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The Picts were a tribal confederation of peoples who lived in what is today eastern and northern Scotland during the Late Iron Age and Early Medieval periods. They are thought to have been ethnolinguistically Celtic. Where they lived and what their culture was like can be inferred from the geographical distribution of brochs, Brittonic place name elements, and Pictish stones. Picts are attested to in written records from before the Roman conquest of Britain to the 10th century, when they are thought to have merged with the Gaels. They lived to the north of the rivers Forth and Clyde, and spoke the now-extinct Pictish language, which is thought to have been related to the Brittonic language spoken by the Britons who lived to the south of them.〔Katherine Forsyth, Language in Pictland. The case against non-Indo-European Pictisch, Studia Hamelina 2, Utrecht 1997〕 Picts are assumed to have been the descendants of the Caledonii and other tribes that were mentioned by Roman historians or on the world map of Ptolemy. Pictland, also called Pictavia by some sources, gradually merged with the Gaelic kingdom of Dál Riata to form the Kingdom of Alba (Scotland). Alba then expanded, absorbing the Brittonic kingdom of Strathclyde and Bernician Lothian, and by the 11th century the Pictish identity had been subsumed into the "Scots" amalgamation of peoples. Pictish society was typical of many Iron Age societies in northern Europe, having "wide connections and parallels" with neighbouring groups.〔Foster 1996. p. 17.〕 Archaeology gives some impression of the society of the Picts. While very little in the way of Pictish writing has survived, Pictish history since the late 6th century is known from a variety of sources, including Bede's ''Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum'', saints' lives such as that of Columba by Adomnán, and various Irish annals. ==Etymology== What the Picts called themselves is unknown. The Latin word ''Picti'' first occurs in a panegyric written by Eumenius in AD 297 and is taken to mean "painted or tattooed people" (from Latin ''pingere'' "to paint";〔(pingo ), Charlton T. Lewis, Charles Short, ''A Latin Dictionary'', on Perseus Digital Library〕 ''pictus'', "painted", cf. Greek "πυκτίς" ''pyktis'', "picture"〔(πυκτίς ), Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, ''A Greek-English Lexicon'', on Perseus Digital Library〕). As Sally M. Foster noted, "Much ink has been spilt over what the ancient writers meant by Picts, but it seems to be a generic term for people living north of the Forth–Clyde isthmus who raided the Roman Empire."〔Foster 1996. p. 11.〕 Their Old English name〔The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle has ''pihtas'' and ''pehtas''.〕 gave the modern Scots form ''Pechts'' and the Welsh word ''Fichti''. In writings from Ireland, the name ''Cruthin'', ''Cruthini'', ''Cruthni'', ''Cruithni'' or ''Cruithini'' (Modern Irish: ''Cruithne'') was used to refer both to the Picts and to another group of people who lived alongside the Ulaid in eastern Ulster.〔Ó Cróinín, Dáibhí. ''A New History of Ireland: Prehistoric and Early Ireland''. Oxford University Press, 2008. Page 213.〕 It is generally accepted that this is derived from '' *Qritani'', which is the Goidelic/Q-Celtic version of the Britonnic/P-Celtic '' *Pritani''.〔Chadwick, Hector Munro. ''Early Scotland: the Picts, the Scots & the Welsh of southern Scotland''. CUP Archive, 1949. Page 66-80.〕 From this came ''Britanni'', the Roman name for those now called the Britons.〔〔〔Dunbavin, Paul. ''Picts and ancient Britons: an exploration of Pictish origins''. Third Millennium Publishing, 1998. Page 3.〕 It has been suggested that ''Cruthin'' referred to all Britons not conquered by the Romans—those who lived outside Roman Britannia, north of Hadrian's Wall.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア(Wikipedia)』 ■ウィキペディアで「Picts」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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