I have long held the belief that a people do not just disappear from the face of the Earth but continue to live according to their own tenets and mores, even if they are no longer an ascendant culture in their native land – and where is that? Parents bring their children up as they were brought up themselves. Behavioural habits are slow to change.
There are those who claim the Picts are a Celtic group. I do not subscribe to this idea. For me the Picts came from Crete and before this from Egypt and Sumeria. I believe they were originally a Dravidian speaking people from India who have much mystified archaeologists and historians because they were sailors. Many writers have mistakenly created distinct cultures from a single ethnic group who travelled widely and carried with them certain sciences such as Astronomy, and those of civilisation, including weights and measures. But before we get into their ancient history let’s look at the evidence presented by a recent study by Farley Mowat.
Mowat is a Canadian sailor and storyteller. He is a cultural historian with firsthand experience of living among the Inuit whose plight and treatment he has dealt with in the books ‘The People of the Deer’ and ‘The Desperate People’. However it is his book ‘The Alban Quest’ which holds our attention here.
In this unique work he traces the movement of the Picts from Crete, following the defeat of their culture at Troy, through Italy to the British Isles. He points out the the town of Poitiers in the south of France was called Pictarius by the Romans, and much more supporting evidence besides. He follows their first movements around the British coast as seal and walrus hunters, quoting extensive diaries from ancient sources. Eventually, as the pressures from other groups forced them further and further north, they fled to Iceland, around the horn of Greenland finally to the North American Coast, where an Italian adventurer and diarist encountered them in the 13th century. Long before, let it be noted, Columbus made his voyage of discovery that heralded the spread of European culture to the Western continent. But this is his work and you may read it at length in his book.
When I came across the book in 2003 I had already traced the roots from Sumeria to Yemen and eventually to Egypt and Crete of a people I came to realise were the Picts. They had certain unmistakable features. One was their love of cattle, and particularly their small black bulls with large eyes. They were able to accurately portray nature around them and it is to the Picts that I suggest the Egyptian dynasties are indebted for the Hieroglyphic script they inherited.