# "Anglo-Saxon genocide" contested again



## Brian G Turner

*Teeth unravel Anglo-Saxon legacy* 
*New scientific research adds to growing evidence that the Anglo-Saxons did not replace the native population in England as history books suggest. *


The data indicates at least some areas of eastern England absorbed very few Anglo-Saxon invaders, contrary to the view in many historical accounts. 

Chemical analysis of human teeth from a Medieval cemetery in Yorkshire found few individuals of continental origin. Details of the work are described in the scholarly journal Antiquity.

Researchers from the University of Durham and the British Geological Survey looked at different types of the elements strontium and oxygen in the teeth of 24 skeletons from an early Anglo-Saxon cemetery at West Heslerton, North Yorkshire that spans the fifth to the seventh centuries AD. 


These types, or isotopes, of oxygen in local drinking water vary across Europe and locally within the British Isles. The differences are influenced by latitude, altitude, distance from the sea and, to a lesser extent, mean annual temperature.


More: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3514756.stm


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## Esioul

I think they think (!) that there weren't as many Anglo Saxons living in england as was previously thought- a lot of the 'Scandinavians' were actually natives (maybe some Celts?) who had just adopted Sacndinavian grave goods etc.


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## Brian G Turner

Interpretation of the whole period is a strange mixture of assumptions and generalisations - and something that isn't widely acknowledged is that the Anglo-Saxon migrations into Britain were part of a long-standing tradition - even the CElts were originally from Central Europe, and they displaced the original Henge builders - who themselves had displaced the previous peoples. I guess the Saxon migration, occurring in "the Dark Ages", therefore requires some form of "dark" theme that must be somehow expressed.


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## Esioul

Do you go for the migrationist interpretations? I don't know anything much about the Saxons, the Romans and Sumerians are more my obsessions, but I'd heard there was some general whinging that the previously accepted theories were wrong and that the Celts didn't exactly migrate, although I think maybe some must have done. I wonder why the migrated?


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## Brian G Turner

I'm not exactly sure of "why" - or even what form these actual migrations took. For example, how violent would they have been? How much cultural assimilation was involved? My point was more than the Saxons were following a long trend - of an influx of mainland Europeans into Britain. Yet people have been fairly fixed on dark tones for the Saxon migration, whereas the movement of the Celts into Britain and displacing the Henge builders barely raises an eye.


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## Esioul

I do see what you mean- people tend to think, poor Celts, nasty Saxons taking over and so on. It might be because so little is nearly known about the Henge builders. One weird thing about henges- the only places they appear in Europe at that time were Britain and Brittany. I wonder why? This might suggest that cultural assimilation didn't always take place with some things (like religion, if the henges are to do with religion). 

I suppose it's possible to say that the Celts were here before the Saxons so it's a shame that the Saxons kicked them out or whatever, but the Celts weren't natives here either, and nor where the Henge builders etc, for that matter. Weird, and probably off-topic of me...sorry....


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## Brian G Turner

Not off-topic at all. 

 It's also something of a shame that pagan groups who claim to be following "native European traditions" often seem quite unaware that the Celts were _not_ responsible for building Stonehenge. 

 And it's probably quite true that the Celts get more of a look in because recorded history actually gave them a name and an identity - whereas the henge builders remain as enigmatic as ever. Perhaps deeper research into the Picts might shed some light on that topic - my impression is that were a hunted and diminshed people, squeezd into the Western corners of Britain. Perhaps there's a relationioship there.


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## Esioul

Ther's been an idea that the Scottish and especially the Welsh and Cornish might be sort of Celts, or what remains of them anyway: they were pushed into these areas by various invaders etc. But there's also been the idea that saying so is too political, or something. I think it was the Romans who first really identified the Celts, calling them the 'Keltoi' or something like that.


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## Brian G Turner

Keltoi is actually the Greek form. 

 More info:
http://www.comparative-religion.com/ancient/celtic/

 There are Celtic languages still known to geographic regions where it was pushed - Cornish and Breton as one language group, I believe, whereas the other distinct Celtic language group includes Welsh, Manx, and the Irish and Scottish dialechts of Gaelic (which differes from the Highland language of Scots). Something like that, anyhow.


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## Esioul

Aargh- our Arch teacher told us it was Latin. Yep, just put it through my computer Latin dictionary and it didn't like it. I don't know a word of Greek, but I might try teaching myself next year. I want to continue with Latin too, if I can get a teacher, because I want to study some at uni, even though I only took it up this year. 

Yeah, I'd heard they'd found loads of connections between those languages which made them think they might all have been the same language at one time.


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## Brian G Turner

I have - at different times and in different ways - tried to teach myself Latin, Manx, and Arabic. NEver succeeded past the introductory lessons, though - Languages are simply not my strong piont, though. English is hard enough to understand.


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## Esioul

Not necessarily- I find it really hard to teach myself a language, because a book or whatever can't answer all my questions. I've found that learning Latin this year has helped my English no end- it's increased my awareness of grammer and vocab. I'm not ever so good at languages, but I'm hoping to pass it if I can. Our college has a policy against doing GCSE's, so I had to take the AS level. I mean, it's all right for the private school snobs who've had the privilage of being taught Latin for years and years!


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## Moondancer

Um... I'm not a snob, but Latin was compulsory at my school. I really agree about the grammar & vocab though - I found that they didn't teach grammar in English, so when we were taught it in Latin it helped to make sense of the English.
GCSE Latin is pretty close to the AS level anyway - or at least it was when I did it... the A-Level is just more intensive & requires English into Latin as well. If you can get hold of a copy, Kennedy's Latin Primer is the best grammar book I've found & is really useful.


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## Neil040

A fascinating discussion!

I think the megalithic people pretty well disappeared albeit not exactly without trace obviously!  I remember the first time I stood on the edge of Dun Aengus, a megalithic fortress on Inishmore off the Galway coast..  it was built above the cliffs that fell 500 feet to the Atlantic Ocean.. built before stonehenge I think.. three concentric half circles of massive stone construction.. very complex fortifications that included a field of sharpened stones to break attackers... tunnels through the walls as access. and ending with their backs to that sheer drop...  They believe those people came from the Iberian Peninsular... and landed on the extreme edge of europe.. remote I can tell you!   But the thought that came to my mind... was what the hell did they build all THAT to protect themselves from!!!  Now THAT is an interesting thought...

I have some thoughts about the Saxons too.. but its late so I shall leave that for another day/night...


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## Rosemary

Esioul said:
			
		

> Ther's been an idea that the Scottish and especially the Welsh and Cornish might be sort of Celts, or what remains of them anyway: they were pushed into these areas by various invaders etc. But there's also been the idea that saying so is too political, or something. I think it was the Romans who first really identified the Celts, calling them the 'Keltoi' or something like that.


The ancient Celtic tribal lands were subdued by Caesar.  The Celtic tribes moved away to other various parts of Europe.

The Celts arrived in Britain (not England then) about 900BC.  Stonehenge was finished around 1500BC, long before the Celts.  The Celts assimilated themselves throughout  most of the country and into the* British* tribes.  

The later invasions by the Angles, Saxons and Jutes drove the Celts west and north, so fled across the channel to Armorica (now named Brittany after them).

The term Scotti was used to describe Irish tribes.  The term eventually embodied in the name of Scotland, was not a tribal name.  It was a generic term meaning raiders.  Original Celtic name for Scotland was Alba, later understood to mean England.  The Irish Scotti tribes invaded Scotland and northern England.  Adamnan, an Irish historian moved to Scotland and used the name Scotia to refer to Ireland and not Scotland!!  In 11th century an Irish exile called Marianus Scotus refered to his Irish compatriots as Scots.  The first Irish kingdom of Scotland was known as the Dal Riada, after Carbri Riada, son of King Conair. He led his men from Kerry to the coast of Scotland at the place now known as Argyle.  So the Scottish clans of Cambells, MacAllens and MacCullums were actually decended from the Irish Dal Riada.  From Ad850 the country was known as Scotia Minor to distinguish it from Scotia Major (Ireland).  So the name of Scotia finally became known as Scotland.  Later after a great battle around 891AD, some of the Dal Riada tribes moved south and settled in Northern Wales.  Celtic language was divided in the P Celtic and the C Celtic.  The C Celtic tribes of Ireland (Scots as they should be properly called) also invaded the coast of Wales.  The P Celtic tribes stayed and lived in Scotland.  The Prophecies of Merlin were P Celtic Stories.  The Q Celtic language was also heard in Cornwall 
   All very confusing I know but just thought I would share some of my research with you.


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## lazygun

..wonder if this explains the all-encompassing nature of kilt colours?.....


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## Rosemary

lazygun said:
			
		

> ..wonder if this explains the all-encompassing nature of kilt colours?.....


 
The confusion or the history of the Scots ! 

Not too sure when they actually started wearing the tartan!  Hmm have to see if I can find out.  Good thought though lazygun


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## sanityassassin

most of the tartan you see today is quite recent late 17thC or later the real work tartan  is heavy and drab none of this bright yellows and reds, but oche and brown and the kilts were long peices of cloth wrapped around the body


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## Stalker

In connection with above history of Scottish invasion from Eire to Alba, I thought it would be proper to add some lyrics into discussion... Remember a great ballad by Robert Louis Stevenson, _Heather Ale_?
*F*rom the bonny bells of heather
They brewed a drink long-syne,
Was sweeter far than honey,
Was stronger far than wine.
They brewed it and they drank it,
And lay in a blessed swound
For days and days together
In their dwellings underground.

There rose a king in Scotland,
A fell man to his foes,
He smote the Picts in battle,
He hunted them like roes.
Over miles of the red mountain
He hunted as they fled,
And strewed the dwarfish bodies
Of the dying and the dead...


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## Brian G Turner

Just to let you know I removed some general chatter about kippers from this thread...


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## Rosemary

I said:
			
		

> Just to let you know I removed some general chatter about kippers from this thread...


Sorry - went off at a tangent again!!  I shall try a bit harder in future not to do that.


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## Monty Scott

I identify as a Celt because my ancestry runs from America to England to Wales to Ireland to Scotland. Before that I am not sure. This discussion is fascinating as I have not really kept up on the subject. I surely will do so now! Thanks!


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## Rosemary

Monty Scott said:
			
		

> I identify as a Celt because my ancestry runs from America to England to Wales to Ireland to Scotland. Before that I am not sure. This discussion is fascinating as I have not really kept up on the subject. I surely will do so now! Thanks!


You are welcome dear


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## andyn

Kilts are not actually Celtic. Orginally worn in the middle east Ancient Summerians and Phonecians. Also there have been found Celtic graves on what was the Old Silk Road out of China. For the vast majority of people living in England the Angles- Saxons just replaced the Romano Celt leadership and they had new masters. Similar to what happened in 1066 with the Norman invasion.


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## svalbard

There may have been a number of reasons for the ascendancy of the Anglo-Saxons other than the wholesale slaughter of the Celtic population. But I believe slaughter did occur. It is recorded in the The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle where it describes the capture of Anderita. It claims that none were left alive of the forts inhabitants, men, women and children. It is only one recorded incident but where there is one...


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## Peter Graham

Svalbard and I spend happy hours debating this sort of thing up in the Aspiring Writers forum.

My take is that there was slaughter, but there was arguably not ever an organised war of Celt versus Saxon. A number of the "Saxon" leaders mentioned in the Anglo Saxon Chronicle have suspiciously British sounding names, suggesting that the Saxons just joined in the jolly merry-go-round of internecine squabbling that was such a feature of post Roman Britain and which was so lamented by Gildas.

Another issue is the relative size of a Saxon army - we are talking in terms of hundreds, rather than thousands. Genocide is difficult enough with a modern army and 21st century technology at your back. If you've only got a handful of mates, some beer and a harvest to get back to, what is the point?

I think that Saxon success is down to two root causes - firstly, during the first Saxon revolt they were better armed than the British of lowland modern-day England, which was precisely why they were invited in in the first place. Secondly, I understand that their lands would devolve on one heir upon death, rather than being split equally between sons, as was the Celtic British custom. That allowed more organised kingdoms to develop and grow.

I also think that the Saxon invasion was really just a replacement of the Celtic British warrior elite with a Saxon English warrior elite. For the average turd-eater in the fields, it probably didn't make a jot of difference if you were being opppressed by someone called Cadwallon or someone called Ethelfrith.

Regards,

Peter


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## svalbard

Sorry about the late reply to this, but I have only revisited this thread today.
I have to disagree with you here, Peter. I think there is only one mention of Saxon leaders having British sounding names in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. That is Cerdic and his 'son' Cynric, if indeed he was his son. A few British names survive in the Wessex lineage for a couple of generations. Elswhere the British names and language are wiped out in the space of a hundred or so years.

Compare this to the Norman invasion, where Anglo-Saxon survived and mixed with the Norman-French of the ruling elite.


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## Peter Graham

Hi Svalbard,

You might be right, but I've always had my suspicions about "Ceawlin" being a British name.  I'll have look through the chronicle and put a few more up for debate!

The King Lists of the Saxons also show the odd British name.  Coedbad of Lindsey springs to mind.  He's in the list the same as the rest, suggesting two possibilities.  One is that the Celtic British aristocracy of Lindsey retained nominal control of the area (probably as a tribute state of Northumbria) but adopted English customs and names and then, probably via a slow process of intermarriage, basically became English.  

Alternatively, as is probably more likely, the Britons lost Lindsey to the Angles, who for some reason remembered and retained the name of a previous British King.  I see no reason why they would do that if they had been engaged in the wholesale extermination of the Lindsey Britons, but I can see why they might want to do it as a means of legitimising their own claims over an existing lumpen proletariat made up at least in part by those of British descent.  Henry II did the same thing with King Arthur to help legitimise his claims over Wales.

And if the English did exterminate the Britons, why did they retain the existing British names for places - Lindsey, Lincoln and Kesteven (all still in use today and all referring to significant places - the county town and two of the three administrative areas of the county) are all pre-Saxon and/or Celtic in origin, as are some of the river names, like Glen and probably Bain.  The villages of Glentham and Glentworth (for example) appear to show English place name elements attached to pre-exisiting Celtic names.  Not to mention all of the Weltons, which _might_ mean "farm/village of the welsh".

And there is also archaeological evidence - some very interesting stuff from early Deira seems to show that a decorative metalworking style that can be described as Romano-Saxon emerged in the fifth century, suggesting that native smiths were still producing metalwork, but were adopting the themes and motifs of their English rulers.  And when written records begin to appear, there is clear evidence of British survival.  Ine of Wessex introduced a legal code which set the amount of weregild payable on respect of murders of his subjects.  You got less if you were British, but you stil got something.  What is more, there was a separate "rate" for British landowners, showing that some of them at least were still men of property and standing.

And I'm not sure that it's fair to draw a link to the Normans.  For one thing, written records are far more abundant for that later period of history.  We don't actually know how long people spoke British for under Saxon rule or even if they did at all.  But I wouldn't mind betting it was just the same as it was after the Norman conquest, when the proles spoke English and their masters spoke Norman French.  English landowners were reduced in importance but still existed (albeit in reduced numbers), just as happened under Ine.  The decision to speak English across the board was, as I understand it, a conscious political one made during the French Wars rather than something that happened over time as a result of intermarriage etc.

Over to you!

All the best,

Peter


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## svalbard

Just briefly because I am still doing some research on this and I will not use Peter Beresford Ellis as a source as I know you have a few issues with his work. On the use of language. A reason that English became the official language of England was in no doubt due to political reasons and sound ones at that as well. I would argue that the Brythonic language was well and truly dead in England at the stage of the Norman conquest. How long it survived in England after the Saxon migrations is very questionable. I think this may show up a difference in the Norman conquest and the Saxon 'conquest'. 

The Normans arrived in the main part with only the upper echelons of their society. Of course merchants and trades men followed in the proceeding months and years. But it was not a mass migration of a whole people and culture as was that of the Saxons.  The Normans allowed the Saxon population to continue to farm the land, although in a state of serfdom. Whereas back in good old days, the Saxons took all the land that was available for themselves. Some Celtic names survived in isolation and I think that is the key word here.

I need to go and do some work on this.

Cheers,
Svalbard.


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## Peter Graham

Hi Svalbard,

You're right about PBE! I wouldn't be arrogant enough to argue that his stuff is without merit, but he clearly comes from the rather fashionable "Celts good, Saxons bad" camp. He makes lots of sweeping assertions and, although I couldn't pretend to comment on most of them, those I can comment on show him to be a master of spin at best, or pure invention at worst.

I'd have to take issue with your point about Brythonic. The last native speaker of (Brythonic) Cornish only died a few years ago. I accept that Cornwall was a fairly late addition to Wessex, but it was probably under English control for a good two hundred years before William of Normandy hove into view.

I don't dispute that whole Saxon tribes migrated wholesale after their warbands had carved out territories for them. But that still doesn't necessarily suggest genocide. The tribal lands of the Saxons etc were relatively small and almost certainly thinly populated, whilst Britain was a large, fertile ex-Roman province where you didn't always get your feet wet every time you stepped outside. Certain areas - notably Kent and East Anglia - probaby were swamped by huge numbers of Anglo-Saxons, in which case anyone already living there would almost certainly be obliged to start learning a new language straight away. But I doubt there were ever enough Saxons to repopulate the entire country from scratch.

In other areas, I'd suggest that the whole process of lingustic change was much more gradual. By way of an example at the other end of the scale, we speak (a version of) English in Cumbria, but Anglo-Saxon settlement would only ever have been minimal here, even after the fall of Rheged to Northumbria circa 620. The huge majority of place names are Brythonic or Norse, suggesting that people here were not widely speaking English at least until after the Norse had become integrated into English society - and that would be the 11th Century. 

I'd argue that isolated British place names across most of England might be indicative of little pockets where the British for whatever reason (marriage, force, local conditions etc etc) still had some form of control or status. But that doesn't mean that the British weren't living everywhere else aswell, albeit under the control of English overlords.

Regards,

Peter


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## MKG

Hi all - this thread made me join the site 

It's something I've been struggling with for five years now, trying to make some sense out of my local history. For what it's worth ...

There appears to be no evidence of substantial "Celtic" (whatever that might mean) migration into Britain. Certainly, the culture came - but people?

There is some DNA evidence that the number of Anglo-Saxon "invaders" was of the order of 5% of the total indigenous British population.

There is zero evidence that there was a common Brythonic language in these islands before the advent of the Anglo-Saxons. It would appear more likely (given that the Belgae, for one example, had already migrated here and may have spoken a Germanic language) that Britain was a multi-cultural, multi-lingual place. 

There is zero evidence that the Anglo-Saxon invaders (and that constitutes Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Frisians, Franks and possibly a Swabian or two, amongst others) spoke a common language. The (I consider) overwhelming probability is that Old English was the mongrel which resulted from the mixing of all of those peoples and all of their languages.

Partible inheritance (already mentioned in this thread) is a much more logical and human reason for the ascendancy of the the Anglo-Saxon way of doing things than is genocide.

There is a village very near to where I live (at the northern extremes of Mercia) called Wales. Make of that what you will.

At which point I'm going to have to go back to the thread to remind myself why I'm posting this . In the meantime, there it is to be digested, shot down - whatever.


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## Peter Graham

Hi MKG,

Haven't been down here in a while - compared to other sub-forums, the history threads move at an altogether more sedate pace.

I more or less agree with your take on this. I don't think that we can discount bloodshed and slaughter (Svalbard's Anderita example cannot be disregarded), but I think we can discount slaughter and bloodshed based *solely* on grounds of race and ethnicity.



> There appears to be no evidence of substantial "Celtic" (whatever that might mean) migration into Britain. Certainly, the culture came - but people?


 
Warrior elites would be my guess. You take over from the existing political authority and impose your will. This is exactly what the Romans did. Within a couple of generations, the masses will be speaking your language and adopting your customs and modes of dress. There is simply nothing to be gained by exterminating the locals and repopulating huge swathes of countryside from scratch. 



> There is some DNA evidence that the number of Anglo-Saxon "invaders" was of the order of 5% of the total indigenous British population.


 
That sounds about right, especially if you look at the relative sizes of fertile Britain and the boggy Saxon homelands.



> There is zero evidence that there was a common Brythonic language in these islands before the advent of the Anglo-Saxons. It would appear more likely (given that the Belgae, for one example, had already migrated here and may have spoken a Germanic language) that Britain was a multi-cultural, multi-lingual place.


 
Possibly, but I'd guess that there were significant similarities at the very least. Goidelic and Brythonic Celtic appear to be relatively distinct, but within the Brythonic group, I'd be surprised if a Welsh Silurian could not have understood most of what a northern Brigantian was saying to him. After all, the Saxons and the Norse could more or less understand each other (shatter/scatter, shirt/skirt) and their respective languages come from different branches of the Germanic linguistic group - they are probably further apart than Goidelic and Brythonic are.



> The (I consider) overwhelming probability is that Old English was the mongrel which resulted from the mixing of all of those peoples and all of their languages.


 
I agree, but I wouldn't see English as an early version of Esperanto which was created as a means of enabling communication. I'd wager that Old English arose from the doubtless significant similarities between the various Germanic tongues and then filled in the gaps as it went on.



> Partible inheritance (already mentioned in this thread) is a much more logical and human reason for the ascendancy of the the Anglo-Saxon way of doing things than is genocide.


 

That's certainly my guess!

Regards,

Peterfrith


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## tiailds

Rosemary said:


> The Celts arrived in Britain (not England then) about 900BC.  Stonehenge was finished around 1500BC, long before the Celts.  The Celts assimilated themselves throughout  most of the country and into the* British* tribes.


The Bretons were Celts.  The henge builders who were earlier were more agricultural as opposed to the slightly more agresive Bretons.  I consider them to be the longest standing "native" people of the islands.  Any invasion after them I put in a negative context.


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## Peter Graham

tiailds said:


> The Bretons were Celts. The henge builders who were earlier were more agricultural as opposed to the slightly more agresive Bretons. I consider them to be the longest standing "native" people of the islands. Any invasion after them I put in a negative context.


 
Hi Tiailds,

Welcome to our slow-moving debate!

Might I ask why you feel that the post-Celtic "invasions" were negative or that the Celts weren't as aggressive as those who came after them? I know that it is fashionable to see the ancient Celts as somehow being early hippies who were at one with nature and beauty, but there's no real evidence for that contention.

A cursory glance of the surviving canon of British poems of the period makes it pretty clear that the Celtic kingdoms (largely based on the pre-Roman Celtic tribal areas) which came into being after the collapse of centralised Roman administration were a fairly bloodthirsty bunch, who spent easily as much time fighting one another as they did the Saxons. The poems generally concern slaughter, gift-giving (an important part of keeping your warband happy!) and noble deaths in battle. Their kings gave themselves names like Gwallawc the Battle Horseman, Peredur Steel Arms, Selyf the Battle Serpent and Eliffer of the Great Army. Between them, they managed to withstand a Germanic onslaught which totally destroyed Roman Western Europe, only to throw most of it away in the seventh century in violent, internecine squabbling. They didn't manage all that by skipping through the daisies and talking to the flowers!

Regards,

Peter


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## tiailds

I concede that the Bretons were warlike during the post-Roman era.  They had to be after the chaos of the Roman structure leaving and then defending against several nations and dozens of tribes all wanting the island.  Their biggest mistake is inviting the Saxons to help defend them thereby inviting their soon to be conquerors.  If the Bretons could have held off the invaders on their own and united and organized under something similar to what they had during the Roman occupation, they would probably have been fine for the next few centuries.  But a few major mistakes early on essentially doomed then in the end.  

I realize that overall they are Celts and therefore primarily warlike, but I believe that they resort to war only when necessary and the rest of their society is rather peaceful and long lasting.


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## ManTimeForgot

You believe this based on what?  The original druid religion was a bloody one (and that's putting it mildly).  Their religion and their literature bespeaks a culture that valued blood sacrifice and war.  What evidence is their to suggest that the Celts were "mostly peace loving" that only warred as a "last resort?"


I think in the end all of you Brits are just gonna have to face it; its not natural to live on that cold wet island of yours.  Everyone's been an invader at some point history.

MTF


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## Anomander

Okay - the druidic religion, to which of these "civilisation" did it belong? It's one line I'm considering exploring in more depth at some point.


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## Urlik

ManTimeForgot said:


> You believe this based on what? The original druid religion was a bloody one (and that's putting it mildly). Their religion and their literature bespeaks a culture that valued blood sacrifice and war. What evidence is their to suggest that the Celts were "mostly peace loving" that only warred as a "last resort?"


the only evidence that they practiced human sacrifice is Roman propaganda designed to show that the Celts and Gauls were uncivilised barbarians who needed to be conquered.
the archaeological finds could just as easily have been criminals who were sentenced to death for their crimes (even though the method was ritualistic this doesn't mean it was religious as all death sentences follow some form of ritual, even today)
later stories of druidic sacrifice were written by Christian monks who had a vested interest in making their predecessors look as bad as possible



Anomander said:


> Okay - the druidic religion, to which of these "civilisation" did it belong? It's one line I'm considering exploring in more depth at some point.


 
the Druids were the priest class of Celtic polytheism, but as they used an oral tradition for passing on their knowledge and there is no written record of their practices, there is absolutely nothing really known about them except that they revered the Moon, the oak, mistletoe and white bulls


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## Peter Graham

> the only evidence that they practiced human sacrifice is Roman propaganda designed to show that the Celts and Gauls were uncivilised barbarians who needed to be conquered.


 
Unfortunately, that's pretty much the only evidence full stop! As Urlik says, it _might_ be wrong, but there is precious little to substantiate the opposing view.



> the Druids were the priest class of Celtic polytheism, but as they used an oral tradition for passing on their knowledge and there is no written record of their practices, there is absolutely nothing really known about them except that they revered the Moon, the oak, mistletoe and white bulls


 
From which tiny clues a whole pseudo-religion has sprung, fully formed like warriors from dragon's teeth! 

But by the later Celtic period, most of the Celts were at least nominally Christian.



> I realize that overall they are Celts and therefore primarily warlike, but I believe that they resort to war only when necessary and the rest of their society is rather peaceful and long lasting.


 
As MTF suggests, there is not a shred of evidence to support this view. It's a fashionable view, I grant you, but what evidence there really is paints the Celts (like the Saxons) as first and foremost a warrior aristocracy who (like the Saxons) effectively took over the upper strata of British society. In "Gallic Wars", old Julius Caesar states that one of their principle exports was slaves - hardly the mark of a peaceful society.



> I concede that the Bretons were warlike during the post-Roman era. They had to be after the chaos of the Roman structure leaving and then defending against several nations and dozens of tribes all wanting the island.


 
But let us look at these "dozens of tribes". Some were Germanic - Saxons, Angles, Jutes et al, but the pressing threat of the post Roman period came from the Picts (who were Celts) and the Irish (who were Celts). So, once again, not much evidence of the Celts being peace-loving there!



> Their biggest mistake is inviting the Saxons to help defend them thereby inviting their soon to be conquerors.


 
In all fairness, Vortigern was just following accepted late Roman military practice of paying one lot of thugs to defeat another, but even if not, what choice did he have? For whatever reason, it appears that the North did not come and help him and there is evidence (in the form of Coel Hen), that the British still held enough power at York and along the Wall to keep effective control of what is now northern England and Southern Scotland for nearly 200 years after the Saxon rebellion.



> If the Bretons could have held off the invaders on their own and united and organized under something similar to what they had during the Roman occupation, they would probably have been fine for the next few centuries.


 
I agree. This is the real nub of the problem. The Saxons didn't win Britain - the Celts threw it away. They couldn't (or wouldn't) unite behind one leader.



> I think in the end all of you Brits are just gonna have to face it; its not natural to live on that cold wet island of yours


 
Too true. We'd all much rather live in Disneyland or exotic places with names like Big Flat Desert, Kansas, or Hot Burrito, Oklahoma.  

Regards,

Peter


----------



## tiailds

> But let us look at these "dozens of tribes". Some were Germanic - Saxons, Angles, Jutes et al, but the pressing threat of the post Roman period came from the Picts (who were Celts) and the Irish (who were Celts). So, once again, not much evidence of the Celts being peace-loving there!


I have trouble seeing the Picts as Celts, but ignoring that.  The Bretons should have just "kept it in the family" so to speak and hired other Celts (such as the Irish) to help protect from invaders.  They being related closer than Saxons and being closer geographically would aid in preventing a rebellion (chances are there still would be a rebellion, but I think it could have been handled better).



> The Saxons didn't win Britain - the Celts threw it away. They couldn't (or wouldn't) unite behind one leader.


Even if they couldn't totally unite, even with a loose confederation of Celts from two islands, they would have intimidated and/or repelled most Saxons or other miscellaneous invaders for quite a long time.  I still believe that over an extended period of stability and peace (with the help of somewhat loyal hired mercenaries), eventually, some form of unification would have taken place that could hold till the Scots began establishing themselves and even then loosly ally with them as well.  

Over half of the island seems to be surrounded by would be invaders just waiting for an opportunity.  The Bretons and other neighboring Celts could hold them off, even several at a time, if they could remain organized following the Roman military organization and taking advantage of the infrastructure.



> Too true. We'd all much rather live in Disneyland or exotic places with names like Big Flat Desert, Kansas, or Hot Burrito, Oklahoma.


Mmmmm, Hot Burrito.


----------



## Peter Graham

> I have trouble seeing the Picts as Celts


 
Really? Might I ask why?




> The Bretons should have just "kept it in the family" so to speak and hired other Celts (such as the Irish) to help protect from invaders.


 
But this is the whole point - the Irish _were _the invaders whom the Britons needed to be protected from, or at least they were a significant proportion of the invaders. 



> They being related closer than Saxons and being closer geographically would aid in preventing a rebellion (chances are there still would be a rebellion, but I think it could have been handled better).


 
This is where I think we disagree. We may have a modern day notion of Celtic one-ness, but it is abundantly clear that the Celts did not view their world in such simple, ethnic terms. They felt no greater kinship to Irish raiders, Scottish pirates or Pictish warbands as they did to the Saxon barbarians. In fact, they seemed to feel very little kinship with one another - they spent easily as much time fighting amongst themselves as they did fighting what we would nowadays describe as their common foe. 



> Even if they couldn't totally unite, even with a loose confederation of Celts from two islands, they would have intimidated and/or repelled most Saxons or other miscellaneous invaders for quite a long time.


 
I agree. This is why I say they threw it away. They simply couldn't hold large-scale alliances together for long enough to do anything truly useful. When they did, they were pretty unbeatable, but it only happened rarely - once in the south and once in the north. 

The "Arthurian" campaigns point at Celtic alliance in the south, which resulted in Mount Badon and the recapture of massive amounts of territory in the south and east of England. 

Nennius refers to a massive alliance of northern Brythonic kings under Urien of Rheged (hurrah!) who all but swept the Northumbrians into the sea. And then at the point of victory, there was treachery in the ranks. Urien was assassinated at the instigation of one of his so-called allies (Morcant Bulc of Bryneich) and the alliance descended in to feud and civil war. Within about thirty years, British York, Elmet, Dunoting and Bryneich had collapsed and both Rheged and Goddodin had been all but smashed as independent kingdoms. 




> I still believe that over an extended period of stability and peace (with the help of somewhat loyal hired mercenaries), eventually, some form of unification would have taken place that could hold till the Scots began establishing themselves and even then loosly ally with them as well.


 
Hmm. You might be right, but why the Brythonic kingdoms would have wanted to ally with what they saw as Dal Riadan raiders is a mystery. Again, I think you are seeing the struggle in purely ethnic terms - I don't think it was ever like that. There is little evidence that having your land ravaged by the Saxons was worse than having it ravaged by your Celtic neighbours.



> The Bretons and other neighboring Celts could hold them off, even several at a time, if they could remain organized following the Roman military organization and taking advantage of the infrastructure.


 
Again, I agree. But they couldn't - or didn't.



> Mmmmm, Hot Burrito.


 
I've never quite seen burrritos in the same light after reading what drug-addled stick-twiddler Tommy Lee used to do with them... 

Regards,

Peter


----------



## svalbard

I have just  a couple of points to add to here. I agree with most of what Peter is saying. There is a lot of evidence emerging of the Celts as more that just blood thirsty barbarians. Although never a single nation or one people they seem to have had a very strong trade network through out 'Celtic' Europe. Roads are another interesting aspect to be considered. In Ireland evidence has emerged of timber roads laid down to facilitate, we hope, the expansion of trade.

Peter has alluded to Caesar's accounts, biased as they were, of the slave trade. This was normal for the time and practiced by all civilisations. War I believe was no more endemic with the Celts as it would have being for any tribal group or emerging empires of the era. An interesting idea here is that our ancestors would have consumed a lot more alcohol than we do today. They would have used it as part of daily diet. I am not saying they were a bunch of raving alcoholics armed to the teeth, but a man with a spear, slightly inebriated could take offense quite easily leading to situations that could result in bloodshed. 

Poetry extolled the virtues of the warrior and those stories of survived. So also have tales of magic and lust. Not all are about war. It could be that the poerty of the late sixth and early seventh centuries are mainly about war is because they really were bloody times in Britain.


----------



## Peter Graham

> There is a lot of evidence emerging of the Celts as more that just blood thirsty barbarians.


 
Absolutely. In many ways, they were a very advanced and cultured society and their poems - or such as survive - are second to none. But I think that it is equally fair to say that the Saxons were also more than just bloodthirsty barbarians. Many people looking back at this period forget that the events described took place over many hundreds of years and that both societies - Brythonic and English, changed and developed as time went on. 

By way of an example, if today is the day that the British north finally fell to the Northumbrians, the first "keels" of Saxon mercenaries would have been arriving in Kent in about 1815 - the same difference in time between us and the Battle of Waterloo. It took _two hundred years _for most of what is now England (together with chunks of Southern Scotland) to "fall" or to be assimilated by the English and, even then, Wales, the South West peninsula, a big chunk of Cumbria, Dumfries and Galloway and all of Stratchclyde were still held by independent Brythonic kingdoms. That is ten generations of slow creep, punctuated by sporadic violence. Ten generations of people on both sides being born and raised in this country, intermarrying, trading, drinking, fighting and generally muddying the gene pool.




> Peter has alluded to Caesar's accounts, biased as they were, of the slave trade. This was normal for the time and practiced by all civilisations.


 
Absolutely, but dear old Beresford-Ellis and those of his stripe still maintain (quite wrongly) that the Celts "abhorred slavery". It is this sort of historical re-invention that has led to the attractive, but highly woolly, way of seeing the Celts as being the inheritors of Paradise. And we should not conflate bias and dishonesty - Caesar might well have had reasons for misrepresenting the Celts, but until the counter argument can be suppported with firm evidence, let us not be to quick to dismiss as useless propoganda one of our few primary sources.



> War I believe was no more endemic with the Celts as it would have being for any tribal group or emerging empires of the era.


 
Possibly, but it certainly wasn't any_ less_ endemic either.

Regards,

Peter


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## Urlik

considering the number of hill forts around Britain that predate the Roman invasion it is fairly obvious that there was enough warfare among the Celtic tribes to make such undertakings necessary.


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## rdenning

Rosemary said:


> The ancient Celtic tribal lands were subdued by Caesar.  The Celtic tribes moved away to other various parts of Europe.
> 
> The Celts arrived in Britain (not England then) about 900BC.  Stonehenge was finished around 1500BC, long before the Celts.  The Celts assimilated themselves throughout  most of the country and into the* British* tribes.
> 
> The later invasions by the Angles, Saxons and Jutes drove the Celts west and north, so fled across the channel to Armorica (now named Brittany after them).
> 
> The term Scotti was used to describe Irish tribes.  The term eventually embodied in the name of Scotland, was not a tribal name.  It was a generic term meaning raiders.  Original Celtic name for Scotland was Alba, later understood to mean England.  The Irish Scotti tribes invaded Scotland and northern England.  Adamnan, an Irish historian moved to Scotland and used the name Scotia to refer to Ireland and not Scotland!!  In 11th century an Irish exile called Marianus Scotus refered to his Irish compatriots as Scots.  The first Irish kingdom of Scotland was known as the Dal Riada, after Carbri Riada, son of King Conair. He led his men from Kerry to the coast of Scotland at the place now known as Argyle.  So the Scottish clans of Cambells, MacAllens and MacCullums were actually decended from the Irish Dal Riada.  From Ad850 the country was known as Scotia Minor to distinguish it from Scotia Major (Ireland).  So the name of Scotia finally became known as Scotland.  Later after a great battle around 891AD, some of the Dal Riada tribes moved south and settled in Northern Wales.  Celtic language was divided in the P Celtic and the C Celtic.  The C Celtic tribes of Ireland (Scots as they should be properly called) also invaded the coast of Wales.  The P Celtic tribes stayed and lived in Scotland.  The Prophecies of Merlin were P Celtic Stories.  The Q Celtic language was also heard in Cornwall
> All very confusing I know but just thought I would share some of my research with you.


 That's pretty much as I understand it. I think the Anglo Saxons migrated to the east of what becomes England, probably originally encouraged to come by the Romano British who were having Pict and Irish "issues". Eventually the Saxons numbers grew so big that conflict with the Roman British started in the Mid 6th century. The Battle of Catreath (Catterick) around 597 was when the Anglo Saxons in Northumbria pretty much threw off any remaining British rule in the north. So in the 6th and 7th centuries the Saxons become more powerful than the British.

What then happens to the British? Some stay and are amalgamated into the population, possibly as slaves and maybe as freemen. Some migrate west into Wales and become the Welsh. Some become the Cornish. Some leave and go to Brittany.

I find this period fascinating. Its the Birth of the British nation. From these years emerge  the English, Welsh and Scots. Its a confusing and brutal time.


----------



## anhalo

I was always under the impression that 4 Germanic tribes (Picts, Gaels, Angles and Saxons) made up most of the UK population, migrating there en masse in 8000 bc, after the end of the last glacial period when the UK was once again inhabitable? (With the picts and the gaels eventually merging as celts and the angles and the saxons merging to produce the anglo-saxons)

I also remember reading a report saying that a genetic analysis of the modern UK and Irish populations shown that most people were related to these tribes, and that roman/viking genetic influences had been over-egged, even though there were obvious cultural influences therefrom.


----------



## Vertigo

I remember hearing recently on the TV that it is now considered from the DNA evidence that the Celts were not actually a particular bunch people as such. The DNA evidence does suggest any group of people (Celts) migrating to Britain but there is evidence of considerable amounts of trade going on between Britain and the continent and it is supposed that the "migration" of the Celts was actually just the spread of shared cultural behaviour and art.


----------



## Dave

Vertigo said:


> I remember hearing recently on the TV that it is now considered from the DNA evidence that the Celts were not actually a particular bunch people as such.


I have to preface my reply by saying I haven't read all of this thread, but I just wanted to say that you may have to throw out everything you think you know once the DNA evidence starts to build.

I am following the investigation of ancient human migrations by the study of y-DNA, and from my own y-DNA it would seem that before Scotland my great grandfathers came from Ireland, and before that either via Viking Scandinavia, or directly North from the Basque Ice Age refuge. What is clear, is that there were an incredible number of different tribes and migrations.

But that is only the start. Within 15 years they expect to start work on mapping migrations using the whole human genome. You can expect some real progress made on this with real scientific evidence to back up the theories.


----------



## Tirellan

anhalo said:


> I was always under the impression that 4 Germanic tribes (Picts, Gaels, Angles and Saxons) made up most of the UK population, migrating there en masse in 8000 bc, after the end of the last glacial period when the UK was once again inhabitable? (With the picts and the gaels eventually merging as celts and the angles and the saxons merging to produce the anglo-saxons)


 
The Angles and Saxons didn't show up until around the 5th century AD


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## Boneman

Have we demanded an apology for the massacres?

(sorry, couldn't resist...)


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## Peter Graham

> I was always under the impression that 4 Germanic tribes (Picts, Gaels, Angles and Saxons) made up most of the UK population,


 
The Picts and the Gaels were not culturally Germanic - they were culturally Celtic.  Celtic culture drifted into Britain in a series of waves, starting some time in the late Bronze Age, depending on your notion of what constitutes "Celtic".  The last Celtic influx was probably the Belgic culture of the late Iron Age.

"Pict" was a name given to the peoples north of the Antonine Wall by the Romans.  It isn't what they called themselves and, as such, isn't really a helpful term.  The term is now used as convenient shorthand to describe a confederation of ancient peoples who lived in part of what is now Scotland.

"Gael" is another shorthand word, usually used to describe a culturally Celtic people who spoke a language which ultimately became Old Irish, Manx and Gaelic.

"Saxon" and "Angle" are much misused terms which refer to Germanic settlers from modern Denmark and Germany who settled in Britain from about 425 - but who may well have been here much longer.

Both the Celts and English are therefore incomers.  

Regards,

Peter


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## svalbard

Peter Graham said:


> Both the Celts and English are therefore incomers.
> Peter



Are we not all incomers at some stage in history 

Peter is quite correct in his post(although I most get back to his 'anarchist' post on another thread)

Where I would differ is that I believe the 'Picts' were active south of the Antonine Wall. 'Picts' is a collective name to the tribes, Tacitus maybe the first referance, of Britain. 

Bottom line is that nobody really knows and we are are all guessing? No written record, no facts.


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## Brandon Pilcher

Who came up with the idea that the Anglo-Saxons wiped out the British Celts? It sounds to me like someone confused a linguistic and cultural shift with ethnic cleansing.

Speaking of language, one of my pet peeves is the tendency for people to confuse language with other aspects of ethnicity, especially genotype or phenotype. For instance, a lot of people use "Semitic" to denote people with an olive-skinned Middle Eastern appearance, yet there are black Ethiopians who speak Semitic languages and olive-skinned Middle Easterners like the Iranians who don't. Language does not determine physical appearance.


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## Peter Graham

Hi Chaps,

Brandon- I rather agree with you.  The massace theory is based on a handful of references in texts (of which the vast majority were written several hundred years after the events they purportedly describe) and the apparent lack of British place name elements in most of what is now England.  There are also some hints that the kings of the Anglian homeland decamped pretty much wholesale by the end of the 5th century, but in all fairness the Anglian homeland is pretty tiny when compared to Britain as a whole and even if there was a mass migration (which is far from proven) there is no reason to believe that it led to genocide.  There is little or no archaeological evidence to support the genocide theory - although, as proponents will argue, that doesn't mean there isn't stuff waiting to be found.

Most serious historians have always had doubts about the notion of genocide and in recent years, work by incredibly reputable chaps like Nick Higham at the University of Manchester have once again challenged the populist notions of mass slaughter.  And populist is what it is - the idea of massacre and replacement seems to owe a lot to the resurgence of interest in all things Celtic and Arthurian, which flowered in the Victorian period.  We like our popular history simple- good guys and bad guys.  if the Celts are the good guys, the Saxons have to be the bad guys.

Lincolnshire is an interesting case study.  Normally regarded as one of the most heavily settled areas, the evidence of Celtic cultural survival as discovered by archaeology (pottery, brooches, the development of an Anglo-British decorative style, cemetery evidence and the apparent survial of a christian church in Lincoln itself) and textual evidence (notably the Lindsey king list and the later Life of St Guthlac) all paint a picture totally at odds with notions of ethnic cleansing.  

Svalbard - you might be right about the Picts.  Attempts have been made to see certain traits in "Pictish" culture (defensive buildings, matrilinear descent and written language) and these have effectively confined the Picts to the east of Scotland, above the Antonine Wall but not getting to the top.  The Irish called them the Cruithne.  My guess is that the picture north of the Wall was far more complex, with various tribal confederations and language groups jostling for supremacy.  

However, your idea that the Picts were living between the Walls is an interesting theory - let's hear it!

Regards,

Peter


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## River Boy

I've never bought that the Saxons completely destroyed all the Britons when they came here, and neither does Sir Frank M Stenton in 'Anglo-Saxon England' perhaps the most useful book on the time. Historians don't get a sense of the identity of the Britons from the time during/after the Roman Empire, so its convenient to paint that England suddenly became a Saxon nation - even though we hadn't been Roman during the Roman occupation, we didn't become Danish in the ninth century, and we didn't become Norman in 1066.

The lost identity of the Briton, to whom our roots and bloodlines probably owe more to than any of the invaders.


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## svalbard

Hi Peter,

My theory is half baked on the Picts. I agree with you about the possible demograhics of tribal politics north of the wall. If you look at Irish expansion into Scotland and Christianity's, they are moving against a society that might not have evolved much from tribal life of pre-Roman Britain. This is where I think a clue may lie as to who and what the Picts were. Painted People is how the name is translated from Latin. This could have being a common trait amongst all British tribes pre-Roman times, to tattoo their various tribal patterns on their bodies.

The Cruithne referance you mention is interesting. My thoughts are that they were a remnant of a people called the Fir Bolg by the Gaels or Sons of Mil during the pre-history of Ireland. Connacht, the western province of Ireland is called after them.

Flimsy I know, but I will get back to you when I have more time. Notice I make no mention of an Anglo-Saxon genocide. This I will also get back to.

Cheers,

Svalbard 'Peter Bereford-Ellis' Pendragon.


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## Peter Graham

Hi Svalbard,



> If you look at Irish expansion into Scotland and Christianity's, they are moving against a society that might not have evolved much from tribal life of pre-Roman Britain.


 
This raises further interesting questions about the nature of Irish immigration.  Although the Irish church was clearly a massively important import, I'm less sure that evidence of a language which one might call "Old Irish" being spoken on parts of the British mainland is evidence of immigration.  A highly worthy Irish academic seems to believe that "Old Irish" may just have been a language widely spoken in both our landmasses which was largely supplanted over here by the language which became Old Welsh.  Irish roots for a number of names of the early Roman period in Britannia give support to this theory.




> This is where I think a clue may lie as to who and what the Picts were. Painted People is how the name is translated from Latin. This could have being a common trait amongst all British tribes pre-Roman times, to tattoo their various tribal patterns on their bodies.


 
I agree.



> The Cruithne referance you mention is interesting. My thoughts are that they were a remnant of a people called the Fir Bolg by the Gaels or Sons of Mil during the pre-history of Ireland. Connacht, the western province of Ireland is called after them.


 
I think one has to be careful about conflating origins myths with historical fact - and I have always assumed that the Fir Bolg fall into the former category.  Does "cruithne" not mean something like "painted ones" too?  It might not!



> Notice I make no mention of an Anglo-Saxon genocide. This I will also get back to.


 
Ready and waiting, old chap.

Regards,

Peter Dumville Koch Higham Graham


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## svalbard

Hi Peter,

Primary sources are used the world over to describe historical events. At times those sources can be a generation or so removed from the events chronicled. An example would be the life Alexander the Great. Yet no one debates the accuracy of his life apart from a few obscure events such as the visit to Siwa. 

When it comes to the so called 'Dark Ages' of Britain we do have a primary source. He might be considered a curmudgeon, but Gildas was a recorder of the times.

Now I have never shirked from the fact that the British, Irish and Saxons killed each other with relish through out those times. Gildas, Bede and the ASC all attest to this. British kings allied themselves with Saxon kings as the need took them. The Saxons did not need to conquer the Romano-British as they were doing a pretty good job of killing themselves in their own struggles.

But and this is a big one. Gildas is sure in his writings as he denegrates the British leaders. There is only one true enemy and that is the Saxons. He is the only written word of that time in Britain that has come down to us and yet he is dismissed as a rabid preacher. We base this on a few archeological finds and the fleeting mention of Saxon kings with suspect names, which leads back to the bloody nature of the times. 

Was it genocide? Not as we would describe it in today's terms. Was it a conquest? I would have to argue that it was.

Regards,

Svalbard 'Baram Blackett'


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## J-WO

I'm absolutley no expert on this period, so forgive me barging in, but isn't possible these 'genocides' were merely the toppling of one ruling class and the foundation of another, albeit a recently arrived one?

I mean, if I was a Saxon Lord or whatever, I'd leave the peasantry alone to get on with the already existant farming infrastructure etc- if in ain't broke why fix it?


----------



## Peter Graham

Hi Svalbard,



> When it comes to the so called 'Dark Ages' of Britain we do have a primary source. He might be considered a curmudgeon, but Gildas was a recorder of the times.


 
Not quite, we don't. If Gildas is writing about 540 ish (give or take), he was born circa 500ish. That is anything up to 75 years (or three generations) after the so called adventus and at least 50 years after the alleged Saxon rebellion. It's rather like us setting out to write a firsthand account of the Boer War.

Not only that, but Gildas was not writing history in the sense that we understand it today. He was writing polemic - the Saxons are God's punishment on the Britons for their dissolute ways. The tone of his writing has much in common with thundering Biblical punishments such as the plagues of Egypt.

We also know that Gildas is not good on his Roman history - look at his account of the building of Hadrian's Wall.

Of course, this doesn't mean he is wrong. I accept that there must be some truth in what he is writing. The question is, how much truth? So far, we have virutally no archaeological evidence to back up Gildas' reports of the burning and sacking of cities from coast to coast. We have increasing evidence for the survival - indeed flourishing - of British power in significant chunks of what later became England (let alone Wales and Scotland). We have a growing body of evidence from some areas that points at assimilation.

So, I think what we have in the "Saxon revolt" is really just localised trouble in the south east. The Saxons were unlikely to be causing issues in the west and north at this stage and the evidence of the East Midlands points to largely peaceful intermingling.




> He is the only written word of that time in Britain that has come down to us and yet he is dismissed as a rabid preacher. We base this on a few archeological finds and the fleeting mention of Saxon kings with suspect names, which leads back to the bloody nature of the times.


 
I don't know that we do. In Lincolnshire, for example, we base it on pottery and decorative jewellery styles, on dating English cemeteries and burial practices, on the apparent continuation of not only urban but also Christian life in Lincoln and on etymological evidence of places and people. It is way more than a few fleeting finds. A solid corpus of evidence is beginning to emerge for one region and whilst we could never say that this picture is true of everywhere, it does give the lie to the simplistic "the Saxons landed correctly at Thanet and put everyone to fire and the sword" argument.



> Was it genocide? Not as we would describe it in today's terms. Was it a conquest? I would have to argue that it was.


 
You may be right, but what do we mean by conquest? Does conquest presuppose armed conflict, or can it come about culturally or through intermarriage? Or by any one of the above?

Regards,

Peter "Bring me the head of Sellars" Graham


----------



## Peter Graham

Hi J-Wo



> I'm absolutley no expert on this period, so forgive me barging in, but isn't possible these 'genocides' were merely the toppling of one ruling class and the foundation of another, albeit a recently arrived one?


 
It certainly is. In fact, this argument puts you in very distingushed company.

The toppling gets more complex still when one realises that Saxon toppled Saxon as readily as they toppled Briton. The Britons did likewise. We like our history neat - and never more so than when dealing with an obscure period such as the Dark Ages. We also like to see history through our own eyes - and, at the moment, we seem obsessed with the primacy of nation states. This causes many to view the period as essentially an ethnic struggle between Briton and Saxon - an approach which I believe is fundamentally flawed.



> I mean, if I was a Saxon Lord or whatever, I'd leave the peasantry alone to get on with the already existant farming infrastructure etc- if in ain't broke why fix it?


 
So would I.

Regards,

Peter


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## svalbard

Hi Peter,

http://mbe.oxfordjournals.org/content/19/7/1008.long

http://www.gnxp.com/MT2/archives/000648.html

The above articles tackle the gene pool question and like many studies of these kind can be looked at in a number of ways. The first one is heavy on the science with the analaysis about two thirds of the way through. The authors make no claims. However their findings about how many migrant Saxon's it would take to change the gene pool is interesting. More importantly how long it would have taken if it was not a mass migration. 

The second article is more biased in it's outlook.

Regards,

'Dog with a Bone' Svalbard.


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## Peter Graham

Hi Svalbard,

Interesting links - thanks for that.

I'm no geneticist and I've always got a bit of an aversion to posting links to sources which I can't really comment on, but I am aware that there are other studies which show much smaller migration levels.

But even if we take the Oxford Journal study at face value, I still don't see that it supports the notion of replacement of one population with another one. Nor does it specifically or exclusively support an adventus in 440 or thereabouts. The authors are at pains to point out that whilst they have _assumed_ a single migration event, the data does not preclude other conclusions. They also cannot say when the incomers came or whether the incomers lived alongside - or in place of - the earlier inhabitants. We know that the counties which are traditionally reported to have seen greatest English immigration are also those with the largest contemporary populations - perhaps suggesting (but no more than that) co-existence rather than replacement. The finds for Lincolnshire (one of those counties) also points heavily at co-existence.

I can't see that the evidence clarifies the issue of whether intermarriage would leave the same genetic markers.

However, if well-founded, I'd agree that the results do point at something more than the replacement of warrior aristocracies alone. There is other evidence of this (the size of the early English cemeteries and cryptic hints about the early Mercian king list in Beowulf, to name but two pieces).

The real question is whether the English won by conquest or assimilation. I think it depended. To see it as an ethnic struggle of Saxon-vs-Briton or even as some sort of analogy for modern day relations between the English and their "Celtic" neighbours (as Beresford Ellis does, although I note in more recent comments he made that he appears to be distancing himself from some of his earlier conclusions) is to misunderstand what I think was a far more complex and fluid situation.

I don't accuse Gildas of lying, but I do accuse him of serious exaggeration. I accept that the Saxons were a warlike people (as were the Celts) and I find it very hard to accept that a model of kingship which is based around the martial prowess of the warband would not seek out, and engage in, conflict. I think this is what happened in the south at least. Elsewhere, the model much less certain. 

I suspect we agree that Dark Age armies were small - measured in hundreds rather than thousands. If this is indeed common ground, how is is that such huge tracts of land can change hands on the outcome of one battle such as Bedford or Chester? If indeed they did, I'd argue that the answer is simple - the winning side has effectively lopped off the opposing king and his warband. The way is clear for the victors to take the top table in whatever networks of patronage and tribute exist in that area. They are not having to deal with a nation under arms. For most people, life goes on.

Regards,

Peter


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## J-WO

'I, for one, welcome our new Saxon overlords.'


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## svalbard

http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/the-anglo-saxon-invasion-britain-is-more-germanic-than-it-thinks-a-768706-2.html

Here is an interesting article which again shows that this debate is still very much open with new studies offering new information. I will look for some of Prof. Harke's material to study it more closely. I would like to know how he arrives at his estimate of 200,000 Anglo-Saxon settlers. If his figures are anywhere near that number then it throws a question mark over the theory of just a transfer of power to a ruling elite.


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## paranoid marvin

J-WO said:


> 'I, for one, welcome our new Saxon overlords.'


 

Haha, all hail Cameron the Unready!


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## Dave

> The London geneticist Mark Thomas is convinced that the conquerors from the continent maintained "social structures similar to apartheid," a view supported by the laws of King Ine of Wessex (around 695). They specify six social levels for the Britons, five of which refer to slaves.


To be fair to the Anglo-Saxons, the Britons would already be possessed of a 'slave mentality' from life under the Roman occupation. All the Anglo-Saxons did was to replace the Romans. The Picts and Northern Britons were never tamed.

I said earlier in this thread that Genetic Genealogy would transform this kind of research. This is only skimming the surface of the pool of what will ultimately be possible. 



> As a result of the brutal subjugation, the reproduction rate of the losing Britons was apparently curbed, while the winners had many children. The consequences are still evident today in the British gene pool. "People from rural England are more closely related to the northern Germans than to their countrymen from Wales or Scotland," Härke explains.


His studies were on the y-Chromosome (passed from father to son) and that conclusion is hardly a new one. I suspect strongly that if he did a similar study using the mitochondrial X-chromosome (passed from mother to child) then he would find a different story. Historically, the men folk were killed in battle, subjugated, or just massacred; but the women were more likely taken as brides.

In other words, on average, for the rural English person his most distant male ancestor was probably an Anglo-Saxon, but his most distant female ancestor was possibly a Briton. That is a gross generalisation though. (There were plenty of Romans legionnaires who stayed behind, just for starters, particularly around Hadrian's Wall.)


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## Peter Graham

The article isn't at all academic and is riddled with errors,  but it  would certainly be good to see Harke's research.  I see that Michael  Wood recently put the opposing view on his slightly-more-academic recent  TV show, which pointed to DNA results which showed that nearly all of us  in England had "Celtic" blood.

One must be careful with Ine.  His law code was issued nearly three  hundred years after the "adventus" - the same difference in time between  us and the Old Pretender's Jacobite uprising.  Ine was a king of  Wessex, which abutted strong and extant Brythonic (Celtic) kingdoms.  We  don't know as much as we think about the nature of slavery and bonded  servitude in that period, but unquestionably the top rank of Ine's  subject Welshmen were relatively large landowners.  Nonetheless, Ine's  laws tell us very little about the political situation in the early  fifth century, just as Anglo-Scottish relations today tell us very  little about the 1715 uprising.

What we do know is that by Ine's time, the English kingdoms were  developing into political structures stronger than the warband.  We also  know - or can reasonably surmise from the names of the early kings -  that Ine's Wessex was originally a Brythonic rather than an English  kingdom, a fact that appeared to be lost on the men who compiled the  Anglo Saxon Chronicle many centuries after the kingdom had been created.

By the time of Nennius, the Annales and the Chronicle, the revolving  succession of petty kingdoms of the fifth and sixth had been replaced by  larger, more stable kingdoms which were starting to look and behave  like nation states - Mercia, Wessex, Northumbria, Powys, Gwynedd,  Dumnonia, Strathclyde, Dal Riada etc.  I believe that the older history  was shoehorned to fit this later model, which is where this rather  simplistic notion of "Celt v Saxon" arose.

200,000 immigrants seems like a lot and there is little or no evidence  of such large scale migration in the early to mid fifth - although I  accept the old adage that absence of evidence is not evidence of  absence.

As you might have guessed, my particular interest is Dark Age Lincolnshire.  Lincolnshire was one  of the major destinations for the Germanic immigrants, but as can be  implied from the work of historians/archaelogists such as Leahy, Sawyer  and Green, the evidence that exists for the fifth and sixth points at  integration rather than violent and sudden displacement.  If finds in  the early English cemeteries are reliable, we are looking at a pastoral  rather than a warrior people (in marked contrast to Kent).

Regards,

Peter


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## svalbard

I quite enjoy Michael Wood's shows, his *In the Footsteps of Alexander* is one of my all time favourite documentary series. Although I must admit to falling foul of the TV critics who panned his latest series, A.A Gill in particular. Not something I normally give in to, but I do feel Wood's of recent times is starting to present his history shows with a heavy dose of saccharine. 

I am somewhat torn on this subject. My feeling is that there is an element of both peaceful settlement in certain areas and slaughter in others. I imagine there were even alliances of 'Saxon' and Brythonic, the foundation of Wessex could very well be the product of such an alliance.

The 200,000 does seem like a lot, but Stephan Oppenheimer, a geneticist(need to check that) and one of the proponents of the assimilation theory does not dismiss this figure out of hand. Large migrations does not necessarily mean genocide for the native populations, but it does increase the likelihood of conflict.

On Gildas and Bede. Interestingly Roman historians tend be taken at their word for the accounts they write about, but we cast doubt on Gildas and Bede our only concrete written window into this time.


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## Brian G Turner

> "People from rural England are more closely related to the northern  Germans than to their countrymen from Wales or Scotland," Härke  explains.


It's worth noting with this comment that Britain saw repeated invasions from central and northern Europe - heck, even the Celts were supposedly Germanic in origin, coming from the area above the Alps, and this was but one wave of invasion - the Celts supplanted the people who built Stonehenge, who themselves were supposed to be migrants from northern Europe.

The curious thing about the Scots is that they originated from Ireland - so it's worth postulating that Irish ancestory might primarily be based on an earlier invasion genepool. As the Welsh retained their language, along with Cornwall, a similar argument might be made to those being last outposts of that prior gene pool.

In other words, the "British" that the Roman's found were a people dominated by Germanic migrations/invasions that were not able to properly penetrate into Wales and Ireland. They may not have penetrated into the Scottish highlands, either, as the Picts appear to be a culture into themselves - until conquered and left to history by the Irish Scots.

In which case, any Anglo-Saxon displacement of the resident English was in fact simply displacing the latest previous Germanic migration/invasion. And neither of which gene pool as having a very significant impact on Wales, Ireland, or therefore Scotland.

That would make it no surprise that the rural English were still genetically tied to the continent, and that Ireland, Scotland, and Wales might retain a more distinguishable prior gene pool.

(An additional note is that in Roman times, the Parisi of East Yorkshire had a culture held to be distinct from the rest of England, yet more closely related to that of northern Europe. That suggests there had been an even more recent migration of peoples from the Zeider Zee to the Humber.)


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## Peter Graham

> The curious thing about the Scots is that they originated from  Ireland - so it's worth postulating that Irish ancestory might primarily  be based on an earlier invasion genepool.


This is certainly a popular hypothesis - a strong one, too.

There is, however, an alternative hypothesis, although I've only seen it argued by one chap.

The theory goes that the language which became Old Irish was originally  spoken across all of the British Isles.  At some point in the late Iron  Age, a new wave of Celtic incomers/invaders came to the country.  They  spoke a slightly different language, which ultimately became Old Welsh.   When the Romans turned up, OI was being pushed north and west by OW.   The Romans had a habit of Latinising existing place and personal names,  so one can find Irish roots by looking at what the Romans called  things.  Examples include:

1.  York.  The Roman name was Eboracum, which is a Latinisation of  Eboracon.  The "ebor" comes from OI "yew trees".  The OW would be  "ywen".

2.  Boudicca.  From an OI root meaning "destroyer".

3.  Cartimandua.  From OI "Great Queen".

4.  Venutius.  From OI "skinner".

And so on - there are masses of them (towns, tribal names, personal  names etc).  But by the time Rome left (insofar as it did), OW dominated the speech of most of  what is now the British mainland.

In subsequent ages, it is noteworthy that there was a Dal Riada in both  Argyll and Ulster.  It is assumed that the Irish one colonised the  Argyll one, thus explaining the existence of apparently Irish place  names on the British mainland.  However, if we accept that the  fossilised Latin names show that OI was originally spoken across the  British mainland, a rather different picture emerges.  




> As the Welsh retained their language, along with Cornwall, a  similar argument might be made to those being last outposts of that  prior gene pool.


Possibly - but language is not always a good indicator of the ethnic origins of those who speak it.  



> In other words, the "British" that the Roman's found were a  people dominated by Germanic migrations/invasions that were not able to  properly penetrate into Wales and Ireland.


Good point. The notion that Germanic peoples lived in Britain throughout  the Roman period is also gaining credibility at the moment - it's been  argued for the Parisi, but also for the Iceni (though see the comment re  Boudicca's name, above).



> In which case, any Anglo-Saxon displacement of the resident English was  in fact simply displacing the latest previous Germanic  migration/invasion. And neither of which gene pool as having a very  significant impact on Wales, Ireland, or therefore Scotland.


A linguistic displacement is not the same as a genetic one, as I'm sure  you'd agree.  English Northumbria stretched to Edinburgh for a time,  whereas Welsh Strathclyde stretched to Morecambe Bay on a good day  (incidentally, Morecambe itself is a Celtic survival despite sounding  quintessentially English - "crooked sea").  

The speed with which petty kingdoms - English or Celtic - could rise and fall suggests to me that nation building was the preserve of small numbers of aristocrats and that for most people, it mattered not a jot who was in control.  If it had mattered - had the loss of the warband meant that extermination or displacement was on the cards - one would expect to see "nations under arms" - everyone turning out to defend their lives, their families and their property from the invader.  But nothing in the texts, the poems, the cemeteries or the archaeology even hints that this happened.

Regards,

Peter


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## Venusian Broon

I said:


> In other words, the "British" that the Roman's found were a people dominated by Germanic migrations/invasions that were not able to properly penetrate into Wales and Ireland. They may not have penetrated into the Scottish highlands, either, as the Picts appear to be a culture into themselves - until conquered and left to history by the Irish Scots.


 
Taking it slightly off a tangent here, but still on the theme of displacement of people, could it not be that the Picts just peaceably melded with the Irish Scots, rather than were conquered? By all accounts the Picts were far more numerous and more than capable of defeating strong foes if needed. There was, I believe, a great deal of interaction between Pictish and Irish Scottish nobility. (As there was no doubt plenty of to-ing and fro-ing with practically all kingdoms within striking distance and further afield.) 

So perhaps it was more of an 'upper management issue' where the overall king of Alba traced his descent through the Irish Scottish side. It's interesting that the Scottish king's coronation stone, clearly was from Ireland, but was kept in Scone in the heart of Pict territory. 

Hence the Picts were never defeated, it's just that we just brand them as Scottish by the 10th Century or thereabouts. 




Peter Graham said:


> The speed with which petty kingdoms - English or Celtic - could rise and fall suggests to me that nation building was the preserve of small numbers of aristocrats and that for most people, it mattered not a jot who was in control. If it had mattered - had the loss of the warband meant that extermination or displacement was on the cards - one would expect to see "nations under arms" - everyone turning out to defend their lives, their families and their property from the invader. But nothing in the texts, the poems, the cemeteries or the archaeology even hints that this happened.


 
That's a very good point Peter, it was a turbulent period, not helped by the fact that alot of what happened just was not reported on very well, or not at all. 

I'll state the obvious and point to the big external threat of the viking invaders that galvanised the loose confederations, alliances and petty and not so petty kingdoms into the nations we see today, most obviously for the English but I'm sure this helped the proto-Scottish nation to band together as well. (I'm not sure why this didn't occur in Ireland. Possibly the impact of the Vikings on Ireland was less?) 

---

Finally getting a bit more firmly on topic, (I haven't read the first 3-4 pages of this thread so apolgies if I'm just re-treading old ground). Is the explanation of genocide to explain why cultures dissappear not just a 20th Century artefact foremost in our minds because of the horrors discovered in 1945? It certainly reads bolder, hence perhaps why it's routinely suggested for why things are missing (on broader terms even: Homo Sapians causing genocide/deliberate extinction of Neandertals, North American major fauna, Mammoths, etc...) Personally I think it's too much of a simplistic answer (and where are the piles of thousands & thousands of captives heads or other evidence of genocide?!?) 

That's not to say there were not bloody times - William the conquerer subduing the Saxon north after it rebelled did kill a very significant proportion (majority?) of the population, so horrors must have occurred. And clearly a little later in history and slightly further afield you can point to the Mongols who did indeed practice genocide on all those farmers/city dwellers who were spoiling their vision of glorious steppe and priarie land.


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## Peter Graham

> Hence the Picts were never defeated, it's just that we just brand them as Scottish by the 10th Century or thereabouts.


I think this is probably true.  We know that the Picts did fight the Dal Riadans (and everyone else), but ultimately they were most likely absorbed by their Scottish neighbours.  Interestingly, one of the great pro-extermination arguments is the lack of Brythonic words in the English language.  I'm not aware of any survival of the Pictish language either, yet this is never really argued as evidence that the Dal Riadans exterminated them all.

We have to watch the timelines here.  Looking back on this age 1,000 odd years down the line, it's easy to forget that we are making comment on nearly 600 years of our collective history.  70 years ago, we were at war with Germany.  Now we are close allies.  For most of the last 900 years, we have been cheerfully bashing lumps out of the French.  Now we are close allies.  I see no reason why the sands could not have shifted as readily back then as they do now.  In fact, I'd be surprised if they didn't.




> I'll state the obvious and point to the big external threat of the viking invaders that galvanised the loose confederations, alliances and petty and not so petty kingdoms into the nations we see today


I'm not sure that is so obvious, in all fairness.  Like "Saxon", "Viking" is a convenient term to describe a large number of different folk groups.  By the time the Great Army rolled up, Mercia, Northumbria, Wessex, Strathclyde etc were already well established kingdoms.  We all know about the sacking of Lindisfarne and Alfred with his cakes, but not all Norse incursions were violent.  In Cumbria, there are relatively few English place names, but masses of Norse ones - beck, *thwaite, *by, dale, fell, force, scale, scar, *ness etc.  There is little or no evidence of violent incursion or settlement.




> (I'm not sure why this didn't occur in Ireland. Possibly the impact of the Vikings on Ireland was less?)


It was massive.  The northwest of England was largely settled by Vikings from Ireland.  Dublin was a hugely important Viking city and one could even argue that the ginger half of Ireland have their roots in Scandinavia.



> Is the explanation of genocide to explain why cultures dissappear not just a 20th Century artefact foremost in our minds because of the horrors discovered in 1945?


It's also convenient.  Norman supplants Viking supplants Saxon supplants Celt/Roman supplants other Celt supplants proto-Celt supplants Beaker Person etc is nice and easy to understand.  In addition, it can play well to tub-thumping nationalist sentiment (Saxons=English=wicked, drunken, violent oppressors, Celts=not English=splendid, peaceloving, artistic people not unlike Tolkien's High Elves).



> That's not to say there were not bloody times - William the conquerer subduing the Saxon north after it rebelled did kill a very significant proportion (majority?) of the population, so horrors must have occurred.


Absolutely agreed.  Everyone, be they Saxon, Viking, Celt or Pict, relied on the warband.  Warbands are all made up of young fighting men bound by ties of honour to their lord.  The ties went both ways - which Svalbard catches beautifully in his fiction - and the lords were under a duty to keep their warriors in a manner which would not have disgraced today's rappers or premiership footballers.   War was therefore endemic in the system.

Regards,

Peter


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## Nerds_feather

I said:


> I
> In other words, the "British" that the Roman's found were a people dominated by Germanic migrations/invasions that were not able to properly penetrate into Wales and Ireland. They may not have penetrated into the Scottish highlands, either, as the Picts appear to be a culture into themselves - until conquered and left to history by the Irish Scots.



just a little pedantic aside, but it's generally thought the germanic invasions/migrations didn't occur until well after the romans arrived in britain, and didn't really hit full scale until after the romans had pretty much abandoned their outposts in britain.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Saxon_settlement_of_Britain 

there are obviously a lot of open questions concerning that period in history, for example how many angles/saxons/jutes, to what degree did they supplant vs. dominate vs. assimilate into "british" society, etc.


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## Venusian Broon

Nerds_feather said:


> just a little pedantic aside, but it's generally thought the germanic invasions/migrations didn't occur until well after the romans arrived in britain, and didn't really hit full scale until after the romans had pretty much abandoned their outposts in britain.


 
I think I_Brian's point was that the Celts themselves were a migration that (possibly) originated from the general area of 'Germania' or modern Germany/Switzerland, so in that respect were just like one of many waves immigration that flooded the early British isle and were all quite similar in this geographical respect. 

They were of course not German or even of the stock of people that we'd consider German.


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## svalbard

VB, 

The Vikings had a massive effect on Ireland. As Peter points out Dublin was a major trading centre for them and kingdom in its own right. One of the most significant battles in the Viking era occurred at Clontarf, just outside Dublin, on 1014. The Viking army that day included the Earl of Orkney and contingents from as far a field as Iceland. Happy to report that the Irish won a resounding victory although Brian Boru and his heir were killed in fighting. Brian's grandson, all of 14 years old was also killed in the battle. He was found, so the story goes, with his hands clasped around the head of a dead Norseman. 

Thanks for the kind comments, Peter.


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## Venusian Broon

Hi svalbard, 

I apologise for my lack of knowledge of Irish history, I had punted a huge speculation and meandered into a different area of thought . My first thirty years of learning and inquiry were definitely science focused, so I have been catching up on history and other areas a little bit at a time. I just hadn't got round to the Emerald Isle. I did know a long time ago that Dublin was a Viking settlement, so there may be some hope. 

As an aside, svalbard (So more apologies to those reading the thread - meandering off a bit), I'm interested in why the Irish never seemed to form a unified strong nation state, like an England or Scotland - I'm sure there are many reasons over the centuries so it'll be a complex answer. Is this a mystery, have I completely mis-read the history (or not read it at all )? 

On a second aside, I'd be very grateful if you could recommend a good history/s of Ireland. I'd be interested in all eras, from the first inhabitants to modern day, but I suppose my (slightly more) specific areas of interest gravitate from first inhabitants to up to ~18th Century at the moment. I'd guess that there may be a range of books that tackle specific areas individually. If you know of any great books offhand I'd really appreciate it. 

The problem I've found with Irish history books is, a bit like books of Chinese history, is that they are definitely much more focused on the modern era. 

Right, I will stop hijacking the thread about unrelated issues. 

Cheers, 

VB


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## Peter Graham

> As an aside, svalbard (So more apologies to those reading the thread - meandering off a bit), I'm interested in why the Irish never seemed to form a unified strong nation state, like an England or Scotland


I may be wrong, but I'd guess a lack of feudalism.  Until 1066, England, Scotland and Ireland were all made up of shifting and competing petty kingdoms.  The Norman Conquest brought with it a far more organised and rigid social structure which was imposed on England and adopted in southern Scotland.  The same Norman French lords who held England also held the valuable bits of Scotland (the Stewarts were originally stewards to the Dapifers of Dol in Normandy).

The system relied on strong central government and completely replaced the rather more fluid and inclusive (if you were rich enough) earlier structures, such as the English Witan.  There were very many bad things about feudalism - especially if you were English - but it allowed for greater royal control.  In any event, England is much easier to hold geographically than much of Scotland - it's flatter, had a road network and is nearer to the recognised centre of government.

I don't think that Ireland really embraced feudalism, meaning that it clung to the old ways.  The Highlands of Scotland too - the hideously re-invented clan system was effectively an Iron Age throwback.  The problem with the earlier, non-feudal systems were that they were prone to internecine conflict.  Feudalism was not without its rebellions, but I think there was a subtle difference.  If you want to topple Henry I (or whoever), you must take London and effectively replace him.   The feudal civil service  (for want of a better description) now works for you.  The power is always based in London.  By contrast, if you want to dominate Ireland, you can do so from wherever you happen to be based.  The Irish system (repeated in England throughout the Saxon period as power shifted from Northumbria to Mercia and ultimately to Wessex) thereby allowed any warrior with a following to be overking - but did not necessarily provide for a strong enough administration to establish a line after death.

That's my view, although like I say - it's a guess!

Regards

Peter


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## Venusian Broon

Peter Graham said:


> That's my view, although like I say - it's a guess!


 
Cheers Peter much appreciated, 

I love this style of, how should I put it, 'analytical' history of group and society dynamics (?). Speculation of course and impossible to prove one way or another. 

History today seems much more about the personal experiences, which is also good in its own way and I can understand given the advances in archeological techniques that gives much more insight to individual lives, but I suppose the inner scientist in me yearns for broader and more generalisable dynamics. 

(or of course it might be the effect of reading about Hari Seldon's psychohistory from Asimov's _Foundation _series)


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## Nerds_feather

Feudalism doesn't entail a strong state, look at Germany during that period. It was the "most" feudal area of Europe, and was divided into small principalities loosely assembled into the confederal Holy Roman Empire. 

I suspect the answer as to why England developed different from Ireland may have to do with the specific way in which the Normans consolidated power after 1066, replacing the Saxon nobility with loyalists from France, etc.


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## Peter Graham

> I suspect the answer as to why England developed different from Ireland may have to do with the specific way in which the Normans consolidated power after 1066, replacing the Saxon nobility with loyalists from France, etc.


Loyalty wasn't really a virtue one could associate with the rag tag collection of chancers, mercenaries and jug-eared psychopaths who accompanied William on his little cross-Channel jaunt!

It would also be wrong to think of the Saxon nobility pre-1066 as being in any way a unified force.  Sacrilege though it might be for an Englishman to say it, William had a better claim to the throne than Harold Godwinsson.   The whole idea of there being one King of England was little more than 100 years old and there were still large chunks of the country only too ready to take up arms at the drop of a hat.  We'd been ruled by a bewildering succession of English, Danes and Norwegians and the primacy of the royal line of Wessex was not exactly a done deal in places like Northumbria or the Five Boroughs.

As with many aspects of Scottish nationalism, the notion of an English nobility united against the wicked Norman is more myth than history.  I'd argue that William replaced the English nobility less because he feared them and more because he was expected to share the spoils of confict with his powerful vassals.  They came with him for land, prestige and money and he'd not have lasted long had he not obliged them.

I'd agree that feudalism doesn't automatically mean a strong state.   But in England and lowland Scotland at least, it stood a greater chance of creating a stronger state than what went before.

Regards,

Peter


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## Nerds_feather

Agree on the pre-conquest Saxon nobility...it was anything but unified, though of course we might be talking differently right now (or not at all) had Harald Hardradi not decided to invade England just before William the ******* did. 

My point was that William had to consolidate power in a specific way--he had to reward those who had fought for him, and he had to eliminate the possibility of rebellion. Though that didn't really work out in his lifetime, he set the seeds for a strong state by replacing the Saxons, building simple castles (as I understand it, castles were not so common prior to 1066) and so on. Things were bad under William Rufus (full of rebellions and strife), leaving it up to Henry I to finish the job. He initiated comprehensive taxation and finances and, I think, was probably the king we can most duly credit for England's (relatively) strong medieval state.  At least, that's the argument I would make.

Can't really speak to Scotland, as I don't know enough about its historical development.


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## svalbard

VB,

Why did Ireland not develop into a strong nation state? You could write a thesis on that  It might have something to do with our contrary natures here, a strong sense of tribalism(which still exists today) and an ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory 

Even the victory at Clontarf over the Vikings failed to unite the Irish. With the death of Brian Boru, power shifted to another king, Malachi Mor, away from Brian's family. Years of strife followed. It is interesting to note that the Norman's were invited into Ireland by the exiled king of Leinster. 

The Brehon laws of Ireland were also cultural thing and not a centrally enforced set of laws. It was very much a clan based system which held sway right up to the time of the Flight of the Earls in the early 1600s.

The Norman conquest of Ireland did not lead to the feudalism that came into existence in  England. The leading Norman families such as the Butlers and FitzGeralds became "more Irish than the Irish themselves". Although they changed the face of Ireland in certain ways the Norman's continued to rule as the native Irish chieftains marrying into many of the those families. A small part of Ireland, around Dublin and south Leinster became more centralised as the years wore on. This area became known as 'The Pale'. I am not too sure if the saying 'Beyond the Pale' has crossed the water, but it essentially means going into unknown territory. 

If you can find it try Francis John Boyle's High Kings of Ireland.


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## Nerds_feather

svalbard said:


> Even the victory at Clontarf over the Vikings failed to unite the Irish. With the death of Brian Boru, power shifted to another king, Malachi Mor, away from Brian's family. Years of strife followed. It is interesting to note that the Norman's were invited into Ireland by the exiled king of Leinster.



well there's an interesting potential explanation: it has to do with having or not having a stable mode of succession.

have you ever read amin malouf's "the crusades through arab eyes?" it's basically a historiography of contemporary arab writings on the crusades, as they were happening. pretty interesting book, but to me the MOST interesting bit is when malouf gives a theory as to why the islamic states of the middle east--which were at that time more advanced than the christian states of europe--declined after the crusades, while europe rose. (of course it's only true if you look long-term, given that the height of ottoman power came in the 16th century). he argues that it's because the crusaders learned from the arabs, and incorporated things they found that were useful, whereas the arabs did not. he argues that the most useful political institution the europeans had was the hereditary succession, and that whereas this ensured a great deal of stability, in the middle east every time a sultan died there was a civil war. 

so yeah, this might be applicable to the question at hand!


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## svalbard

Nerds_feather said:


> Things were bad under William Rufus (full of rebellions and strife), leaving it up to Henry I to finish the job. He initiated comprehensive taxation and finances and, I think, was probably the king we can most duly credit for England's (relatively) strong medieval state.  At least, that's the argument I would make.



...there was just the small problem of a 17 year civil war after the death of Henry I 

Henry II would be one of my bets on the King who did most to create a strong and powerful state, but I would even look further down the line at Edward I. 

To your point on the Crusades. That sounds like an interesting read and I am always on the look out for different perspectives. You could be right on a strong succession plan. The laws of inheritance in pre-Norman Ireland were quite complicated. The eldest did not always succeed his father and at times lands would be parceled out to some or all siblings. This could and did lead to difficulties. 

Oh dear, this thread is well and truly high-jacked. My apologies.


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## Nerds_feather

yep, i see that it is...but i don't see why a clearly-stated topic should get in the way of an interesting, free-flowing conversation!

the malouf book is quite good, and among other things reinforces the notion that western historians have emphasized recently that all these medieval religious wars were marked by a negotiability and navigability that we today often realize. or, to put it another way, there was a lot more communication, sharing going on than the caricatures and political rhetoric from west and east say there was.

not saying the crusades and other religious wars, such as the muslim invasions of the mediterranean weren't violent or, at times, brutal...but rather that they were more complex and complicated than we sometimes assume. malouf's book does a good job of capturing that.

it's a quick read as well.


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## svalbard

Phoned a friend, who contacted another, who also seems to have contacted someone else and I should have a copy of Malouf's book when I come back off holidays in 2 weeks time. Talk to you then.


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## Venusian Broon

svalbard said:


> VB,
> 
> If you can find it try Francis John Boyle's High Kings of Ireland.


 
Cheers svalbard, will take a note and will keep an eye out.


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## silvermoon

Bryan Sykes reckons the mitochondrial DNA (ie female lines of descent) in Britain show that most have Celtic ancestry--implying that even if the Romans, Saxons, Vikings or Normans killed off bucket-loads of men in the preceding population, they bred with the women, and thus there are few female lines which are specifically of those aforementioned groups.


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## Peter Graham

I agree that this is what the evidence tends to show, but "Celtic" might be a bit of a misnomer in this context.  The Celts were also originally a wave of warrior invaders who assumed control over the native population as was.  The Celts were no more the original inhabitants of our islands than the Normans were.

It isn't necessary to assume the massacre of the "Celtic" menfolk.  The evidence - such as it is - shows development of what one might call an Anglo-celtic decorative style in many parts of the country.  Archaeology and place name evidence indicates survival and co-existence and there are even a handful of references in the texts which make it clear that many places had two names - an older, "Celtic" one and a newer, "English" one.  In most cases, the English name eventually won out, but that is likely to be as a result of the spread of the English language - which is not dependent on slaughter.

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, but even so, there has been a persistent lack of any archaeological evidence to support the slaughter and displacement argument.  

The slaughter argument rests principally on the texts, which, with the exception of Gildas, were written hundreds - often many hundreds - of years after the earlier events they describe.  By the time the Chronicle, Bede, the Annales and the Historia were been written, the situation had changed massively and neophyte nation states were beginning to emerge.  Gildas is demonstrably...erm...shaky on his history and was principally engaged in writing religious polemic rather than impartial history as we understand it today.  Which isn't to entirely disregard what he says (whether we trust him or not, he was at least there*), although it is to seek to see it in the proper context.

The written records for the Viking and Norman periods are much better, and whilst they contain a fair amount of evidence for violence, they do not suggest anything along the lines of ethnic cleansing.  

Regards,

Peter

*  Which is increasingly looking like bad news for those who seek to link the probably historical battle of Badon with the possibly not quite as historical as we think figure of Arthur.


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## svalbard

Look who's back...the thread that refuses to die 

I understand new DNA studies from Oxford University are showing that East England and Central England showed large influxes of peoples we collectively term Anglo-Saxons. This is a story that will continue with more twists and turns as the science grows. It seems that Opennheimer's early work now needs to be treated with some scepticism. Looks like invasion is back on the menu. I will find some links and stick them up.


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## BAYLOR

svalbard said:


> Look who's back...the thread that refuses to die
> 
> I understand new DNA studies from Oxford University are showing that East England and Central England showed large influxes of peoples we collectively term Anglo-Saxons. This is a story that will continue with more twists and turns as the science grows. It seems that Opennheimer's early work now needs to be treated with some scepticism. Looks like invasion is back on the menu. I will find some links and stick them up.



Prior to the Anglo Saxons? wasn't England inhabitats mostly Celts?


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## Aquilonian

Peter Graham said:


> It isn't necessary to assume the massacre of the "Celtic" menfolk.  The evidence - such as it is - shows development of what one might call an Anglo-celtic decorative style in many parts of the country.  Archaeology and place name evidence indicates survival and co-existence and there are even a handful of references in the texts which make it clear that many places had two names - an older, "Celtic" one and a newer, "English" one.  In most cases, the English name eventually won out, but that is likely to be as a result of the spread of the English language - which is not dependent on slaughter.
> 
> Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, but even so, there has been a persistent lack of any archaeological evidence to support the slaughter and displacement argument.
> 
> The slaughter argument rests principally on the texts, which, with the exception of Gildas, were written hundreds - often many hundreds - of years after the earlier events they describe.  By the time the Chronicle, Bede, the Annales and the Historia were been written, the situation had changed massively and neophyte nation states were beginning to emerge.  Gildas is demonstrably...erm...shaky on his history and was principally engaged in writing religious polemic rather than impartial history as we understand it today.
> 
> .



I actually tried reading Gildas once- endless cut-and-pasting from the Bible, and slagging off of contemporary Celtic kings, but little or no hard facts. His thesis was that God punished evil rulers by letting barbarians exterminate their subjects- same idea as in the Bible. Rulers were evil (in his view) therefore their subjects were being exterminated. For that matter, the Biblical accounts of extermination and wholesale deportation were also grossly exagerated.

But the Victorians took Gildas seriously for several reasons.

1) They made sense of history in racial terms rather than cultural. "Virile" barbarians swept down from the hills, exterminating "effete" civilised races. But they didn't exterminate them totally, keeping some as slaves, sinking into luxurious lifestyles, and interbreeding with their slaves causing long term "degeneration". Eventually they were as "effete" as the guys they'd conquered, and thus ready to be conquered in turn. This is the Robert E Howard (Conan) view of history. Again this fitted with the Bible, in which Jehovah warns the Israelites to exterminate the Canaanites rather than just killing the men and enslaving the women. 

2) The Victorians saw the "Celts" (especially the Irish) as racially inferior to the English. Victorian era cartoons of Irish immigrants to England portray them like Frank Frazetta's images of the kind of ape men and reptile men whom his virile heroes are always fighting. 

3) Archaeology was in its infancy and DNA studies did not exist. 

4) They probably didn't think that clergymen would actually lie- unless they were Jesuits!

Stephen Oppenheimer's research pretty much demolishes the idea of mass exterminations and expulsions in Britain. 60% of our genetic heritage goes back to the first Palaeolithic settlers, and most of the rest is from the Neolithic henge-builders. Celts, Anglosaxons, Danes, are no more than 5-10% each, comparable with the recent non-white and East European immigrant waves.


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## svalbard

Aquilonian said:


> I actually tried reading Gildas once- endless cut-and-pasting from the Bible, and slagging off of contemporary Celtic kings, but little or no hard facts. His thesis was that God punished evil rulers by letting barbarians exterminate their subjects- same idea as in the Bible. Rulers were evil (in his view) therefore their subjects were being exterminated. For that matter, the Biblical accounts of extermination and wholesale deportation were also grossly exagerated.
> 
> But the Victorians took Gildas seriously for several reasons.
> 
> 1) They made sense of history in racial terms rather than cultural. "Virile" barbarians swept down from the hills, exterminating "effete" civilised races. But they didn't exterminate them totally, keeping some as slaves, sinking into luxurious lifestyles, and interbreeding with their slaves causing long term "degeneration". Eventually they were as "effete" as the guys they'd conquered, and thus ready to be conquered in turn. This is the Robert E Howard (Conan) view of history. Again this fitted with the Bible, in which Jehovah warns the Israelites to exterminate the Canaanites rather than just killing the men and enslaving the women.
> 
> 2) The Victorians saw the "Celts" (especially the Irish) as racially inferior to the English. Victorian era cartoons of Irish immigrants to England portray them like Frank Frazetta's images of the kind of ape men and reptile men whom his virile heroes are always fighting.
> 
> 3) Archaeology was in its infancy and DNA studies did not exist.
> 
> 4) They probably didn't think that clergymen would actually lie- unless they were Jesuits!
> 
> Stephen Oppenheimer's research pretty much demolishes the idea of mass exterminations and expulsions in Britain. 60% of our genetic heritage goes back to the first Palaeolithic settlers, and most of the rest is from the Neolithic henge-builders. Celts, Anglosaxons, Danes, are no more than 5-10% each, comparable with the recent non-white and East European immigrant waves.



1. Try reading Gildas in detail before you dismiss him. It is quite amazing that people dismiss the only primary source we have for that time in the history of England. Instead some tend to look at the self-serving archeology of the likes of Francis Pryor and his ilk as the way forward in studies of 'Dark Age 'Britiain.

2. New studies are overturning Oppenheimer's research as we speak. DNA studies are still in their infancy with a lot more to be revealed. I would hesitate to use Oppenheimer's work as evidence of a lack of mass extermination and expulsions.


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## Brian G Turner

And more on the Anglo-Saxon invasion, with the hypothesis that the Saxons committed mass-genocide again disproved - this time through genetics:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-31905764



> A DNA study of Britons has shown that genetically there is not a unique Celtic group of people in the UK.
> 
> According to the data, those of Celtic ancestry in Scotland and Cornwall are more similar to the English than they are to other Celtic groups.
> 
> The study also describes distinct genetic differences across the UK, which reflect regional identities.
> 
> And it shows that the invading Anglo Saxons did not wipe out the Britons of 1,500 years ago, but mixed with them.


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## Ray McCarthy

Yes, increasingly it seems that newcomers may bring new culture and language, but not be overwhelming in numbers. e.g. Normans in England.
I've been trying to match up Celtic tradition / Book of Invasions etc with the real archaeological record of  4000BC to 500AD in Ireland.


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## Nerds_feather

I think the way these things usually worked in ancient/medieval times is something like this:


Invading force comes, supplants local elites from territory.
There are some massacres, but they are sporadic, localized and ad hoc.

Settlements are established in the area.
Trade relations with locals (i.e. those already living there) flourish.
If there are enough of the invaders, and their position strong enough, locals begin learning their language, as it's advantageous; if not, the newcomers adapt to the local language. 

Assimilation ensues, and can be unidirectional or multidirectional.

Gradually the assimilated come to think of themselves in terms of who/what they assimilated into.


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## Ray McCarthy

Nerds_feather said:


> Gradually the assimilated come to think of themselves in terms of who/what they assimilated into.


The Normans in Ireland became too Irish for for the English


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## Stephen Palmer

The Cornwall/Devon border thing is a fascinating insight.


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## svalbard

The above study is still rather tenous. The sample is not wide enough. Historically it goes against The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Bede's view of the Britons,who next to Gildas is our nearest contempory view of the time. There is no doubt that there was an invasion of Anglo-Saxons into Britain in the 5th century, stalled in the early 6th century and accellerated the mid to late 6th century. 

Looking at what happened in Gaul at the end of the Roman Empire we can guess that Saxon fought against Briton in Britain, Briton fought with Saxon against Briton and Saxon fought against Saxon. 

A number of interesting points come to mind. Oswald and Oswiu of Northumbria had support from Dalriada when they reclaimed their kingdom in Northumbria. Oswiu's first wife was a British princess from the kingdom of Rheged. Cerdic the first King of Wessex bares a very Celtic name as does his successor.

The last attested great King of the British North, Urien of Rheged is killed, whilst fighting the Saxons, by one his own. The tales of the British tell of equal slaughter between themselves as it does of between Briton and Saxon.


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## Ray McCarthy

Dalriada. Mmmm. Great Northern Irish Kingdom extending over a large part of Scotland.


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## svalbard

There is a lot of work being done by historians such as Tim Clarkson who are calling into doubt the Northern Irish origins for Dal Riada.


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## Ray McCarthy

That sounds dubious ... however wherever it started it was on both sides of the sea, it's a Gaelic name and also preserved in Co. Antrim.


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## svalbard

Not so dubious. Leslie Alcock, as far back as the 80s, was casting doubt on the kingdoms Irish origins due to a lack of archeological evidence. The kingdom stood beyond the remit of any so called High King in Ireland or regional overlord in Ulster and was in conlict as often as not with both Irish and Pict.


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## Ray McCarthy

svalbard said:


> was in conlict as often as not with both Irish and Pict.


Sounds like everyone else in Ireland and Scotland, maybe even today 
I don't think it's that important the exact origin given similarity of pronunciation of Gaelic and English, going back to split of P & Q in Co.Antrim and west Scotland compared to say Wicklow and Wales or Cornwall. 

I'm trying to research rather earlier period!  2000BC to 100BC in Ireland.


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## Dave

svalbard said:


> The above study is still rather tenous. The sample is not wide enough.


Do you base that statement on the statement that they used only 2,000 samples? Because I don't think that small sample size is important here. Certainly, it is small compared to the size of the whole population, but there are distinct haplogroups in male y-DNA for which 2,000 samples would easily be enough to determine if the same distinct "Celtic" haplotype existed in Cornwall, North Wales, Isle of Man, Ireland and Scotland. Especially given that he deliberately used only individuals who had all four of their grandparents living close to each other in a rural area. Such individuals would actually be very hard to find and might itself explain the small sample size.

I would be much more confident in using genetics to confirm this that historical writings that are generally written later than the actual events, often romanticised, often written from the point of view of the victorious ethnic or political group. I would be much more confident of using genetics than language or pottery styles or diet, because they can change within a few generations.


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## svalbard

One of the big problems is the map. The authors of the study are basing it on a map of Britain in 600AD. The problem is that we do not know the extent of Anglo-Saxon or Brittonic kingdoms at that stage. That is as much a hotly debated subject as the invasion question. Warfare was endemic for the period and land passed through different rulers all the time.

One example would be Northumbria or to be more precise the dual kingdoms of Bernicia and Deira, where only one King from 600 to about 670 passed away peacefully. Add the hundreds if not thousands who perished in battle that period. For the most part the enemies of Northumbria were a coalition of Saxons from Mercia and British kingdoms from Wales or a coalition of British Kingdoms from the North. There were distinct racial lines in this war that lasted the best part of a 100 years until the Picts defeated Ecgfrith of Nirthumbria at Nechtansmere.

Gildas was writing at the time of the Saxon conquest/peaceful takeover which makes him as primary source as you are going to get.


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## Dave

svalbard said:


> One of the big problems is the map. The authors of the study are basing it on a map of Britain in 600AD. The problem is that we do not know the extent of Anglo-Saxon or Brittonic kingdoms at that stage.


I don't know enough about the study to know which map they are using, but if the genetics supports the map, then whether hotly disputed or not, the genetics is supporting it.


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## svalbard

The genetics do throw a whole new light on it. It is still remarkable that a Anglo-Saxon culture completely replaced the native culture. It could be down to the wiping out of the local elites, large amounts of men falling in battle, extensive emigration to Brittany. An interesting fact from this period is that out of 30,000 graves excavated only 110 identifiable native British goods were found. The Laws of Ine from Wessex also show that the lives of the native British were pretty worthless compared to a Saxon. Even the Saxon word for the natives Wealhas(foreigner) is instructive of how the relationship between the two peoples developed.


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## Caledfwlch

One of the weirdest findings of the current DNA experiments regards Wales and Cornwall.

Not only do Wales and Cornwall not share a common ancestory, but Wales itself appears to have 3 seperate "ethnic" groups. North Walians and South Walians are different to each other which is a surprise, but there is also a 3rd group, they are calling "ancient welsh" but one they have found very few people to have, and only in Wales, and I think a couple of people in south west England. Very odd.

But on the other hand, History and Legend speak of people like Cunedda bringing their people down to what we now call Wales during the dark ages, into North Wales, so maybe that explains it (they came from the British Kingdoms in what is now Strathclyde) a programme on Welsh Language TV about the new DNA findings recently mentioned it, but seemed to suggest Cunedda came in around 600ad, whilst my memory and Google seems to agree is he came down at the request of Maecsen Wledig (Magnus Maximus) to protect western Brittania from Irish Raiders. Which was of course much earlier.

I live in the county and former Kingdom of Ceredigion, and when a King of Gwynedd died, possibly Cunedda himself, his land as was usual was split between his 2 sons, rather than going to the eldest heir, the land 1 son, Ceredig took became of course Ceredigion.

Lot's of bizzare stuff going on, especially the strong link between the Welsh, the Basque and certain parts of iirc central Ireland. But then again, whilst most cultures mythology simply has the people coming from X God, Welsh and Irish myth has always spoken about our ancestors coming from the "East" so maybe there is a strong grain of truth there.

One Welsh legend has the Britons being founded by Brutas of Troy, with his Capital, Troia Newydd becoming eventually London, and the very name Brittania/Pryddein being a corruption of Brutas.


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## Ray McCarthy

Caledfwlch said:


> North Walians and South Walians are different to each other which is a surprise,


Is that irony?


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## Caledfwlch

Ray McCarthy said:


> Is that irony?



No, had there been an "ethnic" split, I would have imagined it would be throughout the modern Welsh in General, not such a specific north/south split! Whatever went on in the dark ages, many Britons fled west into Wales, Cornwall and east into Armorica (Brittany) So it seems strange that the people as a general arent of a big melting pot of Briton ancestory, rather than N/S! On top of that of course, is Macsen Wledig's famous words, well I forget if its attributed to him, or a later creation. But there were words to the effect that the Britons should fear not Romes withdrawal etc, as by that time, there was plenty of Roman Blood and its Roman Discipline running through the Warrior Veins of the Britons thanks to mixed marriages between the two for centuries.

They didn't pick up much of a Roman Marker so far iirc, but in the North Wales town of Abergele there is a big chunk of Eastern med,  running through a percentage of the male population.

I was surprised they did indepth testing in the Valleys of South Wales, I am sure in the past it was declined, because of course, with the coal mining and heavy industrialisation in the past, a huge number of migrants moved in from England, Ireland and Scotland.


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## svalbard

Ray McCarthy said:


> Sounds like everyone else in Ireland and Scotland, maybe even today
> I don't think it's that important the exact origin given similarity of pronunciation of Gaelic and English, going back to split of P & Q in Co.Antrim and west Scotland compared to say Wicklow and Wales or Cornwall.
> 
> I'm trying to research rather earlier period!  2000BC to 100BC in Ireland.



You might want to, if you haven't already, look up John Koch. What brought him to mind, apart from your current interests is Caledfwlch's posts about Cunedda and Magnus Maximus. He gives a later date for Cunedda in Wales and he also has interesting paper about St. Patrick. To sum it up, a certain cleric called Patrick was Magnus Maximus's treasurer, master of ceremonies (cannot recall actual title) in Gaul. When it all went a bit pear shaped for Magnus, Patrick dissapeared with all the loot. He puts forward the theory that this Patrick is the St Patrick of Ireland. Problem is the dates. I have uploaded a file, hope it works, of a paper on thd Irish languageand its origins.


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## Caledfwlch

svalbard said:


> You might want to, if you haven't already, look up John Koch. What brought him to mind, apart from your current interests is Caledfwlch's posts about Cunedda and Magnus Maximus. He gives a later date for Cunedda in Wales and he also has interesting paper about St. Patrick. To sum it up, a certain cleric called Patrick was Magnus Maximus's treasurer, master of ceremonies (cannot recall actual title) in Gaul. When it all went a bit pear shaped for Magnus, Patrick dissapeared with all the loot. He puts forward the theory that this Patrick is the St Patrick of Ireland. Problem is the dates. I have uploaded a file, hope it works, of a paper on thd Irish languageand its origins.



Ooh, I like the idea of Patrick being Macsen's Treasurer - IIRC, Armorica (Brittany) was founded by one of Macsen's Generals, Conan Meriadoc, and Macsen seems the sort of guy to surround himself with the sorts of guys who go on to make their marks on the world.

What date does John Koch give for Cunedda? Common stories at least have him coming down at the request of Macsen, who lived in the 4th century, whilst the S4C programme for example claimed around 600ad iirc. Though of course its possibly you have the "arthurian" problem where people much further down the line are claiming X ancestor was, if not related then a close intimate of a famous figure, often Arthur, but istr a good few claimed descent from the Macsen too.


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## svalbard

He gives a date of early 5th century, but he concedes it could be later in the 5th century. He uses Maelgwn of Gwynedds reign as a starting point and works back the generations to Cunedda. This, as he admits, is a hazardous method and open to much debate. He also calls into question the historicity of Cunedda and suggests it may be an origin myth for the numerous Welsh royal houses, much as you point out above. 

If he is real there are two possibilities to who invited him down from the Goddidon kingdom. If we say the first decade of the 5th century it could be Constantine III looking to bolster his western defenses before crossing to Gaul. The 2nd possibility is Vortigern if Cunedda is dated to the 420s.

That last paragraph is my theory not Koch's.


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## svalbard

http://www.caitlingreen.org/2015/07/were-there-huns-in-anglo-saxon-england.html?m=1

A really interesting article on the Migration Period in post -Roman Britain. The theory seems somewhat stretched, however, the ideas about a Hunnic influence on the foundation of Anglo-Saxon England is a tantalising one. For the record Caitlin Green is a highly regarded scholar on this period, and is not given over to crackpot theories.


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## svalbard

Historian on the Edge: Rethinking Warfare and Politics in Britain 400-600

Another update on this long and somewhat meandering thread. Guy Halsall, has an interesting take on the what may have happened in 5th and 6th centuries in Britain. He acknowledges the lack of primary sources for Britain and postulates his view by comparing what was happening on the Continent during the same period where sources, whilst scant are still more plentiful.

His view is one of slow progression by the Anglo-Saxons, sometimes fighting with and sometimes against the British. He argues for an initial small migration of Saxons during the latter period of Roman rule with these early settlement s `topped' up by later migrations.


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