Celtic Hegemony In Europe And Beyond At Its Height
At one time the Celtic peoples were spread over large parts of Europe and beyond. It is known that by around 275 BC, the Celts' influence and power stretched from the Atlantic seaboard in the west of Europe and included parts of the Iberian peninsula, the islands of Britain and Ireland, much of Western and Central Europe, part of Eastern Europe and into central Anatolia. There can be little doubt that the Celts viewed themselves in that period as an identifiable separate ethnically similar people speaking related Celtic languages. Sculptures carved at the time and found in many parts of Europe project a similar image of themselves over a significant geographical spread.
The question of where the Celts originated prior to this great expansion has been the subject of much research over recent years. In particular the hypothesis of “Celtic from the West”, raised by a number of those studying the subject including Barry Cunliffe archaeologist and academic, who was Professor of European Archaeology at the University of Oxford from 1972 to 2007 and now Emeritus Professor and his colleague John T. Koch, who is an academic, historian and linguist who specializes in Celtic studies. The theory being that the Celtic-speaking peoples emerged from the communities living along Europe’s western coastal regions during the Bronze Age.
