Why weren’t the ancient celts considered a civilization?

Why weren’t the ancient celts considered a civilization?
>They had large urban centers
>Paved roads
>A culture
>Wealth classes
>A hierarchy (Government)
>Advance agriculture
>Religious beliefs
>Metalluagy that was on par with the ancient Greeks and Romans.

They sound pretty close to a civilization to me.

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en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oppidum#Examples
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uh, pretty sure they are?

>Not a civilization

Bias history.

Writting
Did they
Or did they not
Have a written language

They’re not white Nordic Aryans.

Runes?

To my knowledge They aren't considered a civilization because they were not a centeralized peoples, extremy divided, tribe orienting in some areas, settled urban dwellings in others, multple languages and dialects.

Also I have heard, (but not personally looked into it) that they had different gods and no uniform writing or based beuracacy that connected the entirety of celts together.

However all of which could be argued about bronze age civs as well, so I'll leave this open ended in hopes to get a better understanding as well.

Do you have a problem, with my classifications, Anonicus?

>because they were not a centeralized peoples, extremy divided, tribe orienting in some areas, settled urban dwellings in others, multple languages and dialects.
ancient greeks were the same

Kek

Ancient Greeks had the Mediterranean though. Was a great source of brain food until the past century or two with the mass accumulation of heavy metals in ocean flora.

Eskimos had a diet where the only prevalent problem was osteoporosis at old age (lack of vitamin D...). Now they suffer the side effects of mercury building up in their bodies.

Too divided, they often fought each other.

Greek is city states....

>ancient greeks were the same
Literally just fuckin said...
>However all of which could be argued about bronze age civs as well, so I'll leave this open ended in hopes to get a better understanding

That pic is roman, retard

No

Post yfw the far west of Gaul was still Celtic in the 5th century and the Romans used Celtic Foederati against the Goths and Huns

-Greeks had a literary tradition. Celtic Druids disdained reading and writing as something that makes men soft and effeminate so nobody really bothered to write their thoughts down and share it with like minded individuals.
-When we say “Greek civilization” what we’re really talking about was “Athenian civilization”, the City-state which may or may not have invented the concept of “public matters”, or Res Publica, but certainly were the first to codify and live by it consciously. At its height Athens was a thassalocracy ruling multiple city states by the might of its Maritime power.
-The Celts never had a concept of there being a Celtic commonwealth, their culture revolved around the tribe and blood bonds and was never more organized than a city council.

Literal tormento pabulum.

It’s an Iberian celtic Oppidum you brainlet.

Germanic, not Celtic

Arverni had a large hegemony over Gauls, didn't they?
I think not writing is kinda gay, but if you've got a bunch of druids picking up the slack I think it's at least not a detracting factor.

See . When we talking about Greece, we aren't talking about Sparta, which didn't even use currency and still used a bartering system.

But they still call it Greek civilization.

So why don't the Arverni warrant a "Celtic civilization"?

i think historically illiterate people take word "barbarians" too literally

>iberian celtic

Lol so they were med mutts, not true celts

>No true Scotsman fallacy
Okay how about Heuneburg?

much smaller honey ;) and it's one exception to the rule, the rest were small villages with a handful of ugly huts each

Actually these Celtic settlements were very common. They were so common that Caesar coined a name for them “Oppida”

No, they weren't, and Hueneburg was abandoned by the time Caesar stepped in Gaul

Damn this thread is full of low effort and uneducated answers. Kids with Vacation much?

The term civilization is extremely broad and debatable but i think if you ask any recognized historian he Will put most Celtic Peoples within his Definition of civilization especially the gauls, celtiberians,galatians and britons.

BCUZ DEY WUZ LIVIN IN CAVES WHILE DA ROMANS BUILT CIVILIZASHUN DAS RITE

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oppidum#Examples

oh yeah... they had had like 3 small towns made with wooden huts and barely any infrastructure, even if they occupied an area which spanned from Ireland to Turkey... incredible.

While Romans had cities approaching a million inhabitants, were mostly urbanized, managed massive engineering projects like kilometers long aqueducts running, tunnels cutting straight through mountains, kilometers long sewers, bathouses in every city, a rich literature and flourishing theater with excellent drama writers, mass production of iron, yeah... they were totally on the same level

C'mon, get a fucking grip, they were on completely different levels

>oh yeah... they had had like 3 small towns made with wooden huts and barely any infrastructure, even if they occupied an area which spanned from Ireland to Turkey... incredible.

Romans weren't that much civilized, they just had a vastly superior military structure.

The Celts definitely did have writing, however it seemed that due to the whole Druidic thing, they sadly seem to only have written down the most mundane shit like "bob made this rather nifty pot for sam".
That's why we know quite a bit about mainland Celtic languages, but very little of their religious beliefs.

You could argue that the Celts did have a sort of "commonwealth" going on, as the Druids seemed to organise inter-tribally and across pretty huge swathes of land.

Got anything against that?

Your list mentions mostly shitty fortified villages and a bunch of small towns, while Italy alone had hundreds of cities with incredible infrastructure (massive arched aqueducts running for kilometers, massive sewers and bathouses, flush toilets, plumbing, massive stone walls, gorgeous theaters etc) and urban planning, Rome reached a million inhabitants during the time of the Gallic wars, Syracuse about 300,000.

They were on complete different levels, deal with it.

You're a complete clueless idiot, Romans were the most civilized people on the planet during the time of the Gallic wars, Celts were glorified savages, they were on pair with the contemporary Sao civilization of West Africa, and I'm really stretching it, a bunch of sparse small towns with no state entity, basically tribal chiefdoms scattered around slowly approaching the first stages of urbanization in a few areas

t. Gayus Rectus Explodus

After the decline of Rome throughout the 4th and 5th centuries, the city wouldn't hold that many people until the late 1800s.

CONT.

Actually wikipedia says it took until after WWI to reach that amount of people.

And?

After the fall of the Roman empire most cities in France, England and other ex Celt territories were completely abandoned

t. Salvatore Mozzarella

Oh it was just something I found interesting. That it would take literally a millenium and a half to pack as many people, now in the steam age, in Rome from an age in which watermills were at most a flight of fancy.

This is exactly why I called you a brainlet. No one here said that the Romans were inferior to the celts.

We were talking about whether or not the Celts should be considered a civilization. Saying that the Celts weren't quite as advanced as the Romans doesn't refute a single fucking thing. It just shows that you're an obnoxious romeboo faggot who wants to undermine other Non-Roman cultures.

Oh and those "hill forts" were large Urban centers that play economic and political roles.

I learned it like this, to be considered a civilization you need at least one of those three:

1.) complex writing system
2.) a strong central government/military
3.) complex iron working

Celts had neither, so the aren't a civ.

They weren't large, and only a handful of them were really urban centers, the Celts cannot pass a civilization because they weren't a unified culture despite speaking similar languages, they were too much diverse, those in Galicia who built the castros might pass, those in britain or even less so ireland, not really

The idea of them being savages doesn't line up with what we know of their government structures, which were complex to the point of being kinda convoluted. There's a prevailing pattern of annual elections for all sorts of positions.
They had all the sorts of shit you need to be classed as a civilisation: Urban centers, division of labour, standardised currency to name a few.

There's a pretty strong theory that Gallic society was so well organised by the time of the Roman conquest that it's one reason why the region seemed to integrate so quickly and easily, because all the required structures were already at hand.

By the time of the Gallic wars there was a massive trend amongst all tribes to centralise and urbanise. The Oppida were growing rapidly, although the caveat is because every tribe (or multi-tribe confederation) had their own, they obviously didn't have one huge impressive center in the same sense that Rome did. Despite this, cities like Alesia and Gergovia were apparently pretty impressive sights even to Roman eyes.

The Arverni were still just an incredibly powerful tribe, about as large as tribes can realistically get, which entered into an impromptu alliance with the remaining Gallic tribes in an effort to stop Julius Caesar from divide-and-conquering them by playing them off of each other, which is how he was able to bring down the entire region with a relatively small army. Vercingetorix’s resistance was a last stand which was too little, too late, keeping in mind that the nobles at Gergovia has executed his father Celtillus and exiled him for trying to rally the Celtic tribes to oppose Caesar’s army. After he raised an army and forced himself back into power, he rallied about 15 tribes to join his resistance. That’s about as organized as the Celts could get, even in the face of an existential threat.

Are there any good reconstructions, descriptions or accounts of these cities before Rome annexed them? I've always loved the Celts

Technically a civilization starts with the existence of a city. Because the existence of a city means you have a culture of farming and/or trade which produces a surplus. Which in turn enables the creation of complexity like bureaucracies and temples and public works and the coordination of ever-larger numbers of men.

>They weren't large

They were large by iron age standards.

>the Celts cannot pass a civilization because they weren't a unified culture despite speaking similar languages

The Greek city-states shouldn't be considered a civilization either.

>diff gods
no, same gods, even the names.
>diff language
no, same or mutually comprehensive.
>not centralized
No one was at this time, they did have high kings and war leaders who controlled multiple estates.
>no bureaucracy
They did though, they had local regents, nobles, and administrators ruling over smaller estates who answered the head of state like a regional king or in some areas a high king or war leader.
>divided
Literally everywhere else was the exact same way. Rome consisted of subjugated city states which still quarreled. Greece the birthplace of Western Civilization or at least it's proto-format was the same way, even worse, they couldn't even unify in the face of foreign invasion. People always forget that Athens sold Sparta out to Persia after Sparta sold out the rest of Greece to Persia. Both tried to play the Macedonians off the other.
Not to mention the lesser city states and the Ionian wars.
Civilization is not unanimous with universal peace.
>urban and rural dwellings
This describes everyone today as well.
>no uniform writing
We don't know exactly, not a lot survived, but we know they did write, whether it was a universal "Celtic" (read :Gallic) language is up for debate.
this
>-The Celts never had a concept of there being a Celtic commonwealth, their culture revolved around the tribe and blood bonds and was never more organized than a city council.
Druids and Kings would regularly convene to plot against Rome. Multiple Gallic tribes and holdings coming together on the basis of a shared desire for self government without a higher foreign power.
They were Celts in Spain, not Spanish Celts.

>They were large by iron age standards.

Considering Rome approached a million inhabitants around the time of the Gallic wars, no, they weren't particularly large

>The Greek city-states shouldn't be considered a civilization either.

They spoke the exact same language, Celts spoke different languages of the Celtic branch, Greek city states were all cities with similar features and infrastructure, except maybe Sparta which lacked walls because they were tryhards, but they were pretty much the same exact people with small variations and the same level of urbanization everywhere, Celts had very different building methods, urban planning (if they had it in those very few cases like the Castros of Galicia), the same infrastructures (theaters, agorà, etc...)

>1.) complex writing system
We know they were literate (otherwise we wouldn't know what we know about Gaulish), but culturally they had a barrier in the form of the damn Druidic class which prevented us from getting any really interesting things written down by the Gauls. All Gaulish writing we have is from really boring shit like potter's marks.
>2.) a strong central government/military
The individual tribes were well organised and by the time of the Gallic wars were coalescing into ever larger confederations.
The idea of Gallic warriors being suicidal idiots running up to get impaled seems to be largely a myth. Most period accounts describe an affinity to long spears and so-called "phalanxes".
>3.) complex iron working
They were considered literally the best of the time period. The Romans happily ripped off shit tons of Celtic military equipment. To name a few:
>Gladius (Celtiberian)
>Spatha (Gallic, copied from the ones used by auxiliary cavalry)
>Lorica Hamata
>Helmets (Galea, Montefortino, Coolus, Agen and Port types)
Possible, but unconfirmed Celtic origin:
>Pilum (simplified soliferrum? Also may be of Samnite origin)
>Scutum (Early variants were basically identical to Gallic shields, prior to the adoption of the Scutum the Romans actually fought as hoplites with the aspis. The Scutum could also be of Samnite origin)

>Considering Rome approached a million inhabitants around the time of the Gallic wars, no, they weren't particularly large

Rome was probably the first city to reach a million inhabitants. Any capital of other "civilization" would seem puny. It's not really fair to bring Rome as the standard rather than as an exceptional exemplar to the entire world at the time.

>no, same or mutually comprehensive

No, different languages, even if related

>no one was at the time

Rome was.

>they did though

No, they didn't

>We don't know exactly, not a lot survived, but we know they did write, whether it was a universal "Celtic" (read :Gallic) language is up for debate.

No, except for some Italic derived short inscription in Switzerland, Celts did not write before the Roman conquest

>while Italy alone had hundreds of cities with incredible infrastructure (massive arched aqueducts running for kilometers, massive sewers and bathouses, flush toilets, plumbing, massive stone walls, gorgeous theaters etc) and urban planning
uh, no?
Not at all. All of this was first of all stolen from the Greeks, Celts, and Semites. Secondly the majority of what you mention was built later on in the Late Republican to Imperial era, when Rome had access to foreign technology and foreign manpower.
>Rome reached a million inhabitants during the time of the Gallic wars
Well, you fucking mongoloid, Celtic Gaul and later Celitc Britain was the last province Rome actually conquered. By this time, that Rome was so huge, she stretched already from Spain to Persia.
Stop pretending like Rome was built by some magical Med superiority.
>had to enslave half the world to accomplish half of what the Gauls did with a tiny patch of Western Europe.

CONT.

Imagine saying some schmuck at a regional mining company isn't a CEO because he only makes a million while Jeff Bezos is, atm, worth more than a hundred billion. They're both CEOs but Bezos is an exceptional exemplar.

You can't use Rome as the standard. They were the pinnacle of human civilization at the time so virtually everyone else would seem puny in comparison.

They were huge and there were more of them than there were large Roman cities.
an Oppida was more like a castle than a city.
Would you call modern day Suburbanites under-developed because they don't live next to a factory strip?
No, you wouldn't.
no

The Greek city states were far more organized than the Celtic tribes and the single biggest difference was that the Greeks had a concept of Res Publica, or the commonwealth. Under the Athenians multiple city states were formed in a league until they were all united under the Macedonians. The Celts could not organize much more than a dozen tribes (much less multi-clan city-states) even in the face of Roman conquest (compare that to the way Athens built a coalition of city-states to repel the Persians.)

There’s a huge difference of scale, there. Greek cities were grander than anything the Celts ever built. Look at it this way: the military bridge that Caesar built across the Rhine just to scare away the Germans was the largest structure that had yet been built north of the Alps, which he tore right back down as a giant “fuck you” to the Germans.

That’s not to say that the Celts were savages, in fact the Romans straight up copied a ton of technology from them. It’s more accurate to compare them to ruralists who valued their independence losing to a centralized urban society which was fueling itself by conquest.

Here's the criteria for civilization.
>Art/Architecture
Various types of artwork and buildings that express the talents, beliefs, and values of people in a society.
>Culture, the way of life of a people, expressed in outlets such as art, architecture, belief, and social structure
>Religion
a social institution involving beliefs and practices based on recognizing the sacred
>Technology
tools and skills people use to make life easier
(if you are unsure about this one, Celts were the only people to develop the iteration of grindstone mill that would be used up until the 19th century.)
Trade/Transportation
An organized network of roads, railways, and ports for moving people and goods from place to place.
>Government
The power or authority that rules a country
>Writing/Language
The system of communication involving symbols that stand for sounds and ideas to record information.
>Economy
the way people use resources to meet their needs

The Celts had all of these things, The Celts or at least the Gauls were a civilization on par with and in some cases exceeding Rome.

>Druids and Kings would regularly convene to plot against Rome.
They would also regularly convene with Rome to plot against each other.

That’s the critical difference

Gaulish is considered to have been one unified language, with dialects.
The same goes for ancient Greek, which also differed heavily based on region, the primary dialects being Attic, Doric and Ionic.
After Alexander's reign Koine was established as a sort of "international" form of Greek, from which almost every modern dialect has descended.

>Greeks had a concept of Res Publica, or the commonwealth. Under the Athenians multiple city states were formed in a league until they were all united under the Macedonians.
>muh Delian league
The Greeks had no concept of a Commonwealth, they had a concept of pseudo-colonialism. When push came to shove they were more likely to sell each other out, like they did.
They even fought with each other regularly, conquered each other, the Gauls did not conquer each other, they had war more as a sport and political event rather than a fight for dominion or eradication of another tribe, this is in stark contrast to the Greeks whom lorded over each other whether it be the Athenians extorting lesser states or the Spartans conquering and enslaving anyone within a 20 mile radius.

>Athens built a coalition
Literally four cities.
No other cities did anything worthy of note aside from economic and political footnotes.

Romans were also infamous for convening with foreigners to plot against each other too.

>They would also regularly convene with Rome to plot against each other.
>That’s the critical difference
You mean like the Greeks did with Persia?
Or the Assyrians did with Babylonia?
At the end of the day, I have to say you're wrong because VerCingetoRix encountered no real Gallic resistance in military form, even Romanized Gauls defected to him.

>There’s a huge difference of scale, there. Greek cities were grander than anything the Celts ever built. Look at it this way: the military bridge that Caesar built across the Rhine just to scare away the Germans was the largest structure that had yet been built north of the Alps, which he tore right back down as a giant “fuck you” to the Germans.

The big problem with the Celts is that their principle construction material was wood, in addition to having a lot of their shit totally destroyed and overbuilt by later Roman constructions.

When it comes to fuckhuge constructions, then the walls of the largest Oppida definitely were larger than Caesar's bridge.

One thing you people have to understand is that not all Celts were equally developed.

The Gauls and Galatians were the most advanced probably followed by the Balkan Celts and Celtiberians, while more isolated peoples like the Britons and Belgae were much less so.

When it comes to the question of "were they a civilisation" then the answer depends on which Celts you mean. For example in the case of Gaul it's a hard yes, in the case of Ireland it's most likely a hard no.

>Gaulish is considered to have been one unified language, with dialects


No, it's not, Gaulic is, like Italic or Roman a branch of Indoeuropean, I, an Italian speak an italic language, but I wouldn't understand spoken Latin or even less so Sicel or Samnite,
>The same goes for ancient Greek, which also differed heavily based on region, the primary dialects being Attic, Doric and Ionic.

It's literally the same language with a few variations, it's really, really similar, Celtic languages were much more heterogeneous.

>uh, no?
Not at all.

Italy had hundreds of city in it by the time of the Gallic wars, and the average city in Italy was grander than anything the Gauls ever built including Alesia.

>All of this was first of all stolen from the Greeks, Celts, and Semites.

hahaha, the fuck are you on about? Romans stole the aqueduct from the Celts?

And they didn't steal it from Greeks, let alone from phoenicians, while some Greek cities had aqueducts, theyw ere completely different from Roman ones, which had a very different structures, especially the open air arched part, which was a Roman invention, Greeks did not have arched aqueducts running for several kilometers, neither did Phoenicians, and both the Phoenicians and Greeks barely employed the arch.

Same thing goes for Roman sewers, et cetera, which were much grander and different structurally from Greek sewers. And much more numerous and widespread too.

>Secondly the majority of what you mention was built later on in the Late Republican to Imperial era,

The first Roman aqueduct dates back to 312 bc.


>had to enslave half the world to accomplish half of what the Gauls did with a tiny patch of Western Europe.

The fuck are you on about, retard? Even before conquering Greece or Iberia Rome was 20 times larger than the largest shithole the Gaul ever built in their entire existence

>The Greeks had no concept of a Commonwealth, they had a concept of pseudo-colonialism
No, they straight up practiced colonialism, robbing their neighbors blind to build up Athens, bullying them into submission with their navy.

They also had a concept of citizenship and participated in popular assemblies and voted on legislation which was carried out by a public government which acted in their interests, at times to their detriment. The Celts has nothing approaching this level of organization: even the most powerful kings couldn’t muster the force to repel Caesar’s legions. Compare that to the way that the Greeks not only repelled the Persians, but then conquered them under Alexander.

>They were huge and there were more of them than there were large Roman cities.

They were huge? The largest oppidium was smaller than the average city in Italy at the time

>an Oppida was more like a castle than a city.

So how the fuck can they be huge, if their basically fortresses and not even actual cities?

>there were more of them

No, there weren't, Sicily alone had like 30-40 actual cities

They were also famous for clinging together as city states even as Hannibal was smacking down the Romans up and down Italy.

You’re ignoring scale

Yes, divide and conquer is the name of the game, sneaky ruthlessness is what wins wars throughout history. Julius Caesar literally wrote the book on divide and conquer by turning the entire Gallic culture against itself, taking over a vast territory with limited resources. This speaks to the sheer disunity of the Celtic people, and ultimately what led to their downfall and permanent cucking by both the Romans and later Germanic supertribes like the Franks.

Gaulish government structure was based on representative systems. We obviously can't know how exactly they functioned but we know that most tribes functioned on some sort of elected council, combined with a "king", and druids doing druid shit.
The "kings" were only kings in name, they were elected and served limited terms in most tribes.

The Gallic political system was capable of centralising massively and seemed to be on a path to coalesce into ever larger confederations before this process was rather rudely interrupted.

As for the military situation, the Romans were basically superior to every other power in the known world. The various Gallic factions were bleeding themselves dry fighting each other, and when a good amount of them finally unified (that itself is no mean feat and shows a huge deal of organization), it really shouldn't be a surprise that a hastily assembled force didn't manage to win against the world's foremost military power.
That being said, they almost did.

Anyway, some of the Gaulic tribes can be considered a civilization or proto civilization, others can't

>Gaulish government structure was based on representative systems
No, it was based on blood tribes like the Arverni or the Aedui or the Helvetii, at best an alliance of several clans, but nothing approaching the organization of the Mediterranean states like Rome, Athens, or Carthage.

Extorting a collection of Greeks who are distantly related to you and therefore your 'colony' isn't colonialism.
>concept of citizenship
>this was only present at certain times and was a more or less arbitrary political tool
user, this is not evidence for Athenian administrative structures being superior to Gallic ones.
>democracy is civilized
Actually, democratic processes are the mark of decivilization.
I read HHH *tips crown*.
On a serious note, Democracy is one step above tribalism, monarchy, which the Gauls had even if it was loosely enforced is above monarchy.
>Celts has nothing approaching this level of organization
They had an educated aristocracy bred to rule, such litigious measures like the ones found in Athens were uneeded because the Gauls ruled more justly and in a friendlier more "organic" fashion.
By friendly and organic I do not mean they simply tried to have nice pr, I mean they were politically unified in terms of how things should be run. In Athens you not only had the strife of democracy, but also those who rejected democracy entirely.
>couldn't muster the force to repel Caesar's legions
No one could have, you could drop Caesar's legions 1,000 years into the future and they would dominate Europe easily, you could probably drop Caesar's Legions in Europe anywhere from 1,500 and back and they would go unrivaled.
The fact that the Gauls under Vercingetorix almost beat Caesar only proves their superiority to other peoples who rebelled with small bands of raiders and then submitted or people who heard of the legacy of Rome and surrendered without a fight at all.
>Greeks not only repelled the Persians
They didn't, they simply went back after the Persians were finished ravaging the area.
Also, Brennus, second battle of Thermopylae
Gauls gave the Athenians, Corinthians, Thebans, and a few others a huge smackdown and then sacked Greece and left without ever facing a debilitating defeat.
Macedonia/Thrace =/ Greece.

>The largest oppidium was smaller than the average city in Italy at the time
[citation needed]
The Freedom tower is kind of small compared to the Burj. I guess the freedom tower is a small building.
>So how the fuck can they be huge
They were the largest things in Northern Europe. Romans didn't keep castle like structures, only forts and outposts which could be dismantled or abandoned without much cost.
The Gauls might not have had the sheer population, but in regards to the population they did have and the utility they got out of them, they were superior to cities. Also cities tend to degenerate, better to have your people spread out in rural communes than packed onto each other in cities which the only purpose is to be a place for the unwashed masses to merely exist.
>no there weren't
>nearly every city in Roman Gaul was built upon a basic Oppida
Yes there were.
What constitutes an actual city?
Is a large village a city?

>divide and conquer
>barely anyone was divided
>the conquering consisted of decisive field battles
Alexander conquered, Caesar subjugated.
I wouldn't call Caesar ruthless or all that sneaky, he was deliberate more than anything, deliberation wins wars because deliberation can not be stopped when you have superior troops.
We see sneaky ruthlessness among the less professional soldiers, like the Gauls and the Germans.
How did he turn their culture against itself?
Some sided with Rome for protection, some didn't.
>sheer disunity
>none of the Gauls came to Caesar's aid beyond being nominally present when he called them
Yeah, real "disunity".
Ignoring the fact that they banded together to create the largest army they had ever seen in their lifetime to oppose Caesar.
>cucking
Gauls retained their way of life.
And if we mean Celts on the whole, Gaelic isn't dead, Latin is.
Pure Celts/Gaels still exist, Romans were bred out by Germanics and Arabs.
The French today are more Gallic than German or Italian.

From what we could tell they definitely could match the complexity of Mediterranean systems, at least is the case of the major tribes/confederations.

"Tribe" is a loaded as fuck term that we today associate with primitive new guineans in dick sheaths tossing little spears around. For ancient yurop, it's a totally different story.
Tribes were just another form of state, in function fairly close to a city state but not tied to a certain urban settlement. They could be complex and run using very sophisticated systems. For the Gauls we have the system of annual council elections and a clear division of power.
Germanic tribes also had complex systems, which have carried their influence into the modern day - the reason why Swiss have such a hard-on for direct democracy can be traced back to their Alamanni ancestors, their relative isolation from the rest of HRE let much of the old tribal ways survive.

why did they have apparently very good metallurgy and a land with a nice climate yet no empires or cities even close in size and advancement to those of South America, much less East Asia, Greater Iran, or the Mediterranean Basin?

Speaking of the Gauls and Britons here BTW, not the Celtiberians since I don't know what they were up to.

Don't underestimate the impact winter, even mild winters, can have on population density without advanced farming knowledge/practices. I can't think of any huge ancient cities which were founded in a cold continental climate around the time of the La Tene celts

Also don't compare wildly different time periods. If by South America you mean Incas that was 1500 years after the La Tene

>hundreds of towns in Roman Italy
>grander (a vague term with no basis of comparison) than anything the Celts built including [this town we literally have no idea what it looks like save a vague description of the outside and location]
>every town in Italy was bigger than any Gallic city
>Celtic languages between tribes were entirely different languages while Attic, Doric, and Ionic were the same language
>strawmanning the "Celtic civilization was superior to Roman civilization" argument to subvert the actual discussion

Why is that Ancient History especially seems to bring out a group of people as vocal as they are ignorant?

> Gallic city

Which were literally just 5 or 6 and all smaller

>>every town in Italy was bigger than any Gallic city

You do know average and every have different meanings, right?

Retarded asshole

>hundreds of towns in Roman Italy

Yeah, so? Got any figure against that?

No, I imagine you don't, considering Crete alone had over 100 cities in Homeric times, it's not really weird to imagine that, of course you're historically illiterate and a clueless tard all around so it seems weird to you, Central Italy was largely urbanized, same with most of the south.

>>grander (a vague term with no basis of comparison) t

More organized, better and much more impressive infrastructure, whole the average gaulic settlement was a woodhut village with less than 100 people inside it, of course you don't even know what the term "average" means so you'll answer with a strawman like "Alesia had 10,000 citizens!!!!" We know, and it was the biggest Celtic town ever built, an exception to the rule, and it was inferior both in size and infrastructure to any major Italian city.

>Celtic languages between tribes were entirely different languages while Attic, Doric, and Ionic were the same language

Yes, they were, you retarded asshole, Greek is the language, Doric, Attic and Ionic are just dialects, I assume you've never studied ancient Greek before, the differences are really minor, while Celtic language were completely different from one another.

Does anyone have screenshots of oppidums in total war rome 2?

And how accurate are they to the real thing?

>we know the number of Gallic cities despite the supposed largest Celtic city in Gaul having no archeological evidence
>I have zero proof about the number of towns in Italy and am basing it on an assumption about the number of cities on an island from a completely unrelated civilization
>furthermore, from this figure I am pulling out of my ass, I can assert the average size and ifnfrastructure investment for Italian cities and compare it to Gallic cities we have little record of and no accurate estimate for inhabitants
>in addition, I can completely assume the number of Gallic settlements (a new qualifier I am bringing up in this discussion to suit a counter argument to a strawman I am forwarding) and their population amounts with no evidence to support me

Is it shitposting if its genuine?

>while Celtic language were completely different from one another

What evidence do you have to support this? Contemporary evidence shows Gallic tribes communicating regularly and easily with each other. Caesar's commentaries talk about the Gallic language as a relatively whole and there being no communication barriers between tribes he had overcome. Really the only thing we know from contemporary sources about how the Gallic language differed from tribe to tribe is the influence of latin on the southern Gallic languages. So I am really curious where you're getting your information from.

>we know the number of Gallic cities despite the supposed largest Celtic city in Gaul having no archaeological evidence

There is ample archaeological evidence of Celtic towns and villages, not only your statement is retarded, it only goes against your argument, God I'm talking with a total imbecile

>I have zero proof about the number of towns in Italy and am basing it on an assumption about the number of cities on an island from a completely unrelated civilization

Yes, I know you have zero knowledge about the cities in italy, considering Sicily alone had 30 cities, there were likely way more than a hundred cities in italy alone.

> I can assert the average size and ifnfrastructure investment for Italian cities and compare it to Gallic cities we have little record of and no accurate estimate for inhabitants

We have archaeological evidence of both, of course being the ignorant idiot that you are, you assume we don't for some retarded reason, while in reality archaeologists know how the average settlement of mos obscure cultures looked like, you of course never took an interest in archaeology and you're talking out of your ass.

>Is it shitposting if its genuine?

I'm afraid you're a genuine retard

>What evidence do you have to support this?

There are celtic languages like welsh alive today and they're classified as different languages from one another, while ancient Greek dialects are classified as "dialects", with few differences from one another.

While you're evidence is you being a biased ignorant tard.

Alesia wasn’t the largest Oppidum. Heidengraben, Avaricum, and heuneburg all were larger than Alesia.

So you don't have any proof for any of the statements you made for which I asked for proof? Duly noted. You also gave me a good laugh comparing Welsh to Ancient Gallic.

>Greco-Roman propaganda still duping morons over 2 millennia later

Hieneburg didn’t exist at the time of the Gallic warsLook I’m not going to argue with someone who didn’t even undergo a formal education or has any real non biased interest in the topic, be gone

Brittany was still pretty much 1st century BC-tier when the 100 years war started.

In the Commentaries, Caesar talks about the Gauls just abandoning and burning their largest cities so they could migrate.

user you're the one claiming theres this ample evidence to support your argument. You've already admitted you completely fabricated the figure about the number of towns in Roman italy. Where is this evidence about numbers, sizes, and infrastructure of Gallic towns? Where is this evidence that the Gallic language was different from tribe to tribe?

>Hieneburg didn't exist at the time of the Gallic wars

When did anyone state the town had be around during the Gallic wars? The only the Gallic wars are being brought up is the biggest primary source about the Gauls is Caesar. This is false reason to discount it.