The quotations below are taken from the excellent Daily Telegraph review of a fascinating new book by Graham Robb - The Ancient Paths . You will find the full review here:-
The Ancient Paths: Discovering the Lost Map of Celtic Europe, review
The author argues that the 'barbarian' tribes created a civilisation that was in many ways equal to that of Rome and in particular that the road system of ancient Europe was not their sole creation. But, it is what he as to say about the' vocal telegraph' system that I found particularly interesting.
If like me you have ever wondered why the Druids never took to writing, this book may provide the glimmer of a partial explanation. Certainly the tribes of Northern Europe and Britain were familiar with the practice. They will have encountered examples from both the Roman and Greek civilisations. The Druids as a privileged intellectual caste did not lack the resources or the ability to develop an alphabet if they had chosen to. Yet they did not.....why?
It is tempting to speculate that the druids had a 'closed shop' mentality and feared that if everyone took up writing they would soon be redundant. They were after all the sole repositories of the ancient wisdom and their ability to memorise and declaim folk memory, law and science made them indispensable
It's possible that the same arguments advanced against excessive computer gaming today were deployed against the alien Mediterranean practice. It's bad for your eyesight! It will make people lazy! Sitting in front of a parchment scribbling all day is no fit occupation for a man! This is no substitute for real communication and interaction! A true bard stands on a rock and declaims heroically to the masses!
Whatever the truth of that, Graham Robb's research suggests that the Gauls ( and perhaps the Britons too? ) enjoyed a real advantage in the area of rapid mass communication as a consequence of their reliance on oral transmission. Witness the following:-
" Certain references in Caesars writing indicate that the Gauls operated a vocal telegraph, composed of strategically placed teams yodelling news overland to one another, which passed messages at a speed nearly equivalent to the first Chappe telegraph in the 18th century. To judge how this might have worked, Robb takes himself off to the oppidum above Aumance, near Clermont-Ferrand, where he reports on the car alarms and the whirr of traffic still audible across countryside four kilometres away. "
The consequences of this are staggering. Assuming that such a network was in place and functioning at peak efficiency on the day the Romans invaded Gaul, it would have taken less than 15 minutes for the news to reach the channel coast 655 kilometres to the north! ( I present my rough and ready calculations below. Perhaps others can improve upon them ) But there's more:-
"He goes further. Aumance was one of around 75 places once known by the name Equoranda, a word with an unknown root that resembles the Greek and Gaulish for sound-line or call-line. All the Equoranda settlements Robb visits turn out to be on low ridges or shallow valleys, and would, he writes, have made excellent listening posts. Examined in this light, one word in Caesars account becomes fruitful: he observes that the Gauls transmit the news by shouting across fields and regios, a word that can be translated as boundaries.
An ancient Persian technique for acoustic surveying, still current in the 19th-century south of France, involves three men calling to one another and plotting their position along the direction of the sound. Put the pieces together and you end up or Robb does with the scattered remains of a magnificent network that could have acted not just as a telegraph system but as a means to map the Druids boundaries on to the earth."
With all that they were able to achieve by these simple, but organisationally rather sophisticated means, it seems less surprising that the Gauls and Britons did not feel the need to experiment with new-fangled ideas.
Rough and Ready Calculations
Lugudunum ( modern day Lyon ) is about 20 km inside the boundaries of ancient Gaul. It is 655km as the crow flies to Le Havre on the channel coast. It would take about 5 seconds to draw breath and shout 'The Romans are coming'. Given that listening posts are 4kms apart there are 163.75 hops ( rounded up to 164 )
5 (seconds ) X 164 ( hops ) = 820 seconds
820/60 = 13.66 minutes
updated by @ceri-shaw: 11/11/15 10:39:06PM
