'Roman' roads were actually built by the Celts, new book claims

Telegraph (UK) ^ | Sunday, October 13, 2013 | Hayley Dixon

[SunkenCiv]

The findings of Graham Robb, a biographer and historian, bring into question two millennia of thinking about Iron Age Britain and Europe and the stereotyped image of Celts as barbarous, superstitious tribes...

"They had their own road system on which the Romans later based theirs," Mr Robb said, adding that the roads were built in Britain from around the 1st Century BC.

"It has often been wondered how the Romans managed to build the Fosse Way, which goes from Exeter to Lincoln. They must have known what the finishing point would be, but they didn't conquer that part of Britain until decades later. How did they manage to do that if they didn't follow the Celtic road?"

Mr Robb, former fellow of Exeter College, Oxford, first came up with the theory when he planned to cycle the Via Heraklea, an ancient route that runs a thousand miles in a straight line from the tip of the Iberian Peninsula to the Alps, and realised that it was plotted along the solstice lines through several Celtic settlements.

He mapped the positioning of hundreds of other towns and cities in France, Britain and Ireland and found that the Celt's had organised them to mirror the paths of their Sun God, created a network straight of tracks following the solstice lines across swathes of the continent...

"There is a lot of admiring what the Romans did, but they didn't do it in a void, and it might be nice if there was a more nuanced view of the almighty Romans."

[SunkenCiv]

Note: this topic is from 10/13/2013. Graham Robb topic, re-ping to ckilmer.

[ckilmer]

the Roman road system was being built in Italy even before Rome’s independence, by the Etruscans
............
the celts predated the romans in greece northern italy and spain.

http://fsos.com/celtic_history.htm
The Golden Age of the Celts
The Celts were at their height during the 4th and 5th centuries BC. During this time they waged three great wars, which had great influence on the history of southern Europe.

About 500 BC the Celts conquered Spain, wresting it from Carthage.

Around 400 BC they took Northern Italy from the Etruscans. Here they settled in great numbers.

At the end of the 4th century the overran Pannonia, conquering the Illyrians.

All these wars were fought in alliance with the Greeks. At this time the Celts and Greeks were on very friendly terms. The defeat of Carthage broke the monopoly on British tin and Spanish silver and freed the overland trade routes to Britain. At this time the Greeks and Celts were allied against the Phoenicians and Persians. Celtic hostility to Carthage helped save Greece from destruction from the East, no Celts enlisted in Carthage’s mercenary army. Alexander the Great made alliance with the Celts in 334 BC, when he was about to embark on his conquest of Asia. The Celts kept the Greek dominions safe from attack during his absence.

The Celts and Rome
Around the year 400 BC the Celts were ruled by a king named Livy Ambicatus. At this time, the height of their power, they were unified as a military confederacy of tribes. They were attracted by the rich land of Northern Italy and invaded, battling and defeating the Etruscans. At this time the Romans were pushing at the Etruscans from the South, and the Celts and Romans acted in alliance. But the Romans despised the Northern barbarians, and at the seige of Clusium (391 BC) (which the Romans regarded as a bulwark of Rome against the barbaric North) the Romans betrayed the Celts. The Celts recognized former Roman envoys fighting with the enemy. The Celts applied to Rome for the family of Fabius Ambustus (whose sons were the envoys), the chief pontiff of Rome, in reparation. Rome refused and elected the Fabii as miltary tribunes the next year. Abandoning the seige of Clusium, the Celts marched on Rome. They passed cities and fortresses without stopping, there was no plundering. Their cry to guards on provinicial town walls was “We are bound for Rome”. They reached Rome and defeated the mustered city forces in a single charge. Three days later they were in Rome, and stayed for a year. They extracted a great fine from Rome in reparation for the treachery at Clusium and left with a peace treaty. For nearly a century there was peace between Rome and the Celts. It was broken only when various Celtic tribes allied with the Etruscans in the third Samnite war, this was near the time of the breakup of the old Celtic Empire.

[SunkenCiv]

Like so many others before and after, they came out of Central Asia -- those Asian mummies in the Takla Makan have what is now European DNA, and already dressed in woolen plaids -- but there's no trace of any roadbuilding there, of that era. If anything, they picked up the practice after they reached Europe, and again, the roads they made were not indistinguishable from those durable Roman roads with which we're so familiar. My own DNA is lousy with Celts, I just wish they wouldn't drink so much.

Hey, it's okay to hit my own people. Old joke: two Irishmen walk out of a bar.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Hey, it could happen.