[Jasper]

Originally posted by Keir Maxwell:
Although I am of primarily Celtic origin I have a caution about the Celtic thing as its a bit of fashion to applaud the Celtic achievements and accredit them with the achievements of others. According to many Celt enthusiastic authors the Celts were the inspiration for everybody at the time. However the Celts were a peripheral group to the then center of civilisation (the near east/eastern mediterrainen) so this is unlikely.

As I understand recent archaeological findings have been expanding the role and range of the Celts in history. For example their role in the production and trade of salt, where they developed techniques that were copied by the Romans, who were quite into salt. At least that's what I gleaned from "Salt: A World History" by Mark Kurlansky -- an absolutely fascinating read.

The Celts main weakness seems to have been that they weren't really very good at warfare, and simply got conquered and absorbed by the Romans and Nomadic migrants.