Different solar disc, one with a man in the center

Figure of a man inside a circle that resembles the sun. Younger Iron Age La T?ne 400 BC - 1st century BC l. The Celtic tribes are the oldest historically documented ethnic group north of the Alps. The Celts belonged to a group of Indo-European tribes and from their original settlements, which lay in southwestern Germany, eastern France and the surrounding parts of Switzerland, gradually occupied the whole of Western Europe in several waves and at a time of historically documented expansion between the 4th and 2nd centuries. BC crossed the Alps and reached northern and central Italy as far as Rome. To the east, they advanced through the Danube to the Carpathian Basin and the Balkans, and on to Asia Minor. The Celts failed to create their own state, so they could not effectively face the pressure of the Romans from the south and the Germans from the north, and at the turn of the century, their political power in Europe collapsed.