![]() The most famous of these is Julius Caesar, who knew these people as the Gauls and conquered them in the Gallic Wars. ![]() This culture was proto-historic: Although the Celts were literate, none of their writings survive, so the only contemporaneous accounts we have were written by Greeks or Romans. ![]() If there were ever an example of history being written by the winner, such is the case with the Celtic civilization that inhabited and at times dominated Europe between about 800 BC to AD 600. The man turned out to be playing a part in an educational exhibit, but since Robb felt like a "visitor to the Iron Age" as it was, the encounter was propitious. Once, while traveling through Picardy, his little expedition stumbled upon "the water-repellent roof of reed thatch and the tan-colored daub of an Iron Age house," complete with turf fire and an "ancient Gaul" tossing a plaid cloak over his shoulder. He describes finding the ruins of temples, forts and towns, questioning assorted experts and slowly assembling this daring theory. At one point, Robb got on his bike (with an unnamed friend) and set off across country, following equinoctial and meridian lines. "The Discovery of Middle-Earth" is very much Robb's own discovery - of what he asserts to be a magnificent, overarching, gridlike pattern, based on the heavens, determining the Celtic settlement of Europe during the Iron Age. In short, yes, at least according to Robb. ![]() Why were so many of them near the Via Heraklea, and was there some significant connection? (The Italian city Milan is one of them.) Mediolanums are somewhat mysterious, as they seem to have had some significance, yet many of them are in the middle of nowhere (now and historically) and devoid of the religious artifacts typically found at sacred sites. Another phenomenon that intrigued Robb were six place names along the Via Heraklea that are variants of "Mediolanum," a name given to about 60 known sites in the ancient Celtic world of continental Europe. In addition, this trajectory follows the angle of the rising sun at the winter solstice as it would have been 2,000 years ago. Robb found that if he plotted out the trajectory of this line, it strikes an Alpine pass where sits a spring sacred to the Celts who also associated it with Hercules. "In its original, mythic incarnation," he writes, "the Via Heraklea marches in a straight line like the son of a god for whom a mountain was a paltry obstacle." The road was said to have been laid down by the Greek hero Hercules, but only fragments of it have survived to modern times, and parts of its course have long been a subject of contention. He was researching a new book by biking along a very old road called the Via Heraklea, which, according to legend, ran from a promontory in Portugal (considered the edge of the known world in classical times), through the Pyrenees and the Alps to Liguria in Italy. It's the Celtic version of Middle Earth that interests Robb. But "The Discovery of Middle-Earth" might well appeal to the more cerebral and historically inclined portion of the Tolkien fan base, and the title is not inappropriate: Long before Tolkien adopted the name Middle-earth for his imaginary land, the term was used by Celtic and Nordic people for the world we inhabit, halfway between the realm of the gods and the underworld. Tolkien, and was published under the title "The Ancient Paths" in the U.K., where Robb lives. I should state immediately that this work has nothing to do with J.R.R. Perhaps fittingly, then, Robb's new book, "The Discovery of Middle-Earth," constitutes a detour. As Robb sees it, history, and especially its concealed but detectable residue, can be better understood up close, by putting your feet on the ground where it happened. France, he argued, is not the culturally homogenous whole it's typically assumed to be, but an assemblage of distinct and often insular local cultures. His best-known book, "The Discovery of France," was based on his travels over 14,000 miles of road by bicycle.
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