The Deep Time Memory of the Gaulish Language and the Human Condition.

It is generally accepted that the Indo European language family arose somewhere to the east
of Europe and was brought into Europe by one or several means. Its place of origin has long
been hotly debated, and current general opinion is divided between either the Pontic Steppe
north of the Black Sea, or Anatolia, south of the Black Sea (for a recent discussion see
Bouckaert et al 2012). There is no consensus on the means of its dispersal, and a variety of
models have been proposed, ranging from the 18th-19th century military invasion, conquest
and displacement model, now largely discredited, to gradual diffusion and assimilation. It is
often suggested that the language group may have ridden piggy back on the spread of
agriculture, originating in the middle east and spreading out from Anatolia to the furthest
reaches of Europe. Under this model, the language group is considered to have been part of
the package of the farming revolution, along with farming technology and a handful of seeds
and domesticated animals. This spread of farming is thought to have occurred in the
Neolithic, the later stone age, and is dated around 4500-4000 BCE for Atlantic western
Europe. Another model suggests the group of languages was brought into western Europe
from its place of origin at the start of the early Bronze Age, that is around 2800 BCE, which
is a significantly later date (Bouckaert et al 2012).

The Celtic language family has been the westernmost of these Indo European languages for
as long as anyone can remember: at the dawn of recorded history Celtic languages are found
to be spoken in the westernmost reaches of Europe, in the Iberian peninsula, in Gaul, in
Britain and Ireland, and throughout the Alps, at the very least. In a parallel with the above
mentioned 18th-19th century theory of language dispersal through violent invasion and
conquest, these languages were long held to have arrived in these areas sometime in the Iron
Age, broadly speaking around the middle of the last millenium before the common era
(BCE). To this day linguistic and historical texts and websites hold up this theory in
discussions of the Celtic language group ( see e.g. Popa & Stoddart 2014).

Recently a new theory has been proposed by the combined might of archeologist Barry
Cunliffe and linguist John Koch, suggesting that rather than having spread from the east
towards the west the Celtic languages instead spread from the west to the east. The
formulation of this theory rests on three foundations: 1. the identification (by Barry Cunliffe,
2010, 2013) in the archeological record of a widespread and continuing Bronze Age culture
that was common to the geographical area described as “the Atlantic seaboard”, that is the
western coastal areas of Iberia and Gaul, including Britain and Ireland, and the complete
absence in the archeological record of either a disruption of this culture or evidence of any
invasions and displacements, violent or other; 2. the tentative and admittedly still debated and
not universally recognised identification (by John Koch, 2010, 2013) of the Tartessian
language of south west Iberia as Celtic, at a date significantly earlier than the earliest dates
traditionally suggested for the establishment of the languages in the east according to the
dispersion from east to west model; and 3. the identification (by e.g. Bryan Sykes, 2002,
2007) of a geneflow from the eastern mediterranean to the western Atlantic seaboard at a
stage significantly earlier than the Iron Age, thought to have taken a route by sea rather than
by land.

In addition it has been found that the megalithic culture, responsible for the construction of
large stone monuments along the mediterranean and the Atlantic arose in the east and spread
towards the west, with the oldest megalithic monuments being found in the eastern
mediterranean (Anatolia) and their age gradually decreasing along the western cline, through
Malta, Italy, Sardinia, Iberia, Gaul, and Britain. While this on the surface would seem to
support the notion of a dispersal of language from the east, the date at which this megalithic
culture movement happened, arising in the east around 7000 BCE and arriving in Britain
around 4000 BCE is far too early to be able to provide an explanation for the development of
the Celtic language group and culture, commonly situated, as mentioned before, around the
early Iron Age (ca. 800 BCE) (see Wikipedia: Megalith).

The theory proposed by Barry Cunliffe and John Koch (2010, 2013) posits that 1. there was a
long established culture common to the entire Atlantic seaboard, shared and dispersed by sea
rather than by land, and 2. the Celtic language and subsequent language family arose as a
widespread lingua franca used in this area, from the Algarve to Scotland to the Rhine estuary,
and subsequently spread eastwards inland, possibly along the major navigable rivers of Gaul:
the Garonne, the Loire, the Seine, the Rhine, providing in turn connection with the Rhone and
the Danube, allowing for further penetration of the language group south and east. This
model provides a plausible explanation for the occurrence of the language along the Rhine
and Danube into Germany, Bohemia, the Hungarian Plain and the Balkans in the Iron Age, at
the time when the first historical records of the speakers of the language are made (ca 500
BCE onwards). This model also suggests that the Celtic language, while possibly brought
from the east at a remote point in time by a group of people of unknown size or description,
grew and developed as the language of all the people of the Atlantic.

What languages might have been spoken in the Atlantic zone previous to the rise of Celtic is
a matter of speculation; it is often suggested that the ancestors of Basque and Iberian might
have been among them, and it has been proposed (Cunliffe and Koch 2010, 2013) that the
lack of the phoneme /p/ in those languages led to the distinct loss of the inherited Indo
European /p/ in Celtic, although this theory is not widely accepted, and it has been argued
that the lack of the phoneme /p/ in a neighbouring or substrate language is not considered to
be a strong enough force for linguistic change (see e.g. Prosper Perez 2014). Be that as it
may, Barry Cunliffe’s theory suggests that the Celtic culture and language should be
considered as having developed in situ in the western Atlantic area, and as such should be
considered native to it. This places it in stark contrast to the previous model which held that
the Celtic languages were imported into Gaul, Britain and Ireland wholesale no earlier than
circa 500 BCE. As such, the Celtic culture and languages would be considered the product of
the people and geographical and environmental circumstances and conditions of the Atlantic
zone.

While the theories above are currently being developed, the question of when the Celtic
languages arose remains open. It may be possible to find suggestions of answers to this in the
Gaulish language, and, in the process, find clues about Celtic culture and ontology.

The Gaulish language is found attested from the 6th century BCE (if Lepontic is included,
following Delamarre 2003) to the fifth century CE (Chateaubleau Tile, discovered 1997,
tentatively dated to late 4th or early 5th century CE). At the time of its attestation it was found
to be spoken from Caledonia to the Rhine estuary and valley, to the Pyrenees and the Alps to
the Danube valley as least as far as Vienna, with incursions into the Po Valley of Northern
Italy, the Balkans and Anatolia by migration attested in recorded history. It is an
extraordinary spread for one language, in an era without central administration or modern
communications. It eventually succumbed under pressure from Latin after the Roman
conquest of those lands, although it has survived as Welsh, Breton and revived Cornish into
the 21st century.

The Gaulish language has become the object of increased interest and scrutiny in recent
years, and is currently being revived as a modern vehicle for communication by a small group
of dedicated people. In the process several things have come to light which may help to shed
light on the issues discussed above, and, in turn, may provide an insight into how the people
who spoke this language perceived of the world around them, and of their place in it, that is,
of the human condition.

The study of the vocabulary of the Gaulish language, leaving aside matters of syntax and
grammar, has revealed a number of features which are worth discussing. Bearing in mind that
the Gaulish language is imperfectly attested and that only around 1100 words of vocabulary
are securely attested, it is possible to identify a number of terms which serve a dual purpose.
These are words that describe parts of the human body, and they are found used to describe
geographical features as well. The word “pennos” means “head”, and is attested in a number
of personal names, such as Pennouindos, “White Head”, and Cunopennus, “Dog Head” , as
well as Pennausius, Pennius and Pennus. A Gallo-Brittonic evolution of the root *kwenno-,
the word does not appear to have an Indo European etymology. This word is not only used to
indicate the heads of humans and animals, but is also used to describe features of the
landscape: Pennolocos, “The Head Of The Lake”, Pennocrucium, “The Head Of The Hill”,
Pennobrigas, “The Head Of The Mountain”, and Pennouindos, “White Head”, as refering to a
mountain, where we can note that the same name is applied to a person as to a mountain. It is
also used in the word arepennis, “before the head/end”, referring to a measure of ploughed
land and indicating the extent of it (modern French arpent, “survey (of land), pacing up and
down”), and the word talopennos “front-head”, referring to a gable or pinion (Delamarre
2003).

The use of the word “head” in the contexts above is not unusual, and parallels can easily be
found in English in e.g. headland or headwaters. More thought provoking however is the use
of the words clutso- and bron-. The word clutso- means “ear”, and is found used to describe
and name caves, cavities, depressions and holes in a widespread fashion around the Gaulish
speaking territory, while at the same time being used as a personal name, as in Cloustria for
instance. The word bron meanwhile means breast, specifically a woman’s breast, as attested
in several dialectical French words refering to breasts and breast feeding (bronne, broner,
abron, brongnes, brunbrun), and is also used to refer to topographical features, specifically
hills, to the extent that inWelsh and Breton the word *bron and its derivatives designate a
breast as well as a hill. In addition it is also found as a personal name, e.g. Subrona (Beautiful
Breast), Uerbronara (Big Tits), Abruna, etc (Delamarre 2003). A parallel with this can
possibly be found in the Grand Tetons in Wyoming, US, whose supposed meaning “Big Tits”
is however disputed, and is by some thought to refer to the Teton Sioux native Americans of
the area, with an etymology analysing “te-ton” as a Lakota word deriving from Titonwan
“dwellers of the prairie”. Naming caves as ears and hills as breasts is, however, not common
in either the English speaking or the French speaking world.

Within the corpus of the Gaulish language we also find the word “araus-“, temple or jaw,
easily analysed as “are-aus-“, that is “before the ear/ in front of the ear”. This word is also
widely used as a name for towns and settlements (Arausi, Arausia, Arausona, Arausio
[modern Orange, France]) as well as a personal name: Arausicus translates as “Jowly” or
“Temply”. The practice of naming a geographical location with the name of a part of the
human body is considered to be commonplace (Delamarre 2003).

Another example of the act of endowing a feature of the landscape with a human
characteristic may be found in one of several Gaulish names for the oak tree. While there are
several names attested for the oak in Gaulish (see Hansen 2015), including deruo-, ercunio-
and tanno-, the word cassano- again reveals an interesting approach to naming things: the
etymological analysis of cassano- suggests that the name may be derived from the word
-casso-, thought to mean “curls, curly hair, hair”, as found in the tribal name suffix –casses
e.g. in Baiocasses (preserved in modern Bayeux), which is interpreted as “blonde curls”.
Other examples of personal names include Sucasses, “Beautiful Curls”, Tricasses “Three
Plaits”, and most imterestingly Uiducasses, “Tree Hair” (with hair like a tree) (Delamarre
2003). This indicates that this name for the oak may be derived from the fact that its
luxurious verdant crown was seen as resembling human hairdoes, presumably also luxurious
if not quite verdant.

From the four examples discussed above it may be possible to suggest the notion that, since
the Gaulish people were quite ready to ascribe human features (head, ear, breast, hair) to the
natural world around them, they may have perceived of the natural world as being part of
humanity, or, conversely, of humanity as part of the natural world, or at least closely related
to it. In other words, they may have considered themselves as belonging to the natural world,
to the environment, and as being quite at home in it. This suggestion can be considered a no-
brainer in some regard, and can lead back to the stage of anthropology where the pre-Roman
peoples of Europe were compared to the pre-European populations of the Americas, Africa
and Australia, and, by extension, the notion of the noble savage, a notion that was pervasive
in philosophy, history and anthropology alike throughout the 18th and 19th century and into
the early twentieth century. In post-war discourse this vision has become widely discredited
and criticised as paternalistic, condescending and simplistic, and rightly so: modern
anthropological research has revealed societies of sophistication and complexity among the
people once considered “noble savages”, a term which was a kind of backhanded insult
disguised as flattery.

Nevertheless, in societies where people lived rural lifestyles centred around subsistence
farming, as was the case for most of the history of the people referred to as Gaulish, it is not a
far fetched notion to postulate a high degree of affinity and familiarity with the natural
environment. After all, a succssful harvest and therefore survival depended on an accurate
understanding and application of the processes of the natural world. That such an
understanding was transcended mere practical considerations and carried across into notions
of ontology is a matter of speculation, but the analysis of the words above and their
application couldbe interpreted as suggesting that it may well have been so.

Further circumstantial support for the notion of a nature-inclusive worldview can be found in
the surviving Celtic languages. In the Welsh language, the modern word for grass is
“gwelltglas”. This word can easily be analysed as being a compound of two Celtic terms also
attested in Gaulish, with “gwellt” meaning “hair” (attested in Gaulish as uolto-) and “glas”
meaning “green” (attested in Gaulish as glasto-, glasso-), with underlying notions of blue-
green, pastel, aqua, specifically as applied to the green of vegetation. This is another striking
example of a natural feature, an ubiquitous one, being designated by reference to a human
body part. In Old Irish poetry, the word “findfholt”, “white hair”, is used to describe the
waves of the stormy ocean (see “Is Acher Ingáith Innocht”), and while it could be argued that
this merely represents a poetic turn of phrase it nevertheless strongly resembles the practice
of transferring human characteristics to the natural world. Returning to Welsh again, we find
that the verb “to growl”, which in English is an onomatopeia, that is a word made up from the
sound it aims to describe, is in fact “arthu/arthio”, built on the word “arth”, “bear”. That is,
“to growl” in Welsh means “to bear”, “to make the sounds of a bear”.

The use of word “arthu/arthio” for the verb “to growl” in Welsh has two interesting
connotations. First, it implies that the people who came to use that word had a close enough
familiarity with bears that it would be logical and reasonable to use that word, suggesting that
bears were a common part of life. And second it means that the adoption of this word into the
language goes back to a time in history when bears were common enough to be part of life.
Since bears are considered to have become extinct in Britain between 500 CE and 1000 CE
and must therefore have been quite rare well before 1000 CE, this lends the word
“arthu/arthio” a certain antiquity. While this is interesting enough, a word from the early or
middle middle ages does not qualify for being of great antiquity. There is however another
word, attested in the Gaulish language, that may be able to lay claim to greater antiquity.

The Gaulish word “acauno-“ means “stone”, and is attested in a number of different settings.
It is attested in glosses by classical authors as acaunomarga, “stony clay”, and as agaunus
“stone” and agaunum “stone, rock”, and is attested as a placename Acaunus, a theonym
Agaunus and a personal name Acaunissa. The suffix –aun- is an active participal suffix from
an earlier –amno-, also found in the words barnaum- “judge” (one who judges) and uellaun-
“commander” (one who commands). With the older suffix the word is also thought to be
found in the place name Acmodae Insulae, translating as “the stony islands”, and thought to
refer to the Shetland islands. The word has been interpreted as “the cutting one”, from a
common root *ak-. This common root *ak- is found in the modern Welsh word awch, which
means “edge”, and the significance is enormous: it means that the Gaulish language at the
time of its attestation retained a word for “stone” which translated as “one which cuts”. The
possible interpretation of “acaun-“ as “whet stone”, i.e. stone that makes sharp, which would
be plausible analysis for an Iron Age word, is negated by its attestation in relation to stone
found on the ground, as in stony clay, and in relation to the Shetland Islands, describing the
essential building material of the islands, that is rock.

To realise the importance of this word, it is necessary to bring to mind the view of the Basque
language and culture, as it is most commonly accepted. The Basque people and language are
widely considered to be 1. pre-Indo European, and 2. the most direct descendants of the
people who settled Europe after surviving the last ice age in refuges south of the Pyrenees,
with tentative links to the Cro-Magnon people who first entered Europe in about 45,000 BCE,
and became its Paleolithic and Mesolithic inhabitants, bearers of what eventually became the
Magdalenian culture. One of the key points in laying claim to this stone-age origin is the fact
that several words in the Basque language, relating to cutting implements, are or were
considered to be based on the Basque word for stone, the ubiquitous material for the first
cutting tools made by humanity. As such, the Basque word haitz “stone” appeared to be at the
base of the words for axe ([h]aizkora), hoe ([h]aitzur, shears ([h]aitzur, tongs ([h]aiztur) and
knife (aizto). However, in recent years this hypothesis has been questioned, and it has been
pointed out that the etymological analyses deriving the above words from haitz was faulty
(see Aizkora Controversy).

Nevertheless, regardless of whether the analysis of the Basque words was faulty or not, the
fact remains that the principle of it was deemed as sufficient and sound enough to allocate a
stone age origin to the Basque people and language, claiming deep-time cultural continuity
with the people of the Paleolithic and the Mesolithic. This is the important issue at hand.
Because applying that same line of reasoning to the Gaulish language, the existence of the
word “acaun-” and its interpretation as “one which cuts” will have to lead to the same
conclusion, that is it will point to a stone-age origin for the Gaulish language, or, at the very
least, for the word “acaun-”. It is possible that the word “acaun-“ is a loan word from a
remote period, absorbed into the Gaulish language and fossilised and preserved as such, but
that would not explain why 1. it has an Indo-European etymology, and 2. that it contains a
component which is attested as productive at the time of attestation of the word. The
implications are clear: if “acaun-“ is Indo-European, if the Gaulish language is Indo-
European, and if “acaun-“ illustrates a direct link to the stone age, than it follows that both
the Gaulish language and the Indo-European languages have their origin in the stone age, i.e.
the Neolithic at the very latest.

One last line of reasoning needs to be followed, and that is this: if the word “acaun-“ is
correctly analysed as describing a stone as “something which cuts”, than it is reasonable to
situate the coining of that word at a date no later than the introduction of metal for the
manufacturing of cutting tools. Since it has previously been argued that the Gaulish language
grew out of the Celtic languages which developed on the Atlantic seaboard, the origin of the
word “acaun-“ must be previous to the start of the Atlantic Copper Age, the Chalcolithic,
with an estimated date of around 3500-3000 BCE. It can therefore be tentatively suggested
that the development of the Celtic languages on the Atlantic seaboard can be dated as no later
than that date. As a corrollary, for an Indo-European language to have arrived at the
westernmost extremity of Europe by the start of the Chalcolithic means that its original
dispersal must have taken place significantly earlier than that.

The start of the Atlantic Chalcolithic not only provides a close match with the development
of the Bell Beaker culture, but also of the megalithic culture in the Atlantic zone, and it
provides an indication that the origin of the Celtic people and their languages may well be
closely linked with the development of those cultures, which appear specific and native to
Atlantic Europe. It provides significant continuity of culture over nearly four thousand years,
until the advent of the Roman Empire. And, going by the linguistic analysis of the Gaulish
words discussed above, it appears to have been a culture that lived in close proximity to the
natural world, and may well have considered humanity an extension of it, without the
existential dichotomy between humanity and the natural environment that has come to
characterise the post-Roman world. This latter notion will be further explored later.

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