AUTHOR=Wagner Charles , De Gezelle Jillian , Komarnytsky Slavko TITLE=Celtic Provenance in Traditional Herbal Medicine of Medieval Wales and Classical Antiquity JOURNAL=Frontiers in Pharmacology VOLUME=11 YEAR=2020 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/pharmacology/articles/10.3389/fphar.2020.00105 DOI=10.3389/fphar.2020.00105 ISSN=1663-9812 ABSTRACT=
The Celtic linguistic community dominated large spans of Central and Western Europe between 800 BC and 500 AD, but knowledge of their traditional medicine is very limited. Multiple progressive plant gains in Neolithic settlements along the Danube and up the Rhine valleys suggested that taxon diversity of gathered plants peaked at the Balkans and was subsequently reduced as crop and gathered plants packages were adopted and dispersed throughout Neolithic Europe. This process coincided with the Bronze Age migration of the R1b proto-Celtic tribes, and their herbal traditions were occasionally recorded in the classic Greco-Roman texts on herbal medicines. The provenance of Celtic (Gallic) healing methods and magical formulas as recorded by Pliny, Scribonius Largus, and Marcellus Empiricus can still be found in the first part of the medieval Welsh (Cymry) herbal manuscript