Someone give me a history lesson.

[Kataki]

What is the difference between gallic culture and celtic culture? I'm not sure I completely understand what a celt is. Where as I believe the gauls were the people whom populated modern france.

[Xanthippus of Sparta]

Here's the short answer...

Gallic culture is Celtic.

Celt is a catch all term for many different groups, that share a common culture...especially language.

In ancient times, the Gallic tribes were Celts, as were the Galatians, Belgae, various tribes of the Britons, Picts, many others.

Before the rise of Rome most of Europe (from Spain, to the Balkans) was inhabited by Celtic peoples...also known as the La Tene culture.

As you probably know Celtic peoples still exist today...the Irish, the Scots, and the Welsh.

[Hanny]

What is the difference between gallic culture and celtic culture? I'm not sure I completely understand what a celt is. Where as I believe the gauls were the people whom populated modern france.

My guess is your confused by Roman sourced literture, GAUL (Roman Name)was a geographical area inhabited by CELTS (Greek word) Romans distiguished between long and short haired CELTS as being different, but that was largelya political difference to Roman ambitions, not a cultural difference.

[removeduser_487563287433]

What is the difference between gallic culture and celtic culture? I'm not sure I completely understand what a celt is. Where as I believe the gauls were the people whom populated modern france.

Celtic is far more useful as a word to describe the Celtic family tree, and in these terms any population that spoke a Celtic language would be Celtic. Celtic culture is a very, very vague term as it covers a period of over a thousand years up to the modern day and of course contains a variety of different cultures.

Gallic, in term of the ancient world, refers to the Gauls. Gauls were the Celtic speaking people (specifically Gaulish and Lepontic) that lived in France, Belgium and Northern Italy.

[Manco]

Very simply put: Gauls were Celts, but not all Celts were Gauls.

[Frederich Barbarossa]

Gauls were a branch of Celts, though they had culturally similiarties. Nowadays France (old Gaul) really has no Celtic roots because it mostly lacks a Brythonic language.

[Kataki]

Ok, I understand now, thats pretty much how I had it figured, but I wanted to make sure after reading Ceaser's conquest of Gaul.

[removeduser_487563287433]

Gauls were a branch of Celts, though they had culturally similiarties. Nowadays France (old Gaul) really has no Celtic roots because it mostly lacks a Brythonic language.

Okay you're a bit confused:

1) It's pretty useless talking about a "Celtic" culture. Celts were spread over a vast geographical area, over an extremely long period of time, up to and including the present day, and it's just not good enough to refer to Celtic culture as a single entity.

2) France/Celtic roots/Brythonic language.

France does have a brythonic language - Breton. However you have confused insular and continental Celtic languages. Continental Celtic was, unsurprisingly, spoken on the European continent and included Gaulish. Insular Celtic refers to the Celtic languages of the British Isles, and included the Brythonic languages. Brythonic languages were probably not present in France/Belgium at the time of the Gauls in any sizeable populations, although there is scholarly disputes on the nature of the Belgic language - the Belgae seem to have held land on both sides of the English Channel.

Brythonic definitely did come to France much later when the Anglo-Saxons were pushing hard on the Romano-British of the West Country. Some populations of Britons fled the British Isles and established Brittany in North West France and Britonia in Northern Spain. Britonia was assimilated into the local Spanish cultures after a couple of hundred of years along with their language but Breton exists to this day.

With regards to France, it has plenty of Celtic routes. There are a couple of hundred French words that derives from Gaulish, and it influenced the development of French syntactically, too. There are swathes of Celtic place names in France, such as Paris.

[Demetrios of Messene]

There seems to be a consensus in this thread that the celts used to share the same language. I know close to nothing about this matter, but this question was troubling me some time ago and maybe now it's a good opportunity to ask:

Is there evidence about this this common celtic language or is this a part of the theory about indo-european languages, according to which some languages should share a common ancestral language in order to explain the similarities among them.

Is it assumed that all Gallic tribes could understant each other? And what about a Gaul and a Pict, would they be able to communicate with each other speaking their native languages?

[removeduser_487563287433]

No, no, no, no. Bloody Hell, Celts did not share the same language. Celtic is a language family, not a language.

There is a hypothetical language called Proto-Celtic that would have been the common ancestor of all the Celtic languages, just as proto-Indo-European could have been the common ancestor of all the Indo-European language.

[Demetrios of Messene]

No, no, no, no. Bloody Hell, Celts did not share the same language. Celtic is a language family, not a language.

There is a hypothetical language called Proto-Celtic that would have been the common ancestor of all the Celtic languages, just as proto-Indo-European could have been the common ancestor of all the Indo-European language.

Ok, this makes sense and is also consistent with your other posts in this thread, which I probably did not read carefully the first time. Thanks for the reply.

I guess it was Xanthippus post that triggered my question as such.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Celt is a catch all term for many different groups, that share a common culture...especially language.

[Xanthippus of Sparta]

I was talking about the Celtic language family as Ferrets pointed out.

It's one of the main things that tie Celtic peoples together as other aspects of their societies could vary immensely.

For example, try comparing the Picts to the Galatians. Or the Celt-Iberians to the Belgae.

Contact with other civilizations (Hellenes, Carthaginians, Thracians, etc) geographically close to the different Celtic groups played a role in this variation. Or, very little contact with the outside world at all (in the case of the Picts, and the ancient Irish).

[removeduser_487563287433]

Actually trade links to Ireland and Scotlad stretch back to the mesolithic. North and Irish Sea trade was long established.

[Xanthippus of Sparta]

Actually trade links to Ireland and Scotlad stretch back to the mesolithic. North and Irish Sea trade was long established.

Very true.

But still, the Picts and the ancient Irish were not affected by outside influence as much as other Celtic peoples.

Say, the Galatians by the Greeks or the Celt-Iberians by both the Carthaginians, Greek colonies, and other non-Celtic Iberians.

[removeduser_487563287433]

To what extent we won't really know but both Greeks and Phoenicians traded with the British Isles - the Phoenicians through their control of the straights of Gibraltar and the Greeks overland from Massilia and then up the Bay of Biscay. Prior to this trade was established to the Meditterean possibly via the Tartessian civilisation based in Spain, and there was a lot of interchange between the Celtic peoples of the British Isles and the continent, which would have allowed for indirect contact and trade with more distant peoples.