3611
Online museum and repository for historical and ancestral knowledge.
The reconquest and recolonisation of medieval Iberia; 8th-13th centuries. 🇪🇸🇵🇹
The earliest and most notable efforts were carried out by the Kingdom of Asturias, which later changed its name to León. Initially, lands reconquered from the Muslim Umayyad Caliphate/Caliphate of Córdoba were recolonised by people from the Cantabrian Mountains following a system known as presura. This would have been functionally very similar to the Anglo-Saxon colonization of what would later be the United States: Settlers who could develop wasteland into viable and productive farms would be granted legal recognition as proprietors. Later, charters known as fueros became commonplace, imitating the wider feudal usage of medieval Europe. Muslim raids made recolonisation a particularly dangerous affair, necessitating the creation of militarised frontier counties such as Álava, Castile, and Portugal. The latter two would end up splitting off and forming separate kingdoms. In the case of Castile, it would eventually absorb León to become the largest and most powerful of the Spanish kingdoms: The Crown of Castile. The territories of the Crown of Castile would include most of those parts of Spain that had been inhabited by Hispano-Celtic peoples, such as Gallaecians, Asturians, Cantabrians, Celtiberians, etc. It wouldn’t be at all unreasonable to regard these peoples as the ancestral originators of of the Castilian ethnos. To a somewhat lesser extent, the same could be said of the Portuguese, as the county —and kingdom— was initially formed by a core of Gallaecian and Asturian conquerors. The peoples of Navarre and Aragón on the other hand, were principally derived from the peninsula’s other nations: Basques and Iberians; French colonization was also responsible for the creation of the County of Barcelona, later absorbed by Aragón.
As the reconquista progressed, the settlers would mingle with and absorb other native Iberians —known as Mozarabs— who’d retained the Christian faith in spite of decades or centuries of Muslim domination. Muslim and Jewish presence continued for some time, until their descendants were formally expelled in 1609-1614 and 1492 respectively. Large numbers of them also left the peninsula before expulsion, either fleeing the Spanish Inquisition of Tomás de Torquemada, or searching for a better life in Latin America, which Spain had begun conquering in the same year that the Alhambra Decree had been issued (1492), which also marks the beginning of the Spanish Golden Age.
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Bronze bridle-bit discovered among the votive deposits in Llyn Cerrig Bach, in Anglesey, Wales; 1st century B.C. 🏴
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Montefortino-type Gallic helmet decorated in La Tène style, discovered in Umbria, Italy; 4th or 3rd century B.C. 🏳️
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Portrait of Prince Charles Edward Stuart, a.k.a. “Bonnie Prince Charlie”, disguised as an Irish maid supposedly named “Betty Burke”.
Having fled defeat at the 1746 Battle of Culloden, Charles fled through the Highlands to the Isle of Skye. For his passage, he donned women’s clothes and pretended to be the maid of his hostess, lady Flora MacDonald. This disgraceful episode later inspired a folk-song known as the Skye Boat Song. During his flight through the Highlands, many Highlanders had protected and aided Charles. None, Catholic or Protestant, had betrayed him, in spite of a £30,000 bounty being placed on him by the British government. But then… he decided to dress up like a woman to flee and hide, eventually leaving Scotland for France. Years later, when France was preparing a fleet to invade England, Charles was considered for a role, including possibly being placed on the English throne… But the French changed their minds after a single meeting with him; he’d made an abysmal impression.
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A sketch of a Greek inscription on a marble stele from the ancient city of Priene in Asia Minor (now Söke, in Aydin Province, Turkey); by Hiller von Gaertringen. 🇹🇷
The inscription dates to around 276 B.C; and honors a citizen named Sotas, son of Lykos, who organised a citizen militia to try and repel marauding bands of Celts, —i.e. Galatians— who’d invaded the region and had been plundering town and countryside alike. The Galatians had crossed over from the Balkans to help king Nicomedes I of Bithynia to defeat and depose his rival and brother Zipoetes. Once this was done, they were given land to settle in central Anatolia, which they almost immediately used as a base of operations to begin raiding and wreaking havoc on all sides. Many Greek cities such as Thyateira, Laodicea on the Lycus, Didyma, and even Ilion (built over the ruins of ancient Troy) were ransacked, while Erythrae paid the Celts a large sum of money to just leave. The city of Cyzikus was able to withstand a Galatian siege thanks to timely delivery of supplies from king Philetaerus of Pergamon. The above inscription states that when the Celts arrived at Priene, many of the native Anatolians —who disliked the Greeks— joined them in looting temples and farms. Many Greeks were killed and others taken into captivity, while the temple of Athena was ransacked and desecrated. The aforementioned Sotas assembled a citizen militia and chased away many of the freebooters, even managing to rescue some Greeks from captivity.
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Aerial view reconstructions of the Roman military base of Trimontium, located at Newstead in the Scottish Borders; handmade illustration by David Simon and digital work by the Trimontium Museum. 🏳️🏴
The fort at Trimontiun was first established around AD 79 by invading Roman troops under the command of Gnaeus Iulius Agricola. It was abandoned and rebuilt several times as the Romans lost control of Scotland and made various attempts over the centuries to subdue the natives or shift the border.. Curiously, at one point the Roman garrison at Trimontium enjoyed the use of a small amphitheater for gladiator fights; it is the only one known from Scotland. The amphitheater’s construction and use is believed to have been between AD 142 and 162, when the Roman emperor Antoninus Pius had ordered the conquest of southern Scotland and the building of the Antonine Wall. When the Romans lost control and retreated beyond Hadrian’s Wall, the fort seems to have continued in use as a forward outpost, although significantly diminished in size and with many of the annexes —including the amphitheater— falling out of use. Roman Trimontium was finally abandoned around AD 180.
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The definitive decline of Gaulish as a spoken language in Europe seems to be attested by Sidonius Apollinaris (AD 430-485). Apollinaris was the son-in-law of the Roman emperor Avitus, and was even briefly the urban prefect of Rome. He was later appointed bishop of Clermont in France, leading the defense of the city against the invading Visigoths.
In a letter written in AD 474, Apollinaris states that during the time of his youth, a trend had emerged among the Gallic aristocracy to forsake the Gaulish tongue and pursue Latin studies. This would have initiated a process of precipitous decline, the common folk following the example of the aristocrats, so that the language was out of use within a little over a century. The trend may have been related to a desire to assert Roman identity and differentiate themselves from the Germanic peoples who’d been taking over large swaths of the Roman Empire, with Gaul itself being split between Visigoths, Franks, Alemanni, and Burgundians. Ironically, the collapse of the Roman Empire may have had more to do with the decline of the Gaulish language than the conquest had:
I will forget that your schooldays brought us a veritable confluence of learners and the learned from all quarters, and that if our nobles were imbued with the love of eloquence and poetry, if they resolved to forsake the barbarous Celtic dialect, it was to your personality that they owed all…
A passing comment made by Irenaeus of Lyon (lived AD 125-202) suggests that the Gaulish language was still used by the majority of people in what is now France, over two centuries after the Roman conquest. Irenaeus was a Greek born in the city of Smyrna (located near modern Izmir, Turkey), but his statement suggests that he’d lived in Gaul —where he was the ruling elder (i.e. bishop) of a Christian community in the city of Lyon— for so long, that the Celtic language had become more familiar to him than Latin and even his own native Greek:
You will not expect from me, who am resident among the Celts, and am accustomed for the most part to use a foreign dialect, any display of rhetoric, which I have never learned, or any excellence of composition, which I have never practised, or any beauty and persuasiveness of style, to which I make no pretensions…
Aerial view of Loch Ness in mid-autumn. 🏴
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Single-edged slashing sword (“falcata”) found in the Vettonian necropolis of La Osera, in Ávila province, Spain; 4th century B.C. 🇪🇸
The sword’s handle, rail-guard and pommel had corroded off. Falcatae were the characteristic close-quarters combat weapon of the classic Iberian culture of southern and eastern Spain. Occasionally, however, they are found among the grave goods of the Indo-European peoples —including Celtiberians— who inhabited the deep Spanish interior. Really, the falcata is just a Spanish variant of the Greek kopis, also known as makhaira. The weapon seems to have been popularized in Spain after the 6th century B.C; when Greek merchants established trading colonies like Emporion (now Ampurias, in Catalonia).
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Not sure who this kid is, but what a chad. 🏴🫡
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The La Tène Culture in ancient Wales. 🏴 Essay by English archaeologist Hubert N. Savory (RIP: 1911-2001).
https://www.persee.fr/doc/ecelt_0373-1928_1973_num_13_2_1462
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Killarney National Park; county Kerry, Ireland. 🇮🇪
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“Ritually killed” iron sword found in a chieftain’s grave at Oss, in North Brabant, Netherlands; dated approximately between 800-650 B.C. (Hallstatt C Iron Age). 🇳🇱 The sword is of the Central European “Mindelheim” variety. Displayed at the National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden, Netherlands.
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Maps showing (1) The peoples of Novempopulania, and (2) The Roman provincial divisions of Gaul, with Gallia Aquitania shown in bluish green. ⚜️🇫🇷🏳️
As Caesar tells is, the region of Gaul consisted of three divisions: Gaul proper, or “Celtic Gaul”, Belgic Gaul, and Aquitaine. In the case of Aquitaine, it took its name from a non-Celtic, non-Indo-European people who’d been native to western Europe since remote prehistory. The Aquitani were essentially identical to the Basque people of Spain. For this reason, the area they inhabited —roughly between the Pyrenees and the river Garonne— later came to be known as “Gascony”, from a French word for Basque people; “Gascons”. By the time (1st century B.C.) the Romans documented them, the Aquitanians were confined to this small region called Novempopulania (Latin: “Country of the Nine Peoples”). But early in the 1st century AD, emperor Augustus reorganised the provinces of Gaul and vastly expanded Aquitaine, all the way to the river Loire and the Cévennes mountains. This may have been based on a long lost memory that the territory of the Aquitani had once been much greater, but that they’d been greatly encroached upon by the Celts, the latter having conquered most of the former’s ancient homeland and pushed them beyond the Garonne. Some Celtic peoples, like the Bituriges Vivisci, Volcae, and Nitiobroges had even occupied lands beyond the Garonne, further encroaching upon the natives; although the name of the Nitiobroges (Gaulish for “natives”) implies that they were perhaps originally Aquitanians who simply became assimilated to Gaulish culture. In any case, the archaeological record seems indeed to reflect this narrative: That Celtic peoples (Tumulus Culture, Urnfield Culture, La Tène Culture) expanded gradually westward across France —from an original homeland centered in the German Rhineland and Upper Danube— absorbing and intermarrying with an indigenous culture of megalith-builders. The Aquitanians and Basques would thus seem to represent the remnant of the megalithic cultures of pre-Celtic Europe. Oddly, however, they’ve been shown to have so much Celtic DNA (and vice-versa) as to be hardly at all distinguishable. Intermarriage and assimilation between the two peoples was protracted and thorough, yet somehow the two communities retained different languages, customs, and identities.
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Digital reconstruction of a village of the Gallic Osismii tribe excavated near Paule, in Côtes-d’Armor, Brittany: 3rd-2nd centuries B.C. 🇫🇷
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Carved poplar-wood cauldron with incised decoration found near Altartate Glebe, county Monaghan, Ireland; 2nd century B.C. 🇮🇪
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Bronze mount for a wooden jug crafted in La Tène style. Found in a Gallic burial site at Brno Malomerice, in Moravia, Czech Republic; 3rd century B.C. 🇨🇿
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Reasons I don’t like to cover the Jacobite Wars (1689-1746): 🇬🇧🏴🏴🇮🇪
(1) They are over-romanticised, poorly understood and far more complicated than most people realise. People think it was a nationalistic struggle for Scottish and Irish independence; it was not. Jacobites were merely trying to put a member of the Stuart Dynasty back on the throne of England. In Scotland, Stuart monarchs were often as oppressive and inimical to Gaelic culture as any king of England would have been. What’s more, a Stuart monarch in London would be far more influenced by his English nobility than by anyone else, making him favorable to their interests over those of more far off subjects. If the Jacobite uprisings had succeeded, Ireland and Scotland would have simply remained under England’s dominion and nothing would have changed. Jacobite rebels were simply duped into fighting —and dying— for nothing. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?
(2) The overthrow of Stuart monarchs like Charles I and James II by their English subjects —which then caused the Jacobite struggle— happened for varied and complex reasons. Charles and James had both been incompetent and petulant children who often acted imprudently and in bad faith with both their nobles and the common subjects; a dangerous game to play, even for an absolute monarch. Edward II (1307-1327) had been taught that lesson… but history’s lessons are always forgotten. The story of the English Civil War (1642-1651) and Glorious Revolution (1688-9) is far more complicated than just “England and Cromwell were mean”.
(3) Religion was a major factor. Woven into the merely political aspects of these events was the ongoing struggle between Catholicism and Protestantism. Much like today, people then failed to see how that was a theological issue that should have been settled in councils and synods. People conflate theological differences with national causes, which is illogical. To this day people in Northern Ireland dislike each other intensely based on being “Catholic” or “Protestant”. In reality, what they mean by “Catholic” is native Irish, while “Protestant” just means descended from English and Scottish colonists. Probably 99% of those people aren’t theologians or apologists; many of them don’t even go to church. This comes about because the powerful are always able to merge their interests with religious issues, making it a struggle of arms and money, when in principle it should never be. The mostly Catholic Jacobites (there were some Protestant ones) failed to garner support in mostly Protestant England and Wales, even in Scotland, where most people —including by then a majority of Gaelic Highlanders— had accepted the Reformation. Part of the issue is that the Jacobites were seeking financing and support from Catholic powers like Spain, France, and the Vatican. And this support was indeed forthcoming… yet lukewarm and insufficient.
Whatever the outcome of the struggle, it would have benefited no one except a few powerful aristocrats in England and continental Europe …and of course, bankers. The same story as in all wars.
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👀☝🏻The only known case of a Roman amphitheater in Scotland.
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Gold stater coin featuring a triskele and horse, of the Gallic Eburones tribe, found near the city of Maastricht, Netherlands; 1st century B.C. 🇳🇱 The coin is dated to the time when the tribe was making it’s notoriously obstinate resistance against the Roman conquest of Julius Caesar.
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Another early Christian writer, Jerome of Stridon (Eusebius Sophronius Hieronymus; lived AD 342/5-420) stated that in the late 4th century, the Gaulish language was still being spoken in what’s now western Germany by the Gallic Treveri people, as well in central Turkey by the Galatians. Jerome himself had lived among the Treveri in the city of Trier, Germany, for a few years during the late 360s:
That the Galatians, apart from the Greek language, which they speak just like the rest of the Orient, have their own language, which is almost the same as that of the Treverans.
Dun Aengus (Irish: Dún Aonghasa) coastal fort, on Inishmore Island, County Galway, Ireland. 🇮🇪
The fort was built at the edge of a coastal cliff on the largest of the three Aran islands. Habitation is believed to have begun at the site —initially an extensive open village— in the middle Bronze Age, around 1,500 B.C. The fortifications represent later phases of construction and use, beginning around 1,100 B.C. and gradually improving and increasing until around 500 B.C. (early Iron Age). Dun Aengus is believed to have been inhabited and used off and on until about 900 AD. During its final phase of construction, before 500 B.C. three widely spaced drystone walls were put in place, in addition to an impressive “chevaux de frise”, added as the outermost layer of defense to impede movement for any potential attacker. Use of chevaux de frise defenses is commonly attested throughout Atlantic Europe during that period, from the Iberian peninsula to Scotland.
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Granite statue of a Gallaecian warrior with caetra shield and torc, found among the ruins of the Lesenho hill-fort, in Vila Real, Portugal; 1st century B.C. 🇵🇹🇪🇸
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Beech forest in Lough Key Forest Park; county Roscommon, Ireland. 🇮🇪
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3rd century B.C. battle helmet from the burial of a Gallic chieftain in Transylvania, Romania. 🇷🇴
The helmet and associated items (a sword, two spears, a dagger, a brooch and a curved knife) originated from a private collection. It was thought that the assemblage had been found near Silivas, Romania. However, recent research has led to suggestions that most of the items originated from a burial near Turda, in the Cluj county of Transylvania.
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It’s deeply saddening to see Europe in the state it’s currently in. And Scotland isn’t in nearly as severe of a situation as France, Germany, Spain, or even England. But what no one sees is that the problem is a spiritual one. It’s plain to see that things getting this way has coincided with the rise of atheism and secularism in the advent of the French Revolution; first slow and creeping, now rapidly accelerating. The people turned their backs on Christianity, stopped praying, and started voting for freemasons (occultists) and Jews… who then opened the flood-gates to hordes of knife-wielding Muslim and African rapists. It will take a miracle to save Europe.
2 Chronicles 7:14
…if my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land.
GiveSendGo campaign to help the Boer people (descendants of Dutch migrants) of South Africa, who are being subjected to genocide by the communist South African government. Please share and consider donating.
https://www.givesendgo.com/savetheboerfund%0A
Vercingetorix’ country: Auvergne, France. ⚜️🇫🇷
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