I recently learned a lot about the Gauls while studying ancient Europe, and I notice the Gauls have a large population, as well as a really advanced culture, and I wondered how they could sustain a tribe of 168,000 people in just a bunch of huts, but that wouldn't make sense, so the Gauls must've had pretty big cities right?
They were also described as having cities by Caesar in his Gallic wars, and the battle of Alesia included a Gaul fighting force of about 100,000 soldiers in modern estimates, They must have had a pretty well coordinated army and a country and civilization of their own that people don't realize, a civilization probably on par with ancient Rome itself. I think a lot of Gaul writing and culture was lost when Rome conquered it, and they were purposely erased from history.
This is Tenochtitlan, supposedly at its peak with 200,000 people. That one particular Gaulish tribe had 168,000 in it, so they must've had sizable cities
Lucas Morgan
They didn't have cities, they had shithole hillfort settlements (glorified villages), they weren't properly urbanized before the Greek and the Romans colonized their lands
Carson Martin
The region had an extremely long history, longer than Rome extending far into the prehistoric area starting with cave paintings:
Taking Avaricum (actual Bourges) allowed the Romans to survive the scorched earth policy utilised by Vercingetorix.
Estimations put the number of inhabitants at around 40,000 (all but less than a thousands were massacred IIRC).
So yes, the Gauls had cities. Nothing bigger than what the Roman had but there is a reason they were integrated so well into Roman society.
Zachary Allen
I'm saying that's wrong. The Romans had no problem wiping Carthaginian cities off the map, I think they wiped Gaulish cities and civilization out of history.
Jace Mitchell
They didn't, we would've found trace of said cities if there were, we still have the tophet of Phoenician Carthage and other dozens of Carthaginian cities through the Mediterranean in Sicily, Sardinia, Iberia and North Africa
It's unrelated, but I learned something recently about that Battle of Allesia; which I think most people who like Caesar don't mention on purpose.
Vercingetorix took all the old, feeble, women, children, and had them leave the city in order to maximize the amount of time that he'd have before the supplies within the walls ran out. He thought that Caesar would let them pass because they weren't actively resisting, and were of no threat to the army.
Nope.
Caesar blockaded them in a No Man's Land between the city walls, and the legion's camps. In order to make Vercingetorix and the city's defenders watch their families starve to death.
The source I read doesn't explicitly state why, but knowing Caesar it was probably either to get the defenders to come out and attack; or open the gates so that they could rush in. Otherwise one would imagine Caesar's forces should have been instructed to kill them all on sight.
Leo Green
Some ancient Gaul cities are still cities today, i.e: Vienna, and Marseille, or just ancient accounts of the cities by Caesar, for example one city, Helvetii with a population of 263,000 : en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helvetii#Caesar.27s_report_of_the_numbers
Brandon Phillips
>instead of presenting a counter argument I will act like a passive-agressive faggot You must be a fun guy
Jason Wood
Yeah this thread requires a bit of open mindedness, I must admit.
Lincoln Cox
The Romans had more than enough reasons to completely erase the Gauls from history via destruction of their culture and cities. The Gauls first attacked and sacked Rome in 390 BC and defeated them in the early stages of their republic.
Jonathan Torres
That was the Celts. I literally just read this ten minutes ago, reee.
Bentley Nelson
Same region, same civilization.
Nathan Bennett
Herodotus talks about the ancient Celtic/Gaulish city of Pyrene, which as you can see is pretty clearly in Greek history
Cities are large, permanent, and organized population centers. They might be established and grow for a specific reason like trade, administration or defense, but they do not exist solely to serve as trading posts or forts. Rather a city is a society in its own right with a permanent population of different castes and specialized classes like merchants, artisans, scribes, and officials, and usually acting as a center of production in a wider economy. Gallic Oppida do not generally fit this definition, as they existed not as permanent population centers or communities but were built and maintained solely as fortresses and armories without large residential populations, constructed, abandoned and re-inhabited from time to time depending on whether or not the local chiefdom feels the need to maintain them at the time.
That said, I think given time they could have developed into cities and they seem to have been moving in that direction before the Roman conquest.
Julian King
All barbarians had villages and cities, they were a bunch of mud huts and wooden buildings though.
For some reason people put Euro tribes on par with African and American ones when they were much more similar to kingdoms.
