The Picts

[skyisgrey]

Where the Picts a part of the Celtic tribes, or were they pre-Celtic indigenous inhabitants of Britain?

[Whack-a-Mole]

This is what Merriam Webster has to say about it:

A member of a people of the north of Scotland who are first noted in historical records in the late 3d century and who became amalgamated with the Scots in the mid-8th century

If you can figure the dates of Celtic and pre-Celtic tribes you should have your answer.

[Celyn]

From Enclyopaedia Britannica online (little quote in the hope of being OK re. copyright)

Probably descendants of pre-Celtic aborigines, the Picts were first noticed in AD 297, when a Roman writer spoke of the “Picts and Irish [Scots] attacking” Hadrian’s Wall. Their warfare with the Romans during the occupation was almost continual. Then or soon after, they seem to have developed two kingdoms north of the Firth of Forth, a southern and a northern; but by the 7th century there was a united “Pict-land,” which already had been penetrated by Christianity. In 843, Kenneth I MacAlpin, king of the Scots (centred in Argyll and Bute), became also king of the Picts, uniting their two lands in a new kingdom of Alba, which evolved into Scotland.

Note the use of “probably” - I think there may be a certain amount of uncertainty.

http://members.tripod.com/~Halfmoon/

might be interesting, and

Pictishlinks

has a lot of other links to various Pictish things.

[Whack-a-Mole]

As a slight diversion along this line you should groove to Several Small Furry Creatures Gathered Together in a Cave and Grooving with a Pict by Pink Floyd.

No reason really…just thought I’d mention it.

[Celyn]

Maybe I’m just in a pointless nitpicking mood (sorry Jeff42 but it might be

Several Species of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together in a Cave and Grooving with a Pict.

One never knows when these tiny differences will be important.

[AHunter3]

The PICTs were pre-Browserian indigenous inhabitants of Maclandia, and were distant cousins to the TIFFs and ancestors of the JPEGs.

[APB]

The traditional view is that they were the pre-Celtic inhabitants and that they were displaced from the south-west Highlands by the Scoti, a Celtic tribe from Ireland. The two tribe then united in the ninth century, as described in the entry quoted by Celyn. Much of this is now open to doubt, not least because some archaeologists question whether ‘Celtic’ in this context has any meaning at all.

[CalMeacham]

Not that it will add to your understanding about the Picts, but Conan author Robert E. Howard was really taken with the Picts, so he wrote a series of stories about a Pictish leader named Bran Mac Morn, which have been collected in a book of that title. Thoroughly unhistorical, but a lot of fun.

[Katie]

The Picts are thought to have been pre-Celtic, and then later interbred and mingled with the Celts, but no-one really knows because neither the Celts or Picts left any written history - they were oral cultures, and all the Celtic history and legends we know are from accounts by the Romans and early Christian monks.
The only thing I know about them that hasn’t been posted yet is that they were called the Picts by the Romans and it literally meant “painted people”, because they used to mark their skins with woad. Also, there are still quite a lot of Pictish sites in North-East Scotland, near Inverness - mostly standing stones with designs carved onto them or small stone circles. There’s stuff about them in local museums - the Inverness tourist information office might be able to put you in touch with someone who’s studied them.

[Johnny_L.A]

I started reading a book about the Celts about 10 years ago. Maybe more. Time constraints prevented me from finishing it though. IIRC, it said the Celts came over from Eastern Europe (or Northeastern Europe) and it provided examples of artifacts as evidence. Can anyone refresh my memory?

[Celyn]

Sorry, JohnnyLA, I suppose I’m being a bit lazy and rushed here, but if you click the links I posted earlier in the thread, you’ll find more Pict-related stuff than you can shake a stick at. Oh, and a Declaration of Pictish Independence too.