Kent,

  Sorry but the Celts did have a form of writing.  It was called >Ogham or 
Ogam and developed a few centuries into the Christian era.  >

     Please re-read my comment, more closely.  I never said that the Celts 
had no FORM OF WRITING.  I said that they did not ever use RUNES.  Runes are 
a specific form of writing, which, as I said, was probably derived 
(somewhere in the Baltic region) from Etruscan or another Italic script 
sometime a few centuries either side of 1 AD, and used to write various 
Germanic languages, most notably Old English and Old Norse.
     Ogham, on the other hand, is probably Irish in origin, and developed 
around the same time as the runes, but in a completely separate context.  It 
appears to have been invented by an individual or group familiar with the 
Latin alphabet--one of the earliest known examples is a gaming die, 
inscribed with dots for most of the numbers, but the character which is 
called (in the ogham manuscripts of early Christian Ireland, several hundred 
years later) fern--equivalent to Latin V-- for the number five.
     Ogham is not in any way, shape, or form a runic script.  It consists of 
varying numbers of strokes on a medial line, often formed by the corner of a 
piece of stone.  Runes, on the other hand, are discrete letters, much like 
those of the alphabet from which it most likely developed.  Their only 
common features are that that both are designed to be cut on wood or stone 
and developed in peripheral regions having commercial contacts with the 
Mediterranean civilisations.

The later switched o the latin alphabet.  It's worth noting that the

     They may have been using it all along--this is a hotly contested field 
of study just now.  Ogham is arguably as much a code as an alphabet, and was 
obviously developed by a person or persons familar with the Latin 
alphabet--as well as the die there are features in the relationship of 
strokes to sound which are remniscent of said alphabet's structure.  It's 
also damnably hard to read, and appears to have been largely limited to 
short inscriptions on monuments--mostly things along the line of 
"Such-and-Such, Son of So-and-So, lies here."  The few short inscriptions 
known from small artifacts appear to be of a magico-religious nature.  An' 
there were ever such things as "Druid Books" (another highly debateable 
subject), they most likely weren't in ogham.

Celts of Julius Caeser's time didn't have a written language, which >is 
probably where this misunderstanding came from.

     The Celts of Julius Caesar's time were completely different to the 
people who used Ogham--Gauls, rather than Gaels, with less similarity 
between their languages than between German and English.  There was most 
likely little or no common feeling--in New Irish, the word _gall_ (i.e. 
"Gaul") means "foreigner," a useage which has existed for at least nine 
hundred years.  Ogham is not known to have ever been used to write a 
P-Celtic language, not even Welsh which was in contact with Ogham-using 
Irish-speakers after the Roman withdrawl.
     It is also incorrect to state that the Gauls had no written 
language--see De Bello Gallico for textual references, and the Coligny 
tablet (to name one example out of many) for artifactual.  They made limited 
use of the Greek alphabet (acquired through trading contacts around 
present-day Marseille), and would likely have used it more extensively but 
for their learned/priestly class' dislike of it.

  Latin or Greek are probably better choices for langauges, anyway. >Dr. 
Tofu might be able to read them with a little trouble, which >would avoid 
the problems with Ranma the scholar.

     Agreed.  That said, I still don't like the idea of bringing in 
unnecessary Western influence without a damned good reason for it.  Perhaps 
Tibetan or Sanskrit, or the Chinese of the Shang or Xia (yes, I know that 
the latter is arguably mythic--this is Ranma we're talking, a mythological 
dynasty is par for the course:-)?

                          My tuppence,
                          Andrew


Andrew Carey -- ap_carey3@hotmail.com
"Mirie it is, while sumer ilast,
With fugheles song..."


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