While historians have tended to accord the Celts a place of minor significance in comparison to the Romans, The Celts firmly aligns the Celtic peoples as the primary European precedent to the Greco-Roman hegemony, restoring this culture to its true importance in the development of European civilization. An expert in Celtic studies, Markale regards myth as a branch of history, and explores mythological material to reveal the culture that gave rise to it. The alternative historical vision that emerges is both convincing and exciting. One of the most comprehensive treatments of Celtic civilization ever written. A cornerstone of Western civilization and the major source of its social, political, and literary values, Celtic civilization occupied the whole of Western Europe for more than a millennium. Unlike the Middle Eastern forerunners of the Greco-Roman world, Celtic civilization is still alive today.