Tartessian; celtic in the south-west at the dawn of history.9781891271175 Tartessian; celtic in the south-west at the dawn of history. Koch, John T. Celtic Studies Publications 2009 173 pages $29.95 Paperback DP44 Koch (Welsh and Celtic studies, U. of Wales-Aberystwyth) comes to the support of Greek historian Herodotus in identifying the people of what is now southern Portugal and southwestern Spain as Celts, a position most modern scholars are disinclined to accept. He shows how some 85 inscriptions from about 750-450 BC closely resemble the Celtiberian spoken in east-central Spain, Gaulish across the Pyrenees, and the insular Celtic languages still spoken across what is now the English Channel. If Tartessian is Celtic, he points out; it will have been the first attested Celtic language by a century or more. Distributed in North America by The David Brown Book Co. ([c]2009 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR) 
Arch Yeomans (Member): Celtiberian is the attested archaic language, if Tartessian is older, then what is Iberian? 7/9/2010 1:42 AM
You have to wonder if Tartessian finds legitimacy to be the oldest Celtic language, that perhaps the Iberian language is a more archaic Celtic language. The oldest attested Celtic script is Celtiberian and though only fragments of it exists, it appears to have a lot in common with Irish Gaelic from a region that is primarily in the interior of Northern Spain (Zaragoza to Zamora).
Another possibility: It may have been the lingua franca of the maritime Bell Beakers (which should cause us to look at the mouths of two great rivers (Rhone and Rhine) as the source region of the Bell Beaker languages, the Ebro, Deuro, Guadalaquiver, etc. as the receptor region of the maritime Bell Beaker language. Eventually the language spreads inland into Iberia into Celtiberian into regions which controlled the overland trade of minerals, livestock, produce, etc. Arch |
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