Something Extra

Celtic expansion was no doubt due to over-population. Even today, the Scots and Irish have a very high birth-rate. It seems likely that the Celts reached the north-south section of the Danube by the 4th century BCE as is shown by several La Tene B cemetaries in the Danube bend and north-eastern Hungary. Transylvania too came under Celtic rule. The sudden and conspicuous increase in the number of sites in Trans-Danuvia, north-eastern Hungary and the Great Hungarian Plain implies that these areas also came under Celtic hegemony when, in the late 4th and early 3rd century BCE, tribes from the middle Rhine region set out to conquer new territories in the south. Celtic graves appear in the cemeteries of the Iranian-speaking Scythians in the Great Hungarian Plain from the mid-3rd century BCE while settlements yielding distinctively Celtic finds can be dated roughly to the same time, which suggests that Celtic expansion was relatively peaceful and did not meet with particulary strong resistance.