'First tartan' on Roman statue

BBC News ^ | December 3, 2012 | unattributed

[SunkenCiv]

Remnants of a Roman statue in North Africa could be the "first-ever depiction of tartan", according to a BBC Scotland documentary.

A piece of a bronze statue of the Emperor Caracalla contains the small figure of a Caledonian warrior wearing what appears to be tartan trews.

The third century Roman emperor Caracalla styled himself as the conqueror of the Caledonians.

A statue marking his achievements stood in the Moroccan city of Volubilis.

It stood above a great archway in the ancient city, which lay in the south west of the Roman empire, 1,500 miles from Caledonia -- modern day Scotland.

A small piece of cloak from the monument still survives at the archaeological museum in Rabat in Morocco...

The warrior is wearing checked leggings which, according to Dr Hunter, is "the first-ever depiction of tartan".

It is thought the Celts have been weaving plaid twills for thousands of years and this is the earliest representation.

Dr Hunter adds: "The shield too is Celtic in style. You can see the warrior's head with the cloak over the shoulders. The arms are bound behind the back.

"This guy is a captive. He's a prisoner from the vicious campaigns of Severus and Caracalla."

Septimius Severus, Caracalla's father, led massive military campaigns into 3rd century Scotland.

[SunkenCiv]

The Caledonian warrior on the bronze statue appears to be wearing tartan trews

[SunkenCiv]

GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother & Ernest_at_the_Beach	join list or digest view topics view or post blog bookmark post a topic subscribe
This was cooling its heels over on the GGG group on FB, and just yesterday someone here on FR mentioned Septimius Severus. Just adding to the catalog, not sending a general distribution. To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list.

[SunkenCiv]

A Tunisian mosaic shows a Caledonian prisoner killed by a wild animal -- "Captured, marched for months to this desert province, sent to the amphitheatre and killed by wild animals as exotic entertainment for the locals," says Dr Hunter.

[martin_fierro]

THIS IS NOW

A TARTIN' THREAD

[fattigermaster]

Head/skull bite is characteristic of the leopard, but it would be a large leopard.

[Little Bill]

Were the Caledonia's Picts or Irish or both. My Scottish ancestors were English caught on the wrong side of the border.

[Albion Wilde]

OMGosh that is gorgeous!

[GSP.FAN]

Maybe they are Bay City Roller fans..

[muawiyah]

At that point in time all the Gaellic speaking peoples had the same old same old DNA that'd originated around the Bay of Biscay. It's in the 7th century you find your first run ins with the Scandinavians ~ and that's what created today's Highlanders. At one time after that Norway up to the border with the Sa'ami, and down to Hadrian's wall were pretty much a single country, albeit not a nationstate ~ all your nobles were relatives in that region.

At that time people in the Souvr'n reaches off Caledonia were not different ~

Now, to add some mystery and intrigue into this, they had, by that time, some marker genes from India suggesting that ancient Dravidians or Indo Europeans on their way to the ends of the Earth ended up here. Might find some Hindu religious signs on that same statue if you look real close.

So, gang, hep' me out ~ that Caracalla fellow has an interesting name ~ car a calla or the clearly Gaellic "Ker Ak Alla" ~ a sentence having something to do with HOUSE OF ALLA or HOUSE OF WALLA ~ or maybe it was "KER A KAL LA" which means something like House of the Conqueror of the Kal country was he even Italian, or was he another guy like Constantine ~ from Wales?

[Little Bill]

What about the Celts in China? I believe the first tartans started there,

[BenLurkin]

Gauls and Celts wore plaid pants.

[onedoug]

Hoot, man!

[Chad N. Freud]

“They can take our lives, but they can’t take our . . . Oh, never mind. They can.”

[Verginius Rufus]

Caracalla's nickname is supposed to be a Gallic word for a hooded tunic (which he liked to wear). He was born in Lugdunum, Gaul (now Lyon, France), but was Libyan on his father's side and Syrian on his mother's.

There are two branches of Celtic: P-Celtic and Q-Celtic. Q-Celtic includes the language of the ancient inhabitants of Ireland and those speaking a language derived from it--Irish Gaelic, Scottish Gaelic, and the recently-extinct Manx. P-Celtic is everything else, including the language of ancient Gaul and the language of ancient England and the languages descended from it (Welsh and Breton). Some of the placenames in southern Scotland are P-Celtic so a language of the P-Celtic variety must have been spoken there before Gaelic was introduced from Ireland.

I don't know how Pictish fits into the picture. Apparently there are some very old place names in the British Isles which are Indo-European but not Celtic. Of course there were people in the British Isles long before the Celtic language reached them--the people who built Stonehenge did not speak Celtic.

[muawiyah]

The secret of the Picts might have been that they weren't Gaelic at all ~ take a really good look at the life of St. Gildas. He came from beyond the Wall ~ one of those fella's who knew King Ad and who saw the end of the world in 535 AD.

He dressed like a Jain of the time and taught what can only be Ahemsa. Gildas means "Happy Servant" in Sanskrit.

The peculiarities of the Picts may extend no further than having a different history ~ a really different history ~