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Comment by arethuza | Hacker News Reader

I'd love to know why the Scots had legends that we came from Scythia (of all places) via Spain and Ireland!

"They journeyed from Greater Scythia by way of the Tyrrhenian Sea and the Pillars of Hercules, and dwelt for a long course of time in Spain among the most savage tribes, but nowhere could they be subdued by any race, however barbarous."

https://www.historyfiles.co.uk/FeaturesBritain/Medieval_Text...

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There's a lot of legends like that in the Isles. For example, the first King of Britain is supposed to have been Brutus of Troy, descendant of Aeneas. The easiest explanation is that there is a great incentive on behalf of rulers to claim descendence to legitimize their own rule, but maybe there is some kernel of truth somewhere.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brutus_of_Troy

Well I mean linguistically the Scottish Celts are descended from Irish Gaelics which are descended from Gallo?-Iberian Celts which are in turn descended from Indo-European tribes, the first Steppe nomad society. Very interesting.

Well, the Scots were originally a kingdom that was split between what is now Northern Ireland and parts of the west of Scotland with a base at the fortress of Dunadd.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%C3%A1l_Riata

NB I have stood on Dunadd with my foot in the Footprint of Fealty where kings were crowned:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunadd

The Celts did in fact inhabit most of Europe in pre-Roman times, or at least very big swathes of it. For example there are some stone-made Celtic-crosses that are popular in what is today North-Western Romania (Maramures county), there are different articles about them (in Romanian) which also include some photos [1]. Now, I didn't know if that same type of cross was also present in Scotland but a quick search directed me to this article [2], which tells me that they used to be quite popular in early Christian times. The county of Maramures is pretty close to what used to be Scythia.

I've found another blog-post with more photos about the Celtic crosses from Maramures [3], and in the comments in there someone also linked to similar crosses being found in Northern Greece/Macedonia, close to Thessaloniki [4]. Very interesting stuff.

[1] https://www.bzi.ro/morosenii-au-origini-celtice-artefactul-c...

[2] https://www.churchofscotland.org.uk/news-and-events/news/201...

[3] https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/abandoned-bogomils-grave...

[4] https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/abandoned-bogomils-grave...

> The Celts did in fact inhabit most of Europe in pre-Roman times, or at least very big swathes of it. For example there are some stone-made Celtic-crosses that are popular in what is today North-Western Romania

Celtic crosses are a Christian thing and Christianity only got started after the Romans had subjugated large parts of Europe, so any "Celtic" crosses in Romania are guaranteed to be unrelated to a possible pre-Roman presence of Celtic tribes. (And it's not like putting a cross in a circle is a terribly original idea, so they probably came up with it independently from the Celtic Christians in Ireland.)

It’s in the Scottish-related article, lots of pre-Christian symbols and traditions got absorbed into Christianity, it was only normal, one couldn’t have imposed a “tabula rasa” in those times over an entire continent (even today is not that easy, even with all the communications and PR industries)

(citation needed) here is an alternative: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celts_in_Transylvania

Well the (Celtic) Scots did descend from roughly the Scythians. although afaik the Picts are thought to possibly be non-celtic. The Celtics though were all Indo-European, and so originate from the Eurasian steppe.

No, the Celtic Scots did not descend from the Scythians. The Scythians were speakers of the Iranian branch of Indo-European. The Celtic Scots were speakers of the Celtic branch.

I didn't mean they literally descended from the scythians, but that they both derive from the indo-europeans from the eurasian steppe, and so cultural memory of this could influence the story the original poster was referencing. Although I realize my wording was pretty terrible, so it did sound exactly like I was saying they were descended from scythians. My bad.

More recent information on Picts shows that they were Celts, speaking a language within or related to Brythonic Celtic languages like Welsh.

They controlled the eastern portion of Scotland while the Irish-related Gaels controlled the western portion. As the Anglo-Saxons came in, followed by the Vikings, there was a lot of mixing resulting in modern Scottish populations.

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