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Wednesday, May 10, 2000

Boii O'Boii
Running helter Celter with the original Bohemians

By Theodore Schwinke


Around 3000 B.C., a people now known as Indo-Europeans migrated to Europe from the Near East. As they dispersed throughout the continent, they developed distinct cultures. Among those cultures were Carpathians, Germans, Greeks, Slavs and Celts.

From the second millennium B.C. to the first century B.C., Europe was teeming with Celts. They ranged from the British Isles in the west to Transylvania in the east.

The oldest evidence of the Celts comes from Austria. Archeologists have discovered graves dating from around 700 B.C. in Hallstatt, near Salzburg. The Hallstatt Celts were one of the first Iron Age cultures in Europe, trading with the ancient Greeks, controlling a vast network of rivers and generally running roughshod over their Celtic cousins who hadn't upgraded from bronze.

Celtic tribes invaded northern Italy around 400 B.C. The Boii tribe was among the marauders and "Bohemian" has been a pejorative ever since. The Boii and other tribes sacked Rome itself around 390 B.C. and reached as far south as Sicily. They established oppida -- proto-cities -- on the sites of modern-day Bologna and Milan.

That's when their luck ran out. The Celts were flattened in Phrygia, routed from Rome and pushed from Provence. The Boii were pushed back into Bohemia by the first century before Christ.

And then along came the Germans. A tribe called the Cimbri pushed the Celts west of the Rhine. They were last spotted by Julius Caesar crossing the channel from Belgium to Britain, where they took up golf and afternoon tea.

Czechs toe the line between modern Slavs and ancient Celts


Theodore Schwinke's e-mail address is tschwinke@praguepost.cz

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