The Ancient Paths

‘Big, if true'

At numerous times did I want to shout ‘Well, of course you'd come to that conclusion!' The author, however, conveniently did that for me on multiple occasions throughout; and with great humility in the epilogue, which had the odd effect of improving the credence of his findings.

The Ancient Paths is at times eyeglazing, especially when it dives into the murky thicket of French topnyms that I have never heard of and could barely place without a handy map (which I most certainly did not deploy whenever I opened the book up). Unfortunately, the maps frequently supplied on-page weren't of much use as they tended to be some distance away from the exposition that references themm, and far too numerous for my liking. The end result was me flittering past the paragraphs that I knew provided the relevant array of evidence, instead reading the sectional tl;dr with a little nod and a ‘hmph, makes sense'.

What really held this book up was the author's whimsical, reverent descriptions of the fantasies he had concocted for the events of the past, bringing to life ancient figures that would have otherwise been prosaic features of history class. In some sense, this blend of scholarly fiction supported the dryness of cartographic schema.

But it wouldn't be fair to not critique the thesis of the book, which is that European prehistory, that is, the scientific history of the Celts, has been sorely misrepresented. By the end of the book I had constructed a peculiar identification for the ancients of Europe: mystical yet rational; methodical and possessing a superior consciousness of the world around them that seems to defy the notion of ‘I live here, he lives there, and beyond there be dragons' that seems so commonly held. Perhaps the most ubiquitous mistake made is thinking the ancients of Anitiquity couldn't make long-distance calls. Oh how wrong we are!