A Geography of P-Celtic
Channel: European Association of Archaeologists
Date: 2018-11-11

I shall consider the group of P-Celtic languages that have been spoken on the Atlantic seaboard of Europe – Cornish, Breton, Welsh and Cumbric. If one or more Germanic languages were spoken in the east of Britain, what scenarios might account for how these languages were conveyed to this area and how, when and where did they divide into the distinct languages that we know? The traditional view, with origins in the 16th century, was that these languages were spoken by “Celts” who occupied much of western and north-western Europe until displaced, first by speakers of Romance languages (in France and Spain for example) and then by speakers of Germanic languages as the Western Roman Empire succumbed to invasion. This same view sees the arrival of P-Celtic speakers in Brittany displaced from their British home in the post-Roman period. This paper considers a number of alternatives; that the speakers of Breton are a Celtic fringe that was not displaced by the Roman invasion; that speakers of Cornish and Breton had once migrated from Wales; or that the Cornish colonised Wales and Brittany; or that at some in the prehistoric period, groups of Breton speakers moved north to settle in Cornwall and Wales.
The distinctiveness of the Breton place-names from those in Cornwall suggests that the separation of the two groups must have taken place much earlier than the post-Roman period. The geography supports a more radical interpretation that fits the Palaeolithic Continuity Paradigm. At a stage in the Late Pleistocene or Early Holocene a group of proto-P-Celtic speakers lived at the mouth of the Channel River – now the Celtic Sea. At this time this group could survive on the bounty of Europe’s largest river, filled with nutrients, as it reached the Atlantic and collided with the Gulf Stream.

Author: Mr Scutt, Winfrid - English Heritage (Presenting author)