LastnightI continued reading Gwynne's Pulitzer Prize nominated book on the Comanche nation. On page 60 are these words:

..."The Celtic peoples, ancestors of huge numbers of immigrants to America in the nineteenth century, offer a rough parallel. Celts of the fifth century BC were described by Herodotus as 'fierce warriors who fought with seeming disregard for their own lives'. Like Comanches they were savage, filthy, wore their hair long, and had a hideous keening battle cry. 'They were superb horsemen, inordinately fond of alcohol, and did terrible things to their enemies and captives that included decapitation, a practice that horrified the civilized Greeks and Romans. The old Celts, forebears of the Scots-Irish who formed the vanguard of America's western migrations, would have had no 'moral' problem with the Comanche practice of torture."

I've no idea if Herodotus ever met an ancient Celt although it's almost certain they (the Celts) traded with the Mediterranean countries. And I have no idea about how much time my ancestors spent in the bathroom. I confess I find decapitation as repugnant as many of the practices described and attributed to the Comanche but let's look at the "civilized"Greeks and Romans. Both considered slavery to be part of the normal order of life, unwanted children were exposed without a second thought, the Romans considered people killing each other in an arena (or being torn apart by wild animals) to be fair entertainment for the whole family and atrocities committed by their soldiers in war don't bear thinking about.

On the previous page, Gwynne (and I'm thinking here that his surname indicates that his ancestors came from nearer Merthyr than Athens), he states..."Thus the fateful clash between settlers [ie: Europeans] from the culture of Aristotle, St Paul, Da Vinci, Luther and Newton and aboriginal horsemen from the buffalo plains happened as though in a time warp - as though the former were looking backward thousands of years at premoral, pre-Christian, low-barbarian versions of themselves." Christianity (man's interpretation of it) unleashed centuries of cruelty and bigotry yet it's held up as an exemplar of morality. Did morality not exist in Celtic culture? Yes, it did. My ancestors had their faults but they did have a proper culture, were settled and not stone-age nomads. If anyone can prove that the 5th century BC Celts and the Comanche were cultural brothers then I'm Cleopatra's Auntie Nelly.

updated by @gaynor-madoc-leonard: 11/11/15 10:37:52PM