Gaulic urbanization?

Faeelin

Banned
Okay, reading about the conquest of gaul by caesar. one thing that strikes me is that gaul seems to fall pretty quickly for a bunch of barbarian tribes; to fall so quickly, it must have had some urbanized centers of power which he took out quickly, and hard.

A bit more reading is done, and it appears that gaul was beginning to have some proto-civilized habits, like coined money.

So any way we can speed this up, so that by 50 BC there are organized states capable of repelling rome?
 
The Gauls had been living around quasi-urban centers for ages, using metal coinage and hacksilver, and carrying on long-distance trade in luxuries. Given a cultural reason they could have urbanised within a generation or two (there simply was no reason - their aristocratic, rural, kinship-based society worked beautifully as far as they were concerned). Maybe if there was some kind of longer-standing military threat from raiders across the Rhine? An earlier and more comprehensive Germanic invasion forcing the Gauls to huddle behind the formidable walls of their oppida? Or a religious shift that encourages settlement around temple centers? Bear in mind, what we call quasi-urban easily had the dimensions of your average Roman or Greek city, there just was no urban structure of organising life and, of course, no megacity to rival Corinth or Athens, let alone Alexandria or Rome.

OTOH, I think that greater urbanisation would, if anything, have made Gaul more vulnerable to Roman aggression. It would, for one thing, have opened them to entanglements in the treaties Rome made and then (in many contemporaries' view quite unreasonably) expected its allies to keep. It would also have presented the Romans with ready-made targets for their best skills, siege warfare and set-piece infantry battles. After all, the Romans fought the most urbanised people in the world - the Greeks, Syrians, and Punics - and won. What consistently caused them trouble was fighting non-urbanised people like Germans, Dacians, Sarmatians, Picts and Blemmyes. Militarily, what could have saved Gaul was ripping up the streets, uprooting the houses, tearing down city walls, and letting the forest grow back. Become, in short, more like the Germans.
 
Faeelin said:
Okay, reading about the conquest of gaul by caesar. one thing that strikes me is that gaul seems to fall pretty quickly for a bunch of barbarian tribes; to fall so quickly, it must have had some urbanized centers of power which he took out quickly, and hard.

A bit more reading is done, and it appears that gaul was beginning to have some proto-civilized habits, like coined money.

So any way we can speed this up, so that by 50 BC there are organized states capable of repelling rome?

Easy. Give 'em writing. Caesar writes that the Druids opposed the use of writing, saying that it would erode memories, and make the given word worthless. Now, they had tribal censuses, and kept calendars, among other kinds of records, so the prohibition obviously wasn't absolute. On that basis, some folks have suggested it didn't exist, but the lack of written inscriptions, or of written myths or epics from the pre-Roman period is pretty good evidence that some kind of prohibition was in force.

It couldn't have been mere unfamiliarity. The Gauls had been in touch with the Greeks of Massillia since the colony was founded in ca. 600 BC, and had been trading with the Etruscans since not much later. There was plenty of time for the idea of writing to take root had nothing been stopping it.

We are not totally sure how the Druids were organized. Caesar says they had a center in the lands of the Carnutes, and a supreme council, but there is no supporting evidence for this. From the Irish analogy, it would be more likely that Cenabon, the capitol of the Carnutes, was probably a ceremonial center similar to Uisneach, where some kind of assembly took place, which was not a legislature as such, but was a chance to exchange data and argue over various judgements and decisions by the best known names. In Ireland, the Bards did exactly this, as did the Brehons, in their respective fields, and they were organized mostly by school, with each school being more or less independent, supported by lands they owned, usually given by kings at various points in the past. This in fact very closely resembles the Druidic schools recorded by Caesar.

So, then, we can very tentatively reconstruct that the prohibition against writing must have originated as a judgement by some very well-known Druid, and it was backed up by the judgements of his contemporaries, many of whom might have been his former students. Change this person's life, and you might well reverse the decision. We don't know when such a decision was made, but it was probably a slow process, originating sometime in the 500s BC, and complete by ca 350-400. This, at any rate, was when Greek influence on Celtic art was greatest, and therefore presumably when writing would have come to the attention of the Gaulish intellectual classes, including the Druids.

If the decision is reversed, and Gaul behaves typically of other areas that got writing fairly late, then we might see public inscriptions, dedications of altars, and the like by about 300 BC. By about 250 BC, the Druids are writing down their myths, a mass of ritual texts, and various works of wisdom literature. By about 200, various works of Greek philosophers are being translated, and the Gauls are getting their hands on Greek science. At about the same time, they are writing their first military manuals, and rulers are keeping in touch with their vassals by letter. This is the really big change. OTL, there was a limit to how big or efficient Gaulish states could get. Without adminstration and writing, they stayed tribal, with only a very loose and theoretical vassalage being extended to the whole country.

This means that the Arverni (probably Arwernoi in Gaulish, with semi-modern othography), the leading tribe in Gaul at the time, would have been able to build something much tighter than they did, perhaps something roughly comparable to a medieval feudal kingdom. In addition, they have siege trains by about 150 BC, if not earlier, and decent supply lines, thus eliminating one of the great weaknesses of ancient Celtic armies. With written accounts to show them how _different_ foreigners like the Romans are, the Gauls also have a stronger sense of identity, though not quite nationalism in the modern sense. Throughout the 2nd and 3rd centuries BC, they are able to watch what happens to their relatives in Spain and Italy, and form opinions.

Long before Caesar, they will have a first-class civilization, and be ready for Rome......
 
Aedh Rua said:
Easy. Give 'em writing....Long before Caesar, they will have a first-class civilization, and be ready for Rome......

I beg to differ. Although I am a confirmed Celtophile and as much as I would like to see a quick fix for the Celtic tribes to allow them to repel Rome (and the Anglo Saxons, etc), simply giving them writing is not going to do it. The problem with early Celtic societies was not the lack of writing (although writing would certainly have been an advantage for them). The problem was a basic inability of the tribes to unite in the face of danger. We see this again and again in Celtic history...in Gaul and Britain versus the Romans (which were Celtic societies without writing), as well as in Britain versus the Anglo Saxons (where the Celts did have writing), and in Wales and Ireland versus the English (where again, the Celts had writing). The only example to the contrary...Scotland...seems to have occurred because the lowlands of Scotland were relatively early on settled very heavily by Anglo-Saxons (from Bernicia and Deira) whose societal structure influenced the later Scottish state.

Another problem was the common Celtic practice of dividing up a kingdom among all the sons of a deceased monarch, rather than passing it on to the eldest son (primogeniture), which lead to the Celtic lands always being fragmented and weak. Again, Scotland defies the pattern for a unique reason...the Picts were a matriarchal society, while the Scots were a patriarchal society. So when a Scottish Prince married a Pictish Princess, the Scots ended up in control of the Pictish territory.

Even in my King Arthur timeline, the only reason the Celts of Britain are able to repel the invaders is because the pro-Roman, as opposed to the Celtic traditionalist, faction wins out (in OTL the opposite happened).

So, alas, increased urbanization of the Gauls is not going to help, nor is giving them writing. You have to change the basic structure of Celtic society for them to survive.
 
the prohibition against writing
The big handcuff on writing was lack of bulk writing materials. Before parchment was invented, people could write on bits of potsherd and wood and cloth etc, but bulk writing of literature and codes of law etc needed one of:-
(1) Paper. Only known of in China at the time.
(2) Dried palm leaves. Routine in India, but palm trees don't grow in Europe in the wild.
(3) Papyrus. Needs good trade connections with Egypt to import it.
(4) Clay tablets. Only practicable in hot dry climates.
 
Anthony Appleyard said:
The big handcuff on writing was lack of bulk writing materials. Before parchment was invented, people could write on bits of potsherd and wood and cloth etc, but bulk writing of literature and codes of law etc needed one of:-
(1) Paper. Only known of in China at the time.
(2) Dried palm leaves. Routine in India, but palm trees don't grow in Europe in the wild.
(3) Papyrus. Needs good trade connections with Egypt to import it.
(4) Clay tablets. Only practicable in hot dry climates.

There would have been possibilities, though. fired clay works in wet climes, so any broken pot or amphora could instantly be re-used (the Greeks and Romans did the same, which makes picturing a small businesses filing system interesting). You can use birch bark to write on, and the inner bark of a number of deciduous trees (beeches and elms IIRC, but I'm no botanist and ExpArch was a while) can also be dried into writing materials. Not as useful as papyrus, but possible.

The most likely solution would be softwood slivers. You can split softwood along the grain to prodiuce thin, wide strips which then make decent writing material. I tried it after reading the Vindolanda tablets and, with very limited skill, dried wood, and the wrong tools, managed 1"x3" strips very soon. A skilled woodworker could probably produce letter size without too much trouble. They can be reused a few times if you're careful with the ink and while they break easily, they neither soil nor tear as quickly as paper. For important documents there would be parchment.

Of course, the Celts took what writing culture they had from the Mediterranean civilisations - which probably pout them at a disadvantage when it comes to materials. You can make useful writing materials in northern Europe, but you can't find anything to copy the papyrus culture of Greece and Rome.
 
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