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La Tène culture (450 – 30 BCE)

Around 500 BCE, the people living north of the Alps are touched by the light of history for the first time: the authors of antiquity call them 'Celts'.

Whether driven by hunger or desire – around 450 BCE, the Celts begin to migrate to the shores of the Mediterranean (today's Italy, Greece, and Turkey). Around 400 BCE, northern Bavaria, like many other parts of southern Germany, ends up largely depopulated.

Around 250 BCE, The Celts return to their former tribal lands. Numerous discoveries are proof of high settlement density with superregional, town-like population centres. Precious metals are used as currency for the first time. Characteristic for the period is a type of graphite clay ceramics produced on a manufacturing scale.

The invasion of Germanic peoples from the north, and the expansion of the Roman empire from the south, lead to the end of the Celtic civilisation in the last century BCE.