware of how flimsy a term it really is beyond the purely linguistic.
Nature and cities.
The name of the song is “Den Vilda” (“The Wild” or “Feral One”) by One More Time.
One of the missions of Hurstwic is to educate the public on topics related to the Viking Age. Hurstwic members make themselves available to universities, schools, museums, and community groups for lectures and demonstrations
The Marcomanni were a Germanic tribe, probably related to the Buri, Suebi or Suevi.
Picture: http://www.germanmilitaryhistory.com/blog/524371-the-marcomannic-wars/
See this blog for armor details
Scholars believe their name derives possibly from Proto-Germanic forms of “march” (“frontier, border”) and “men”.
The Marcomanni settled in the Main River valley soon after 100 BC. To escape Roman aggression in 9 BC they migrated east to Bohemia, where their king Maroboduus established a powerful kingdom that Augustusperceived as a threat to Rome. Before he could act, however, the war in Illyria intervened. Eventually Maroboduus was deposed and exiled by Catualda (AD 19).
Tacitus, in the late 1st century mentions (Germania I.42) the Marcommani as being under kings appointed by Rome.
Picture: http://www.modelloursworkshop.com/2011_05_01_archive.html
The Marcomannic Wars (called by the Romans bellum Germanicum or expeditio Germanica) were a series of wars lasting over a dozen years from about AD 166 until 180. These wars pitted the Roman Empire against the Marcomanni, Quadiand other Germanic peoples, along both sides of the upper and middle Danube. The struggle against the Germanic invasions occupied the major part of the reign of Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius, and it was during his campaigns against them that he started writing his philosophical work Meditations, whose first book bears the note “Among the Quadi at the Granua”
In the 2nd century AD, the Marcomanni entered into a confederation with other peoples including the Quadi, Vandals, and Sarmatians, against the Roman Empire. This was probably driven by movements of larger tribes, like the Goths. According to the historian Eutropius, the forces of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius battled against the Marcomannic confederation for three years at the fortress of Carnuntum in Pannonia. Eutropius compared the war, and Marcus Aurelius’ success against the Marcomanni and their allies, to the Punic Wars. The comparison was apt in that this war marked a turning point and had significant Roman defeats; it caused the death of two Praetorian Guard commanders. The war began in 166, when the Marcomanni overwhelmed the defences between Vindobona and Carnuntum, penetrated along the border between the provinces of Pannonia and Noricum, laid waste to Flavia Solva, and could be stopped only shortly before reaching Aquileia on the Adriatic sea. The war lasted until Marcus Aurelius’ death in 180. It would prove to be only a limited success for Rome; theDanube river remained as the frontier of the Empire until the final fall of the West.
Picture: http://www.modelloursworkshop.com/2011_05_01_archive.html
The Christianisation of the Marcomanni occurred under their queen Fritigil (mid fourth century), who corresponded with Ambrose of Milan to bring about the conversion.
There is a runic alphabet called the Marcomannic runes, but they are not believed to be related to the Marcomannic people.
After crossing the Pyrenees in 409, a group of Marcomanni, Quadi and Buri, established themselves in the Roman province of Gallaecia (modern Galicia and northern Portugal), where they were considered foederati and founded the Suebi Kingdom of Gallaecia. There, Hermeric swore fealty to the Emperor in 410. Bracara Augusta, the modern city of Braga in Portugal, previously the capital of Roman Gallaecia, now became the capital of the Suebic kingdom.
The genetic history of Europe can be inferred from the patterns of genetic diversity across continents and time. The primary data to develop historical scenarios coming from sequences of mitochondrial, Y-chromosome and autosomal DNA from modern populations and if available from ancient DNA. European populations have a complicated demographic and genetic history, including many successive periods of population growth.
Relation between Europeans and other populations
According to Cavalli-Sforza’s work, all non-African populations are more closely related to each other than to Africans; supporting the hypothesis that all non-Africans descend from a single old-African population. The genetic distance from Africa to Europe (16.6) was found to be shorter than the genetic distance from Africa to East Asia (20.6), and much shorter than that from Africa to Australia (24.7). He explains:
…both Africans and Asians contributed to the settlement of Europe, which began about 40,000 years ago. It seems very reasonable to assume that both continents nearest to Europe contributed to its settlement, even if perhaps at different times and maybe repeatedly. It is reassuring that the analysis of other markers also consistently gives the same results in this case. Moreover, a specific evolutionary model tested, i.e., that Europe is formed by contributions from Asia and Africa, fits the distance matrix perfectly (6). In this simplified model, the migrations postulated to have populated Europe are estimated to have occurred at an early date (30,000 years ago), but it is impossible to distinguish, on the basis of these data, this model from that of several migrations at different times. The overall contributions from Asia and Africa were estimated to be around two-thirds and one-third, respectively”.
This particular model used an Out of Africa migration 100,000 years ago which separated Africans from non-Africans followed by a single admixture event 30,000 years ago leading to the formulation of the European population. The admixture event consisted of a source population that was 35% African and 65% East Asian. However the study notes that a more realistic scenario would include several admixture events occurring over a sustained period. In particular they cite the spread of farming from a source population in West Asia 5000–9000 years ago may have played a role in the genetic relatedness of Africans and Europeans since West Asia is sandwiched in between Africa and Central Asia. The model assumed an out of Africa migration 100kya and a single admixture event 30kya. However, most contemporary studies have more recent dates that place the out of Africa migration 50-70kya. The study also involved a direct comparison between Sub-Saharan Africans (Central Africans and Senegalese) and Europeans. North Africans population were omitted from the study as they are known to have both Eurasian and Sub-Saharan admixture. These considerations might help explain the apparent short genetic distance between Europeans and Africans.
A later study by Bauchet, which utilised ~ 10 thousand autosomal DNA SNPs arrived at similar results. Principal component analysis clearly identified four widely dispersed groupings corresponding to Africa, Europe, Central Asia and South Asia. PC1 separated Africans from the other populations, PC2 divided Asians from Europeans and Africans, whilst PC3 split Central Asians apart from South Asians.
♥ http://en.wikipedia.org/wi ki/Genetic_history_of_Euro pe ♥
pic ♥ The distribution of the V-13 sub-lineage of haplogroup E1b1b in Europe
