Question for Volky....

[Alazar is Back]

Is the movie braveheart historicaly accurate? I have always wondered this, and just recently watched the movie again, and i know that one of your majors is history, so i was just wondering.....

[pippin the mighty]

isn't that about dragons? LOL

[Firetooth]

volky, is braveheaert about those celts lead by wallace? :?

[kell]

They were scots, (ie from scotland) I'm sure most of it is factual regarding the battles but hollywood tends to always put a love story in these kinds of movies to keep the girls interested pearl harbour is a perfect example

[Blood Wake]

Volkov, never reply to this topic, it's funnier that way

[wolf bite]

A friend was over who is trying to get a job as a history professor, he wrote the below without needing to look anything up.




No, The movie Braveheart is not historically accurate. The first battle in the movie, The Battle at Sterling was in the movie was depicted as a very decisive victory for the Scots. In history this was not so. It was a victory, but the English still kept their offensive strength up. The major victory for the Scottish was the Battle of Bannockburn, which is only depicted during the very last seconds of the movie. After that battle, the Scottish gained their independence for a few centuries.

[Alazar is Back]

Thanks wolf.....I am really getting sick of pippin and his friends spamming up these topics though......

I always thought it was pretty acurate but i guess not.

[Firetooth]

volky, is braveheaert about those celts lead by wallace? :?

I want an answer, rn.

[Gen. Volkov]

Stop spamming Firefight.

If you really must know, Braveheart is an incredibly inaccurate retelling of the First Scottush War for Independence. So the answer to your question is yes... kinda. Scots aren't exactly Celts, and Wallace was only the leader for part of the war.

[Firetooth]

Stop spamming Firefight.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJdUSfervzg

[Gen. Volkov]

That song is dumb and you are dumb.

[Firetooth]

That song is dumb and you are dumb.

I know you are, but what am I!!!

[Firetooth]

btw the Celts weren't even a real thing

[Gen. Volkov]

....yes they were. Its debatable how much of a unified culture there was, but there were definitely a bunch of Celtic speaking people in pre-Roman Europe.

[Firetooth]

No, they weren't. A common linguistic root =/= a shared language by a homogeneous group of people. St. Columba needed an interpreter to translate different languages across Britain (I think it was Scotland specifically he travelled but can't remember and cba to check), iirc, ie. even within a single "Celtic" country, these languages were not mutually intelligible.

Plus, an ethnic group has to self-identify. The word Celt originates with Roman sources applying it to the "Celtic" other; there is no evidence of Celtic self-identification. At a push, there is an account by Caesar that refers to a group of people in Gaul who referred to themselves as Celts. Nevertheless, there is absolutely no evidence of a unified Celtic culture of peoples - be it in art, language or a Celtic church.

Regardless, as I think you alluded to when you said the Scottish weren't Celts, the same Caesar account I mentioned makes explicitly clear that the inhabitants of the British Isles were not Celtic, as they were people who had "always been there" (he says something to that effect). If that is not concrete enough for you, analysis of a bunch of remains excavated across Britain from the "Celtic" period using the Globetrotter tool (recent research from 2014) found distinct genetic clusters, ie. these were not a homogeneous ethnic group.

Across all the "Celtic" regions in Europe, this heterogeneity manifests itself in other ways. Burial practices, for one, differ significantly within local communities. Most the research I've seen for this was concerned with parts of England, but you see this in mainland Europe, too. Basically, these people had short-range social lives and largely stayed within their communities, but you did paradoxically have a small but significant amount of contact between coastal communities in the Celtic fringe. From the main distribution centres here, local elites and petty kings would trade goods inwards, and this accounts for the distribution of the La Tene goods across Europe that had previously been seen as evidence of a unified "Celtic" culture across Europe.

The only real people you could tenuously argue were Celts would be the Gauls, but you'd get short shrift in a serious archaeological circle if you tried to do that with earnest.

/did a module on this (no I'm not an archaeologist but I decided to do some late antique history for a change)