Through prehistoric finds it can be determined that the Celts settled in the Westerwald and were using the iron ore deposits in the so-called Hallstatt times (Iron Age, roughly 750 to 500 BC). In all likelihood they came into the area from the Hunsrück. From La Tène times come the Celtic ringwall-girded defensive and sheltering castles which may be found on, among other peaks, the Malberg. Already by La Tène times, Germanic peoples were thrusting in from the east and from the Sieg valley. They came about 380 BC into the Upper Westerwald, bypassing the High Westerwald, seeing it as nothing more than a trackless wooded wilderness, after which they eventually came up against the Rhine in the 2nd century.