The Celts

The Celts

The Celts

Georg Ramsauer lived in a small village called Hallstatt, in Austria.   This village was located near a lake named Salzkammergut, which means "the place of good salt," also near the region's capitol, Salzburg, "the salt town."   The salt from these mountains was used to preserve the food in most of Old Europe.   Ramsauer was the director of the salt mines. He'd heard tales of his worker's ancestors, and was fascinated by them.   Hoping to find some remnant of these earlier people, he began exploring the areas around Hallstatt, and in 1846, his explorations finally led him to an astounding archaeological discovery--a huge prehistoric cemetary, with over 2,500 gravesites.   The Academy of Sciences in Vienna sent a team to examine the site, and after years of exhausting work, it was determined that these graves, dating as old as 800 B.C., were the first people in a race that at one time reigned over the entire European world, deemed "Keltoi" by the Greeks; or, as they are known more commonly, the Celts.    
The Celtic culture originated in a time when the people of what is now Europe had just grown out of their nomadic stage and were settling down at one spot, either a single home or an entire village.   The Celts of the Hallstatt Era were rather advanced, compared to other people of this time.   They were using iron to make tools and other things, something most European people hadn't even begun to do, and they were becoming skilled with it.   Judging by the elaborateness of some of those burial sites, as opposed to the simpleness of the majority of graves, it seems that the Hallstatt people were a hierarchial society, with a lower class slaving in the salt mines, while the higher classes reaped the benefits of trading their salt with other tribes.   They had no written record, as writing was very scarce in the world in 800 B.C.   Due to this, little else is known about the Hallstatt Celts.
The Hallstatt Era lasted until approximately 700 B.C., and for the...