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The etymology of Scottish Gaelic follows the variantions in how the Celts/Irish interacted with the older Pictish settlements. So the Gaelic of what is now Fife (the last Pictish kingdom) was very different to that early Gaelic of the west coast (where any remaining Pictish settlements were fuly absorbed). Of course this is before Scots Gaelic further changed under differing exposure to Norse languages and then what became lowland Scots from the 9C onwards.
The net effect is that Scots Gaelic is as different to Irish Gaelic as say Spanish to Italian.
And I can speak Scots Gealic.
4th century Greeks Pytheas of Massilia, gave the name Prettanike nesoi, Πρετανικαι νησοι to those living there, on his maps, from Ptolomy passed it on,This is based on the native name for Britain, ” Ynys Prydain” which means, literally, Picts’ Island.
Linguistcly.
Celtic form “Cruitintuath” where Cruitin stands for Pict, and tuath for land or nation.
DNA
S530 is a celtic Pict marker, present in 10% of males in scotland.
@ hannibalbarca120002001
Thank you for that interesting input, that indeed points in the celtic direction.
@ loki1006
Sorry but that you agree or not doesn't matter, it's a fact that the dominant scientific consensus is that the pictish nation was born of a federation of local celtic tribes (the Caledonians being the bigger one) , even if the possibility that those mixed a little with remnants of indigenous pre-celtic tribes is a believable hypothesis.
There is lots of popular fantasy beliefs about the picts, even amongst scottish people themselves, but this is not a fantasy game, it's an history game that should be based on the current state of science history and not perpetuate concepts that have been proved wrong.
You're right that Picts didn't left written texts, but bits of their langage are known from geographical and personal names that survived time, and that's enough for linguists to etablish that it was very probably a celtic langage.
From Wikipedia :
"Pictish is the extinct language spoken by the Picts, the people of eastern and northern Scotland from the late Iron Age to the Early Middle Ages. Virtually no direct attestations of Pictish remain, short of a limited number of geographical and personal names found on monuments and the contemporary records in the area controlled by the Kingdom of the Picts. Such evidence, however, points to the language being an Insular Celtic language related to the Brittonic language spoken prior to Anglo-Saxon settlement in what is now southern Scotland, England, and Wales.
The prevailing view in the second half of the 20th century was that Pictish was a non-Indo-European language isolate, predating a Celtic colonisation of Scotland or that a non-Indo-European Pictish and Brittonic Pictish language coexisted. This is now a minority view, if not completely abandoned."
Source : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pictish_language
You're also right that Gaelic Scottish (which was influenced by Pictish) and Irish are as different as Spanish and Italian, but Spanish and Italian are both belonging to the family of Latin langages and close cousins.
Similarly, Pictish and Gaelic langages belongs to different branchs of the family of celtic langages, the Pictish belonging to the same branch that the brittonic langage and not being part of the Gaelic branch, which explains why it is so different from the Gaelic that you speak.
Anyway, that they were celts or not is a secondary issue about the game. the real problem is that the faction name "Picts and Caledonii" is both anachronistic and redondant, in addition of being needlessly long.
Caledonians were the major composant of the alliance of tribes later known as the Picts, it's as wrong saying "Picts and Caledonii" than saying "Germans and Franks" as Franks were Germans too !
As a proof, the same Eumenius who was the first the mention the Picts in 297 AD, used in another text from 310 AD the expression "Caledones and other Pictii", which clearly implies that Caledonians were a subset of the emerging concept of Picts and not a different tribe.
TLDR :
"Picts" is not a concept that existed during the timeline of the game, so the name "Picts and Caledonians" should be replaced by the simpler and more accurate "Caledonians".
AVE POCUS MAXIMUS , LUDENTES TE SALUTANT !
what you claim is not a matter of fact, its a matter of heavily contested views put forward by some people. Unless you really know your way around both iron age Scottish archaeology and understand the linguistic roots of Scots Gaelic you would be better to preface your statements 'I think/have a view'.
Pictish is not a separate language to that spoken elsewhere in the British isles in that era in the sense that your straw man argument suggests. That doesn't stop it from having been very different to the Celtic languages spoken elsewhere in the region at that time.
I'm glad you agree that I may just be right about a language I grew up speaking ...
Good point, that would indeed be convenient but I don't know if it's technically possible.
Anyway it shouldn't be much work for the Devs to fix it, it's just a faction name to change.
@ Loki1006
I haven't broken any forum rule, I don't see any valid reason why Moderators should lock this thread.
Slitherine and AGEOD are great companies that care about historical authenticity of their games and are receptive to critical feedback, so I hope they are interested in hearing the points that I am making.
Your will to make silenced the voices that go against your beliefs is alarming to say the least, especially as what I say is not just "what I think/have a view" but rather the current dominant scientific consensus (as evidenced by the links I provided) and not "a matter of heavily contested views put forward by some people" as you pretend gratuitiously without any start of proof.
Are you also believing that Global Warming is a chinese scam, despise the scientific consensus on the subject ? It's the same here, it might be a controversial subject in public opinion, but progress of science has already quite settled the issue a this point and people just needs to aknowledge that and evolve their understanding of the facts.
Anyway, the Celts/Non-Celts point is a secondary issue, my main point is that the term "Picts" is anachronistic for the game timeline (and redondant with Caledonians) and you brought no valid objection to that so far.
It also points to you not knowing what your posting about, and should stop doing that. celts as your using the term, are what the greeks and romans called them, we dont know what they called themselves, so by your revisionst stance we should change that as well.
You want to be a revisonist, do it somewhere else. Edit your own game files by all means, i jjust dont want to hear about your ignorance of where the Romans got the term picts from.
Your not even posting the current consensus of academics, again you should stop that, problems your ignorance, not that the game is not acurate.
you really do like straw people don't you? You have no idea at all what my politics are ... but if you have ever been on the AGEOD forums you might work out some ideas. You may also work out my French is probablty a lot better than your Gaelic, since I answer questions using French esp around PoN.
Your argument is specious and you pretend that only you know the truth. I know enough about the real debates in Iron Age Scottish Archaeology to know just how much is disputed or sketchily understood by real experts. If you presented your views as just that ... well I think you're wrong but I really don't care. But you present your ill-judged views as the 'truth'.
So lets help you. I agree the Picts did not come from somewhere else, all the nonsense theories on that point from the 1930s are just that ,,, nonsense.
Now one argument is at the end of the ice-age, southern Britain was still glacier free and probably supported a very low population living mainly off hunting. As the ice retreated, people moved into the region - at first across the land which is now below the North Sea.
Its entirely possible that original hunting population was partly massacred, partly assimilated and partly moved north following the edge of the ice?
If so, at some point you have an ethnic group living in the north of the British Isles that has much in common with the then dominant Celts but also some retained differences? So lets call them the Picts as we have no idea at all what they called themselves.
Now an alternative view is that the Orkneys were resettled by a relatively advanced agricultural people around 4000 BCE. That group crossed into what is now Mainland Scotland and moved south till they met the Celts.
My avatar is a picture of one of the many sets of standing stones they left on the Orkneys.
Both theories can be fitted over what little is known, both support some view of a difference between what we may as well call Picts and Celts.
My intention in opening this thread was to alert the Devs that the faction name was not appropriate, and not to start a hot but interesting debate about the origin of Picts.
Please let's stay all calm and civil in our next comments, I suppose we are all grown-up adults and educated enough to be abble discuss sensitive subjects with serenity.
Calling someone a revisionist, ignorant or a straw man is rude and doesn't help, so please make an effort to temperate your humor and avoid name calling.
@ Hannibalbarca120002001
I clearly misunderstood what you meant to express with your input, which in itself is a proof that it's not conclusive in any way as it can be interpreted in both directions.
If you don't like what I say in this thread, you are free to unsuscribe this thread and stop reading it, but you have no right to order me to stop.
Two things then :
1) To be exact, Pytheas called the whole england "Isle of the Pretani", with "Pretani" meaning "Painted" or "Tattoed" in Brittonic, which is a celtic langage according to linguists. That indeed means the same thing than "Picti" in Latin.
However he was writing in Greek so didn't use the word "Picti'" from which the modern term "Picts" did originate. As I said before, no use of the word "Picti" by Romans was recorded before 297 AD, more than 5 centuries later....
Source :
https://thereaderwiki.com/en/Britain_%28place_name%29
Additionally, that doesn't give us any proof about the celtic or non-celtic origin of the Picts themselves, it just confirm that celtic langages were already used in Britain at the time when Pytheas visited it.
2) That only 10% of modern Scots have the S530 Marker associated to Picts doesn't prove if Picts were genetically Celts or not, it just means that the Pictish population got mixed with many invaders (Gaelic Scots, Anglo-Saxons, Vikings, imported slaves, etc...) over the centuries... However, the fact that Picts and Gaelic Scots mixed easily quite support the theory that both groups were Celts and so had a lot of things in common.
@ Loki1006
Now you are bringing interesting points to the discussion, thank you for that !
I'm ok to admit that the question of if the population of Scotland during the roman era was 100 % ethnically Celt, 0 % or anything in between is still debated by the experts.
The theories that you bring about the initial Pre-Celtic settlement of Scotland are indeed possible and under discussion.
However, at the time when Romans arrived in Britain, the Celts were dominant all over the island and any pre-celtic population that hadn't been assimilated yet was at the very least almost completely celticized after centuries of celtic influence and de facto culturally celts, apart maybe for a few traditions that might have survived (like matrilinear inheritance).
Also, I find very contestable and confusing to call those possible pre-celtic populations by the name of "Picts" like do the theories that you refer, as we have absolutely no proof that those populations were the direct ancestors of the "historical Picts" that the Romans and Romano-British ulteriorly described.
Objectively, the name "Cruithne" would have been less ambiguous, as it is the term that Gaels used to refer pre-gaelic inhabitants of Ireland and scotland (and used later for the Picts, by extension)
So our respective understandings of the origins of Picts are not that different if you are ready to admit that they were essentially Celts at the cultural level, and at least partially too from a genetic standpoint.
Ok, but your simply factually wrong.
When you post revisionism your a revisionist, its the appropriate term for what you have posted.
If you read what i posted you will see i wrote you should refrain from posting about a topic you have no grasp of.
So in the time the game is set, the greek world calls the island as the island of the picts. So no problem.
He wrote it in greek, which was why i wrote it out for you with what it means.
Game is not set 5 centuries later.
Students are reminded wiki is not to be used as a source.
Nope as he does not record the langauge used. You just made that up as well.
Oh dear, that the pictish DNA exist as a gentic marker is proof of a population group, distinct from the more general celtic DNA pool in europe, in the distant past. Cetics were a cuture of many different genetic pop groups,https://www.ibdna.com/downloads/father-line-results.pdf
Picts as a population group, genticly different, but culturaly similar to other keltoi, is from 2-3000 years ago.
You could also say that Macedonian and Greeks were not the same, because even a lot of Greeks said that.
But you could also say that Romans and Greeks were the same, they Gods and Traditions were pretty the same, just other names.
Is Carthage really semitic or did they change so much that they become an own culture?
There were a lot of historical facts who changed during the time and a lot of "facts" that people want to believe.
The definitions and names we had for the historical "facts" about civilizations who did not write anything about themself is just a theory. And some people like to look down on "barbarians" and some like to praise the "lost high culture".
I for for myself spoken cannot agree with you and I cannot disagree with you, It's something that you believe and I don't think that anything here could change you opinion.