I wanted to avoid controversy regarding this word, but there's hardly a better alternative. Let's say a level of cultural, industrial, mercantile, religious and scientific development akin to Rome, Hellas or Carthage. You know what I mean.Define civilized.
Maybe a even more hellenized Massilia as economic powerhouse persists and rivals Rome ?
What does level of development mean?I wanted to avoid controversy regarding this word, but there's hardly a better alternative. Let's say a level of cultural, industrial, mercantile, religious and scientific development akin to Rome, Hellas or Carthage. You know what I mean.
Come on now.What does level of development mean?
Level of development meaning the intensity of urban civilization and material culture, and political centralization associated with Italy, Greece, and the Near East in this timeframe. Large states and empires, etc and not just tribal confederations. This simply requires a Rome screw. With them out of the picture, we can see Gaul (and by extension Britain and Germania) develop on more gradual and organic terms, instead of the overwhelming Roman influence we saw OTL. The Oppida and hill forts were already flourishing. Druids and knights, anyone?Come on now.
Honestly, the big thing have against the Gauls is that they didn't use writing, which was forbidden on a religious basis by the druids. But the Arverne polity was large, influent and well-populated, for instance, and formed a significant obstacle to Rome until the end.
DBWI : Caesar conquers Gaul instead of the other way aroundGauls had cities, check.
Their tech was as good, in some cases superior, even if crucially, their military tactics were inferior.
Gauls had a more organized and potentially uniting faith in the form of Druidism.
They weren't united but neither were the Greeks. Had the Persians conquered them, we might think of them as unimportant, unicivilized barbarians.
Which is kinda underlying this argument. Our cultural heritage is in a large part descended from the classical world. Gaul like Carthage in otl are relatively cultural 'dead ends'. So to a certain extent we don't give them quite the credit they could deserve.
Somewhere, in an ATL, people are debating whether the Greeks could have developed and someone is saying "If only they were influenced by the obviously superior culture of the Persians, well, maybe."
I think the case is true of the Gauls /Cispaine Gauls.
DBWI : Caesar conquers Gaul instead of the other way around
They weren't united but neither were the Greeks. Had the Persians conquered them, we might think of them as unimportant, unicivilized barbarians.
Which is kinda underlying this argument. Our cultural heritage is in a large part descended from the classical world. Gaul like Carthage in otl are relatively cultural 'dead ends'. So to a certain extent we don't give them quite the credit they could deserve.
They absolutely used writing, though. They didn't have a native script that I'm aware of, but Caesar records the Helvetii using musters written in Greek characters, having inspected them after his battle against them.Honestly, the big thing have against the Gauls is that they didn't use writing, which was forbidden on a religious basis by the druids. But the Arverne polity was large, influent and well-populated, for instance, and formed a significant obstacle to Rome until the end.
They absolutely used writing, though. They didn't have a native script that I'm aware of, but Caesar records the Helvetii using musters written in Greek characters, having inspected them after his battle against them.
Germanic people used some writing too, the fact the Runic alphabet is so different from Greek and Latin script and mirrors older Italic writing shows that there must have been an early adoption of writing by Celts and Germans north of the Alps before the Latin and Greek script eclipsed all others. Even if it was just used sparringly and for small texts and words that didn't survive the script came from somewhere and maintained itself.Actually the Gauls did use writing. The Druids forbade their own teachings being written down.
However, Cesar (for instance) remarks that Gauls had been using the Greek alphabet to write*. They also used the Old Italy script in cisalpine Gaul (i.e. north Italy). Later, they would move to the Latin alphabet.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaulish_language
https://www.omniglot.com/writing/gaulish.htm
*Most likely learning it through the Greek colonists in Massalia.
Not necessarily; if we get rid of Rome, Carthage is probably going to fill its shoes fairly well, so Punic would become a lingua franca in the west.So if we abort Rome (perhaps by keeping Alexander alive) the whole of Europe would probably be using the Greek alphabet or a derivative of it?