Turons

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Mint of the Turons on the Loire , 5. – 1. Century BC Chr.
Map of Gaul in the 1st century BC With the presumed positions of the Celtic tribes.

An ancient Gallic ( Celtic ) people in the province of Gallia Lugdunensis on the Loire were called Turons . The Romans called this people Turones or Turonii and their capital Caesarodunum (now Tours ).

A Germanic tribe also bore the name Turonen or Touroner . He settled near the Marvingian tribe, south - later south-east - of the Chatten ( Hessen ). This tribe possibly originated from a mixture of Germanic tribes with Celts still living there . He was mentioned as Turoni ( Greek  Τούρωνοι , Touronoi ) together with other Germanic tribes in the 11th chapter of the geography of Claudius Ptolemy (2nd century AD).

Hypotheses - Celts or Teutons?

It is speculative whether the identical names between the two groups - called Turons - existed purely by chance, or whether there was a connection between the two groups due to pre-Germanic migration movements of the Celtic tribes. A clear indication of a Celtic settlement in the southern Thuringian - Franconian area between the Thuringian Forest and Main are, for example, the remains of the only Celtic oppidum in Thuringia from the 2nd and 1st century BC. The so-called Steinsburg near Römhild in the Hildburghausen district .

There is speculation about a mixture of Germanic peoples and Celts, but neither the Germanic peoples nor the Celts represent a single nation , but rather had a cultural and linguistic relationship , which has increasingly broken down into different linguistic and cultural areas . Thus the origin of the name Thuringian (as Touroner-Turoni-Thoringi etc.) could be just as Celtic as that of their namesake on the Loire. After all, there are still a lot of Celtic field and waterway names in many areas of Germany . Compare the similarity of the French region Touraine with that of the Free State of Thuringia .

It could also be a transfer of names from the Roman and Greek historians. The exact etymology of the word Thuringian has hardly been researched so far.

So far, just as unclear is the connection with the Hermundures , some of which were resettled by the Roman commander-in-chief Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus in the area on the upper Main that was abandoned by the Marcomanni . The very same area in which the Turons are said to have also settled. It is both possible that the Turons represented a split from the Hermunduren or were identical to them - as well as that they represented an independent group, since the original Hermunduren on the middle and upper Elbe (today's Saxony ) had their actual main settlement area 100 BC Chr. But also advanced further south and southwest.

Remarks

  1. ^ Claudius Ptolemy, Geographia - Germania Magna - English and Latin translation of the geography of Claudius Ptolemy
  2. ^ Claudius Ptolemy, Geographia - Germania Magna - The learned cartography of the 15th and 16th centuries

literature

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