Trusty's Hill with Gatehouse of Fleet in the background. Image: Galloway Picts Project
Trusty's Hill Pictish carving. Image: Galloway Picts Project
Posted on 07/27/2012 9:55:32 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
Trusty's Hill, near Gatehouse of Fleet in Dumfries and Galloway, is best known for the Pictish Symbols carved into a natural rock outcrop at the fort's entrance. However, in recent years, many historians have begun to doubt whether these carvings were genuine, some even suggesting that the carvings are forgeries...
As well as an abundance of domestic waste, including animal bones, stone and metal tools and a spindle whorl, from 'dark soil' occupation deposits sealed by the collapsed ramparts of the fort, the excavators recovered numerous crucible and clay mould fragments, metalworking debris and a variety of iron pins and a possible Anglo-Saxon disc brooch, indicating the production of high status jewellery within the site... E-ware pottery from a secure occupation context... not only dates to the late sixth or early seventh centuries AD, exactly the right time for when Pictish Symbols were being carved in Scotland, but as an import from Western France is associated with high status, often royal, sites in Atlantic Britain such as Dunadd, Dumbarton Rock and Whithorn...
The excavation also revealed that the stone ramparts were laced with large vertical oak posts and that each of these was purposely set alight and stoked to the point where the stone rubble packed around them began to vitrify. Given the substantial fuel, oxygen and time required to accomplish this, it is likely that this deliberate and spectacular destruction of the ramparts took many days, even weeks, to complete...
...a team of stone conservators from the Centre for Digital Documentation and Visualisation LLP undertook a laser scan survey of the Pictish Symbol Stone... to enable specialist examination of the detail of how the Pictish Carvings were made and the translation of an ogham inscription that has been previously noted along the edge of the carved stone
(Excerpt) Read more at pasthorizonspr.com ...
Trusty's Hill with Gatehouse of Fleet in the background. Image: Galloway Picts Project
Trusty's Hill Pictish carving. Image: Galloway Picts Project
Did anyone ever determine just who the heck the picts were? Germanic? Celtic? Neither? And where they went?
Remember that when Picts attack, you need to invite the Saxons to invade in order to “help” you. heh. I am sure that will work out fine. lol.
It is thought they came from the north. Many Scots are descendents of Scandanavians.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/the-truth-about-the-picts-886098.html
It has been my understanding that the picts were small, dark people. If from the Nordic area wouldn’t they have been more like the saxons, tall and fair. Just asking.
I think to find the answer, you’ll have to peer deeply into a Saucerful of Secrets.
I'll do that, one of these days.
Neither. When the Romans first occupied Britain, the Picts were speaking a language that was indecipherable to the them. The Romans guessed they were Iberians. The Romans never tried to occupy Scotland, and the Picts eventually picked up the Gaelic language from the “Scots” who got there from Ireland during late Roman times.
“dark soil”
heh
they found the bathroom
Several Species of Small Furry Animals In A Cave Grooving With A Pict by Pink Floyd
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_MvZxpE7YU
The whole Ummagumma Album for all the purists that need all the songs in context LOL.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5A6zdX1Syc&feature=related
Harold, I think you have both items backwards. The Scots traveled to Ireland. Not the reverse. Why do you think The Romans built the Hadrian’s Wall? It was to keep the folks from Scotland from kicking their asses. There is a huge amount of history involved in this area. I suggest you read “Born Fighting” by Jim Webb, (Yeah, the (D) Senator) to get the results of his many years of research of this subject.
If they were Iberian, then they were Celtic.
Descendants of the followers of Akhenaten who left Egypt by boat after his death. They brought that art of tatoo with them.
LOL!
And btw, I just “got” the Hoosier-Daddy nick’.
CB, I love it when people upload whole albums to YouTube (I have a search for “whole album” or “full album” or something in my browser at work), but alas those acc’ts don’t last long. The German version of Kraftwerk’s “Man Machine” was up for a long time, but has finally bit the dust, and the user kicked off YT.
As always, I’m impressed by FR’s level of discussion on something that’s really kind of arcane, nice job, all.
The Picts were a Celtic people, probably P-Celtic (like the Welsh and Cornish for example), and this is based on the surviving snippets of their language.
The Scoti were a tribe in Ireland that colonized from Ireland in the early Middle Ages.
The Romans invaded Scotland a couple of times, but wrapping up the conquest wound up taking a back seat to some much more pressing issue elsewhere in the Roman Empire, so it never got finished. The full extent of Roman presence in highland Scotland is not yet known — that’s a guess based on the discovery of a Roman settlement found in NE Ireland — but there was never any “Eagle of the Ninth” loss of a Roman legion in Scotland. That’s a fun book for kids and younger teens, BTW, that whole series was a fave back then for yours truly, though I never re-read it.
The extent of the threat from the Caledonians can be summed up by the fact that the Romans manned a 70+ mile long Hadrian’s Wall with a minimum complement of legionaries and relied on imported auxiliaries (such as Sarmatian cavalry) to provide a deterrent, like a security guard does in a shopping mall.
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The Picts are generally believed to have been Celts, related to the Brythons of the southern island conquered by the Romans.
The Picts are generally believed to have been Celts, related to the Brythons of the southern island conquered by the Romans.
I feel like I am reading a bunch of run on sentences.
Watch your P's and Q's.
Two different DNA studies did not find any difference between the Picts and other people in the region.
Genetically, they're basically the same people...differences were culturally and probably due to some period of relative isolation.
My apologies.
Just had to read it a few times. LOL. Interesting stuff.
I ‘ve often wondered if the Sarmatian presence in Roman times was the reason for all the black haired Scots in history.
Thanks blam!
It may have left a trail of DNA, but unlikely, given that Scotland is a maritime country, many ports, heh heh...
There apparently was another Indo-European language spoken in the British Isles before the Celts arrived, or at least some of the river names seem to indicate that.
One example of the differences:
"Pinmore" (a place in Ayrshire mentioned in one of Dorothy Sayers' mysteries) is Q-Celtic and means "big hill."
Bryn Mawr has the same meaning but is P-Celtic.
Nope.
With the Youtube Downloader you can copy them to your HD before they are pulled. Of course it doesn’t always work, but its better than not getting them.
cahokia site:freerepublic.com
That’s a good idea, I may try that. I’ve got that somewhere, and could run with the laptop over to a restaurant with wi-fi.
Hey, blam, those tartans didn’t get from Central Asia to the Scottish highlands by themselves. :’)
VR, I think the last native speaker of Cornish died around 1900-1905.
I haven’t used mine in a while, might need updated
Yes, there is a new version.
Thanks. Will check it out.
Dale Drinnon, in his Frontiers of Anthropology blog, examined this issue in some detail this spring. He presented a great amount of evidence showing that the Picts were descended from relatively short, dark people who migrated from the northern Baltic-Northern Scandinavia area, and that those people were the original (i.e., pre-Germanic) inhabitants of that area.
Thanks for the info.
I thought that Cornish died out in the 18th century but could be wrong. I think there is a group which is trying to revive it (as a second language) but they may have to fill in some bits from Welsh. (Sort of like using frog DNA for dinosaurs in “Jurassic Park”...)
Maybe you’re right about the Celtic origins of the Picts. I did a quick Wikipedia search just now and couldn’t find any mention of some non-Indo European language. It might be a disproven old theory. I read a long time ago that the Romans described the Picts as being smaller and darker than other Celtic speakers and that they guessed that they had an Iberian origin.
As for the origins of the Scots, I refer you to SunkenCiv.
what a colossal waste of time
Thanks harold e. :’)
I’m often surprised at the relative interest in the various topics. Like for example, this one’s not huge yet, but what a great discussion! And the topic that went up maybe an hour ago, about a Roman fort at Alderney, has six replies already. That’s probably more than the one I posted about five years ago about Precolumbian Bison populations in Illinois. ;’)
“Who were the Picts”
That’s a great question. Some think they were Celts, maybe, maybe not. The Celts were from central europe and spoke an Indo-European language. (The Iberians weren’t Celts ) Early missionaries considered their language very different. Venerable Bede called the Picts, “Scythian” which some think means Scandinavian. What if they were exactly what he called them Scythians which were a horse culture from the Eurasian steppes and Black Sea. The Picts had horses and horse culture. I can’t help but notice how similar images of Pictish horses are to Scythian. How they got there is anybodies guess but it’s not to much of a stretch to see them as mercenary horse soldiers stranded in a strange land who got the urge to settle down.
I don’t know why you say the Iberians weren’t celt.
The Iberians were a non Indo-European group, the last rements of which exist as the Basque. They are sometimes thought to be true decendents of CroMagnon Man in both genetics and language. The Celts are largely considered a cultural group from central Europe and all forms of their language are Indo-European. In Britian there is a disconnect between culture and genetics where some populations are genetically close to Iberians but culturally Celtic.
If your’re interested in learning more, there is a sub field in archaeology called archeogenetics.
Late ancient authors, dealing with various ethnic groups not mentioned in earlier historians, often applied to them the names of unrelated people who had lived in the same area many centuries earlier who were mentioned by Herodotus and other early writers. So tribes living north of the Black Sea might be called Scythians even if not really Scythian. It may be that Bede was following that practice (although the original Scyths were never as far west as Britain).
I believe the builders of Stonehenge are thought to have spoken a non-Indo-European language. There were definitely people living in the British Isles before any Indo-European languages arrived there.
Given the genetic evidence for relationships with people in the Iberian peninsula, perhaps before the Celts arrived there was a language related to something spoken in Spain (either a relative of Basque or some other pre-Roman language of Spain).
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