peaking people known as the Gaels.
As I have mentioned in "Who were the Celts?" I had brought up that the Celtic languages were divided into two main groups - Continental Celtic and Insular Celtic.
The Continental Celtic was that those languages spoken on the continent. From what I have been able to gather, there are two main Continental languages - Gaullish and Celto-Iberian.
The Gaulish language referred to the ancient Celtic people living in Gaul, which include all of France, Belgium, the Lower Countries, part of Switzerland and Austria, the Alps and northern part of Italy. There were many different Gaulish tribes, so it is assumed that the Gauls may have as many different dialects.
Celto-Iberian was spoken on the Iberian Peninsula, ancient people who lived with probably with native Iberian people in mostly north and central Spain; mainly between the Ebero and Tagus rivers. One of their chief cities included Numantia, which was besieged and sacked by the Romans in 133 BC.
There are another group of Celtic people that migrated to the east, and settled in central Asia Minor (mid-2nd century BC). They were known as the Galatians. I don't know if they spoke a different Celtic language to the Gauls. The region where they lived became known as Galatia; it became a Roman protectorate, and the apostle Paul had visited and written letters to the Galatian followers.
All Continental Celtic languages are extinct and very little is known about the languages. The Insular Celtic is better documented.
The Insular Celtic referred to the languages spoken in the British Isles and Brittany. The Insular Celtic was itself, divided into two broad groups, in which the modern Celtic languages were derived from - Brythonic (British) and Goidelic (Irish).
Brythonic is also called P-Celtic languages, which comprised of Welsh, Cornish and Breton.
By the time, Roman left and the Anglo-Saxons settled in Britain, the Celtic Britons have settled in regions that still exist today. Cornish were spoken in Cornwall, south-west England. Welsh were spoken in most part of England before the Anglo-Saxons, and that included in southern part of Scotland. Ancient Scotland was known as Caledonia or Alba at the time of the Romans. Some of Welsh-speaking Britons fled across the channels to Armorican Peninsula, but it changed its name to Brittany. However, Welsh and Breton became unintelligible.
And the Goidelic languages were referred to as Q-Celtic languages, comprising of Irish Gaelic, Scottish Gaelic and Manx (from the Isle of Man).
It is not certain if Ireland had ever spoken P-Celtic language before the arrival of the Gaelic Celts settled on this isle. Ireland was called Ierna by the 2nd-century geographer Ptolemy, while it was called Hiberia by the Romans. The people of Ireland were also called Scotti, so Ireland was also called Scotia. Around the 4th century, these Scotti invaded and colonised Argyll in Alba and established a kingdom known as Dal Riada. The Scotti warred, and then intermingled with Picts, and the whole Alba was renamed to Scotland. That was the reason why the Scotland spoke a Gaelic language, and shared strong cultural, mythological and folkloric ties to Ireland.
The Irish had also settled on the Isle of Man, around the 5th century, displacing the P-Celtic language spoken there. The Irish invaders have also established a kingdom of Dyfed in southern Wales.
But how did Gaelic people reach Ireland?
So where did the Gaelic people come from?
Like in Britain, the Celtic people had arrived in Ireland only in the 1st millennium BC. It is clear from archaeological evidences that there were people living in both Ireland and Britain before the arrival of the P and Q Celtic people in the 6th-5th century BC.
It was these pre-Celtic people who were involved in the megalithic cultures, such as erecting large standing stones and megalithic tombs. It is a 18th and 19th myths that the Celtic druids were involved in long barrows in Ireland or stone circles, like the Stonehenge in England.
There are several routes in which the people might have journeyed to a