Lethe scholar
@Lethescholar
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Retrieving from oblivion the antiquities of the old kingdom, where the sun sets and the divine awakens. Personal account: @FCMart1n
Joined March 2025
THE FALL OF THE ATLANTIC BRONZE AGE I said I’d talk about the causes that led to the disappearance of the Atlantic Bronze Age culture. Time to dive in! Follow this thread to get on it‼️🧵➡️
THE ATLANTIC BRONZE AGE COLLAPSE For many archaeology and ancient history enthusiasts, the Late Bronze Age collapse, the ominous date of 1200BC, the Sea Peoples, or the Trojan cycle, sound familiar. We all know that the Bronze Age ended abruptly in the Eastern Mediterranean…➡️
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Decorations on Castro culture torc terminals, after F. López Cuevillas. The Callaeci mastered goldwork throughout prehistory, although these decorations likely reflect techniques that only arrived at the very end of the Iron Age.
Combinations of motifs on Castro Culture situlae (Galician and northern Portuguese Iron Age), after C. Seoane Novo.
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The Celtiberian panoply (600-100 BC), according to G. Ruiz Zapatero. The Celtiberians were close neighbours of the Callaeci—yet another world when dealing with warfare.
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Combinations of motifs on Castro Culture situlae (Galician and northern Portuguese Iron Age), after C. Seoane Novo.
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Instead, there are no such clues of Briton presence in Galicia before their arrival in the 5th–6th centuries. Rather, it was the furthest reach of their hegemony, in which they must have taken advantage of Roman citizenship while creating a parallel Atlantic thalassocracy.
Brittany was not settled by random British refugees British settlement appears to have begun there prior to Roman collapse. Even before Caesar's conquest of Gaul, Armoricans and British were highly connected, with the British coming to the military aid of the Armoricans
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“If in big 2026 you’re attributing light eyes and/or hair to Celtic ancestry, then you don’t understand ancestry at all: 1️⃣Celts didn’t have a distinctive phenotype. 2️⃣Iberian DNA is kinda homogeneous. 3️⃣The distinctive trait of Galicia/Minho is Germanic, not Celtic, admixture.”
Se en en big 2026 andas a atribuír ollos e/ou cabelos claros a unha suposta ancestralidade celta, é q non sabes ren de ancestralidades: 1️⃣ celtas non tiñan fenotipo distintivo; 2️⃣ ADN ibérico é moi homoxéneo; 3️⃣ trazo distintivo da Galiza/Minho é impronta xermánica, non a celta.
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When you look at a map, you are seeing the result of history. This is also valid in Antiquity. Looking at a map of the Gaulish tribes in the time of Caesar, you are not just seeing a snapshot of a single moment. You are seeing political processes rooted deep in prehistory.
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And Marseille, like any hegemon, likely sought to prevent the rise of potential competitors. Soon, that is precisely what the Romans did. Narbonensis was conquered almost a century earlier than central (and northern) Gaul, so its tribes simply had less time to aggregate…
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Greek presence triggered the social changes of late La Tène Gaul. But the south, besides being more fragmented, also had the Greeks too close by. Along the coast, minor tribes did not have other Gallic tribes as their hegemons. They had the powerful Greek city of Marseille…
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In the south, there was also ethnic diversity. Besides the Gauls, there were also Iberians, Ligurians, and Aquitanians. The Gauls eventually came to dominate, but political aggregation was more difficult under such circumstances… And then there were the Greeks…
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The north was simply too peripheral to experience this. The south is more complex. First, it should be initially more populous. A larger population means more settlements, and more settlements mean more polities. As population grows, tribes tend to split into new tribes…
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Elites grew stronger. Towns (oppida) expanded. Political systems solidified, evolving from tribes into nascent republics. Former tribes were subordinated to their hegemons and gradually aggregated into powerful polities. And then it is the periphery…
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The correct question is: Why was central Gaul so cohesive? The polities of central Gaul grew because they were the center of a system. In the final La Tène period, trade flowed through Gaul, and the central polities became richer. Political consolidation followed…
@LefuelTheOne @Lethescholar Pourquoi un tel morcellement dans le sud ?
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(And that’s despite the fact that P. Brun’s map does not include the tiny civitates of Narbonensis and Aquitania)
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“Map of the Gallic civitates of La Tène D with a schematic representation of their scale of political integration in three classes of territorial reach”, per P. Brun. Note that the size of polities peaked in central Gaul, whereas peripheral regions remained more fragmented.
France is a unique example of the preservation of the late Iron Age political framework in the longue durée. Caesar conquered ~120 Gallic tribes. In Late Roman Gaul, there were 120 civitates, that became bishoprics. In 1789, On the eve of the Revolution, 137 bishoprics remained.
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SW Iberian toponymy, sorted by components, according to J. De Hoz: 🔹 -briga, as in Salabriga, a Celtic element; 🔹 -ci and -ili, as in Ilici, Iberian elements; 🔹 and the enigmatic -ipo and -oba, as in Iponuba, characteristic among the Turdetani. What could their origin be?
Ethnicities in SW Iberia Protohistory, per J. De Hoz. The Turdetani stood out, firmly rooted on the lower Guadalquivir. Heirs to Tartessos, they were praised by Greeks and Romans for their manners, their riches, and their historical records said to span 6,000 years.
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“É absurdo falar de megalitismo, é como dicir que agora estamos no cemiterismo”. Recordatorio de que para moita xente isto é un bo take cambiando Megalitismo por Castrexo.
@opr_tw Penso que si: obviamente a koiné cultural do megalitismo atlántico incluíu movementos de xente que algunha pegada xenética deixarían. Emporiso, non me consta que haxa probas dese fluxo xenético transcontinental no megalitismo. Si me constan para antes e despois.
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The Lancienses, name of several tribes among the Astures and Lusitani, meant “people of the lancea” (spear in Lusitanian, the pre-Celtic IE language of W Iberia). The Cynetes probably meant “the dogs”. I couldn’t name any related tribe whose name meant “the wanderers”, though.
Some Germanic tribes were called things like “the Knives” and “the Wolf Clan,” so I like that the Vandals bore a more poetic name: *Wandilôz, or “Wanderers.” If the word survived into Modern English, we’d call them the Wendles.
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And Morocco. All of them, from the superb A. de la Peña’s 1979 work, “Las representaciones de alabardas en los grabados rupestres gallegos”. https://t.co/sN6UJKU9HO
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