Guinastasia: Legless amphibians are SOOOO not icky 
!!! They’re called Caecilians ( Order Gymnophiona or Apoda depending on your preference) and are, in fact, tres cool 
. They’re pretty much exclusively fossorial ( burrowers ) and are spiffy little predators that eat earthworms and the like. For the most part they’re tropical in distribution and not a terribly diverse lot. But they’re pretty cool looking. Ever see that cult classic by Ken Russel, Lair of the White Worm? Shrink down the critter in that and you’ve got a pretty decent Caecilian 
.
And really, the dearth of snakes in Ireland is cause for sorrow, not elation 
. Time to shed your phobias and climb aboard the opidiophile bandwagon .
Mick: Wellll…I think you’re exagerrating just a bit on your history. The Celts were relatively advanced for a “barbarian” people in some respects, such as agriculture. That’s why Gaul and Britain were such valuable conquests for the Roman State - They assimilated readily and were quite productive, once subdued ( and incidentally the pre-Christian Romans and Germans absorbed a far larger portion of the Celtic world than “The Christians” ever converted ).
But to imply that they were a peaceful folk is a bit silly. They most certainly were NOT. From their first appearance in recorded history, when one group burst across the borders of Thrace, set Ptolemy Keraunos’ head on a stake ( and incidentally opened the gate for the establishment of the Antigonid dynasty on the throne of Macedonia ), and then surged into Asia Minor to establish Galatia, to the final conversion of the Irish and the Picts ( when the Leinster Irish were slave-raiding and colonizing the coasts of Wales and Cornwall ), they were an aggressive, expansionist people. Hence their establishment at one point ( as you pointed out )across the breadth of Europe and their continual attempts to penetrate further ( Northern Italy for example ). They may have become more settled as time went on and therefore vulnerable to pressure from fresh “barbarian” waves ( i.e. the West Germans ). But they never ceased to be a society that valued the warrior ideal. And the same goes for the North Germans ( Vikings ).
Also, I gotta say that the notion that…
…is going a bit overboard as well. I don’t think that kind of universal political unity can be posited. Sure shifting tribal alliances were common and the Celts probably recognized a common bond, linguistically and culturally. But a ( even temporarily ) unified state across Europe? I don’t see it. ( My apologies if I misunderstood your point ).
Whether they were more egalitarian, pre-conversion, is a different question and an open one. I wouldn’t doubt it, necessarily. Christianity did seem to travel hand in hand with stricter notions of social hiearchy than those usually found in tribal societies ( although whether the one derived from the other is also an open question - it may have just been an artifact of Christianity being pushed by more organized, sedentary, hiearchical states ). However I am a little dubious about some of the claims of gender equality in these pre-Christian tribes. A little less patriarchal? Quite possibly. Non-patriarchal? The evidence doesn’t seem to be there. I get the impression that some of the more extreme claims of gynocentrism in tribal Europe ( as opposed to the much better established hypotheses on the same in Crete ) may be the result of some modern Neo-Pagan reconstructionists making leaps of faith based on scanty evidence and wishful thinking ( and I say that without meaning to disparage modern Pagans as a whole, many of whom are fine folk ).
Of course the specific claims YOU made in that regard aren’t particularly outlandish, to my mind .
Just MHO .
