On Sun, Feb 09, 2003 at 07:14:53PM -0800, Zoe wrote:
Nastiness doesn't get you anywhere, Clutch. A quick Google search found http://druidry.org/obod/druid-path/celts_saxons.html which said, in part, "The ancient Germans and Celts had many things in common so culturally it might be more correct to group them all together as Northwest Europeans rather than separate them politically". How much research have you done on the issue? Germanii were only one tribe, anyway, weren't they?
No. Linguistically the Celts and Germanii were very different. In fact, there is evidence that the Germanii were originally a tribe of Persians who lived near the Black sea at the time of Cyrus. A couple hundred years after Romes first contact with them, the name Germanii had become used by the Germans themselves to describe all the tribes that shared the same language, religion, and heritage. Before that, Germanii did only refer to one particular tribe of Germans (around 200BC). The only thing the Celts and Germans had in common was living in Northern European, and having white skin. Religiously, ethnically, culturally, they were very different. Where the Celts cultivated the ground, the Germans were foragers.
Because of the interbreeding that has happened in North America in the past couple hundred years, many people don't understand the differences that once existed between these two groups, and easily make the mistake of thinking they were just close branches of one big "Euro-American" family.
Jonathan