Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

Italy owes wine legacy to Celts, history buffs say
Reuters via Wash. Post ^ | April 21, 2006 | Svetlana Kovalyova

Posted on 04/22/2006 7:56:23 PM PDT by Pharmboy

ROBBIO, Italy (Reuters) - Wine conjures up the image of cultured drinkers sipping their way delicately through a full-bodied vintage.

But for two history buffs with a passion for the tipple, northern Italy has the barbarians to thank for its long wine-making tradition.

Luca Sormani, from Como, and Fulvio Pescarolo, from the tiny town of Robbio near Milan, have traced the region's wine culture all the way back to its Celtic roots and have started making it according to ancient methods.

Celtic tribes from farther north -- known to the Romans as "Barbari" -- conquered northern parts of Italy about 2,500 years ago, settled there and started draining marshes, cultivating land and growing vines.

"There is a bit of the barbarian in us," said Pescarolo, 51, who is the ninth generation of farmers from the rice-growing western part of Lombardy. "We feel we are part of this nature."

Interest in all things Celtic -- from music to mystical rites -- took off in northern Italy in the mid 1990s, fanned by the Northern League party which rose to prominence with demands for independence for the north.

Sormani and Pescarolo said their interest in Celtic culture had nothing to with politics and that, instead of the symbols and rites, they studied what was close to their hearts -- a blend of agriculture and wine-growing.

NO HELMETS WITH HORNS

"It's not that we want to put on helmets with horns. It's not about mythology or cults," said Sormani, 40, who has a doctorate in agriculture.

"We feel we are part of a tradition which dates back to the times of Celts."

Standing in a vineyard on a man-made hill in the middle of table-flat rice fields in western Lombardy, Sormani recalled how he spent years studying the history of the

(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Extended News; Foreign Affairs; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: agriculture; celts; godsgravesglyphs; grapes; italy; oenology; vino; wine; winemaking; zymurgy
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-20 ... 41-6061-8081-100 ... 121-131 next last
To: ZULU
"And only people with shovel shaped incisors can properly speak Chinese."

All Chinese do not have the 'shovel-shaped' (Sindont) teeth (Christy Turner). The North Asians are descended from South East Asians (Oppenheimer) who have predominately Sundadont shaped teeth. The North Asians have the Sindont teeth, peculiar eye-lid, flatter faces and lighter skin

BTW, Kennewick Man has Sundadont shaped teeth like South East Asians.

61 posted on 04/23/2006 5:48:31 AM PDT by blam
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 47 | View Replies]

To: blam
Wow--I was completely unaware of this find. Thanks for the link to that previous thread. Here he is:


62 posted on 04/23/2006 5:51:45 AM PDT by Pharmboy (Democrats lie because they must)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 58 | View Replies]

To: blam
So things can actually be a bit more complicated than we believe when viewing the peopling of the Americas.

For example, if the Celts arose from areas within present-day China, than some European-appearing North American 10,000 y/o remains (eg, Kennewick man) may have STILL come from Asia. What do you think?

63 posted on 04/23/2006 6:00:06 AM PDT by Pharmboy (Democrats lie because they must)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 61 | View Replies]

To: Pharmboy
"The painted bodies may have more to do with the Picts than the Celts (their name comes from the same latin root as picture:"

There are 'hints' that the Picts may be descended from the Xiongnu people, the fierce tribes of the western steppes. They are one of the reasons the Chinese built the Great Wall. I believe there was a great drought in the western steppes that forced the people to migrate from that region.
IMO, those going east/south are today known as the Hakka and those going west are probably the Scythians/Picts.

64 posted on 04/23/2006 6:00:39 AM PDT by blam
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 55 | View Replies]

To: Pharmboy
"For example, if the Celts arose from areas within present-day China, than some European-appearing North American 10,000 y/o remains (eg, Kennewick man) may have STILL come from Asia. What do you think?"

Absolutely.

I'm thinking that many of us could trace our 'roots' to Sundaland. The Melanesians (Blacks) and the Australian Aboriginies have incidences of red-hair and the Libyians have the same incidence of red-hair as the Irish.

The most ancient people of Ireland are the Formorians. I've even read that some anthropologists think that the San Bushmen of Southern Africa may be the Leprechauns of Irish legend.

65 posted on 04/23/2006 6:20:37 AM PDT by blam
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 63 | View Replies]

To: blam
Sundaland. Fascinating.


66 posted on 04/23/2006 6:26:29 AM PDT by Pharmboy (Democrats lie because they must)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 65 | View Replies]

To: Pharmboy
Also, I think the term 'Black Irish' has very deep roots in Ireland.

"The Fomorians were an ancient sea-faring race it is thought that they originally came from Northern Africa or Asia as they are described as having dark hair and dark skin in the original accounts. The name 'Fomor' literally means 'beneath the sea' from the Gaelic faoi-mhuir. Today scholars believe that 'Mor' means 'phantom' or 'spirit' and therefore proves that the Fomorians were considered to be Gods with magical powers."

I guess I've made a mess of your wine thread, sorry.

67 posted on 04/23/2006 6:26:39 AM PDT by blam
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 63 | View Replies]

To: blam
I guess I've made a mess of your wine thread, sorry.

No no...not at all. I'm a beer and whiskey man myself, so this was always about paleoethnography for me.

68 posted on 04/23/2006 6:29:09 AM PDT by Pharmboy (Democrats lie because they must)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 67 | View Replies]

To: FrogHawk

Ping


69 posted on 04/23/2006 6:30:42 AM PDT by toomanygrasshoppers ("In technical terminology, he's a loon")
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Pharmboy
"Sundaland. Fascinating."

Yup. Sundaland was an excellent place to live during the 120,000 year Ice Age. Modern Humans would have thrived in this tropical paradise while the Neanderthals slugged it out in ice covered Europe. An excellent book on this subject is Eden In The East.

"In an exhaustively researched and creatively argued reassessment of mankind's origins, British physician Oppenheimer, an expert in tropical pediatrics, contends that the now-submerged area of Southeast Asia was the cradle of ancient civilization. From time to time, scholars from various disciplines have argued for the existence of a vastly old ``founder civilization.'' Among the most famous was Charles Hapgood, who based his theory of a lost seafaring civilization on his analysis of the famous 16th-century ``Piri Re'is'' maps of the Antarctic land mass. In this tradition, Oppenheimer blends evidence from geology, genetics, linguistics, archaeology, and anthropology to argue persuasively that such a civilization existed on a submerged land mass in Southeast Asia, which geologists call the Sunda shelf. Pointing to geological evidence for the submersion of the shelf by abrupt rises in the sea level about 8,000 years ago, Oppenheimer contends that the coastal cultures of Southeast Asia were drowned by a great flood, reflected in flood mythologies scattered from the ancient Middle East (such as the biblical story of Noah) to Australia and the Americas. According to the author, tantalizing archaeological evidence exists of settlements under a ``silt curtain'' left by the sea floods in drowned coastal regions from Southeast Asia to the Middle East, while linguistic markers indicate that languages spread from Southeast Asia to Australia and the Pacific. The shared flood story is one striking example of similar Eurasian myths according to the author; the ancient Middle East and Asia share other myth typologies, conspicuously including creation and Cain and Abel myths, which point to common origins in a progenitor culture. Absorbing, meticulously researched, limpidly written, and authoritative: should be regarded as a groundbreaking study of the remote past of Southeast Asia, and of civilization itself."

I think Sundaland is Atlantis...the timing is about right too from Plato's account.

70 posted on 04/23/2006 6:52:40 AM PDT by blam
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 66 | View Replies]

To: ZULU

And I can't roll my Rs no matter how much I try!

I haven't had much time to study one language in this second case Japanese; but I heard intonations that to me, sounded a bit more like, for lack of a better example; a bird call to me.

I'd be careful to read more into what maybe someone has said.

I do have some experience studying these foreign languages. I'd hope with what you said, you would too.


71 posted on 04/23/2006 7:40:46 AM PDT by roadrunner96
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 50 | View Replies]

To: blam
These folks, The Curse Of The Red-Headed Mummy, were found all over western China (up to) 4,000 years ago. Their fabric style, color, mfg techniques and material mirror exactly the Celtic fabrics found 1,000 years later and 5,000 miles away in the famous Celtic sites in Halstadt, Austria. This subject is covered in an excellent book titled The Mummies Of Urumchi by Elizabeth Barber.

I think, they figured the Celts were involved in these mummy cases when they found that the wrapping was of tartan cloth!


72 posted on 04/23/2006 7:51:41 AM PDT by roadrunner96
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 58 | View Replies]

To: Pharmboy

BTTT


73 posted on 04/23/2006 8:29:15 AM PDT by aculeus
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: truth_seeker
Yes, oil and eggplant. BTW, the first noodle was invented by the first cook to make a round pie and then cut the edge evenly.

What we need to do is find the first piemakers, not the first noodlemakers.

74 posted on 04/23/2006 9:01:56 AM PDT by muawiyah (-)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 40 | View Replies]

To: truth_seeker
Bo-Hemia means, of course Country - Blood Red, or Blood Red Country ~ that "Bo" is a prefix exactly like "Mac", "Mc", and "O'", and can be used to mean "son", "family", "clan", "flowing like a river" (that is, "descent from"), and so forth. You preceed it with "ker" or "car" to mean "kingdom" or "county". It appears in Spanish and Portuguese as "ba" and "va" (as in Carvajal, the other, more nearly correct name for Galicia.

The languages that used "Bo" are extinct.

There's some confusion about the origins of the Celts and the Gaelic speaking peoples. Obviously the Celtic culture originated in an arc from Central Europe North of the Alps to Central Asia ~ that is North of the Black Sea.

The languages, though, spread further. Tocharian is an Indo-European language, and is closely related to Gaelic. These guys may have established trading posts in Japan several thousand years ago (to collect dead, wild silk worm bolls). The Chinese have recently been digging up some of their graves.

75 posted on 04/23/2006 9:11:29 AM PDT by muawiyah (-)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 42 | View Replies]

To: Pharmboy
The dark ruby wine has a rich taste with a strong herbal note and an unusual sandy after-taste.

I want some.

76 posted on 04/23/2006 9:58:11 AM PDT by GVnana (Former Alias: GVgirl)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Pharmboy

"It's not that we want to put on helmets with horns"

Wh...well why not??!!

I like mine, and wear it all the time, except during electrical storms, and when I don't have my pillow with the horn-holes in it.


77 posted on 04/23/2006 11:38:26 AM PDT by PoorMuttly (Free Mexico)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: muawiyah
"Remember, the Italians claim descent from refugees from the Trojan War."

Don't you mean Etruscans?
Etruscans and Trojans are the same people... The Italic tribe is a separate group.
78 posted on 04/23/2006 11:42:06 AM PDT by Prost1 (Sandy Berger can steal, Clinton can cheat, but Bush can't listen!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 3 | View Replies]

To: muawiyah
"The Chinese have recently been digging up some of their graves."

Yup. Here's one example.

Ancient European Remains Discovered In Qinghai (China)

"Ren said the tomb shape, the burial articles and the way they were put in the tomb are all typical in Eastern Han Dynasty (25-220), which proved the three westerners had lived here for a long time and were accustomed to local traditions and customs."

"Although so far, we have been not sure of the country the three Europeans came from and there might be a large number of such 'westerners' living here at the ancient time," said Ren."

79 posted on 04/23/2006 11:44:22 AM PDT by blam
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 75 | View Replies]

To: PoorMuttly

Good question--LOL!


80 posted on 04/23/2006 11:44:32 AM PDT by Pharmboy (Democrats lie because they must)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 77 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-20 ... 41-6061-8081-100 ... 121-131 next last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson