Celt/Roman/Anglo Saxon/Viking/Norman French, those Brit girls get around.
Posted on 01/20/2016 7:49:52 AM PST by ek_hornbeck
The present-day English owe about a third of their ancestry to the Anglo-Saxons, according to a new study.
Scientists sequenced genomes from 10 skeletons unearthed in eastern England and dating from the Iron Age through to the Anglo-Saxon period.
Many of the Anglo-Saxon samples appeared closer to modern Dutch and Danish people than the Iron Age Britons did.
The results appear in Nature Communications journal.
According to historical accounts and archaeology, the Anglo-Saxons migrated to Britain from continental Europe from the 5th Century AD. They brought with them a new culture, social structure and language.
Genetic studies have tackled the question of Anglo-Saxon ancestry before, but sometimes gave conflicting results.
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.com ...
When the Roman empire fell invasion and genocide was the order of the day for many of its colonies.
Makes sense since it’s highly unlikely the Celtic population was annihilated by the invading Anglo-Saxons.
If one is to believe the many lurid tales of "prima nocta" (First Night), then a very few Norman lords could have had a significant impact.
They were probably subjugated by the Anglo-Saxons in the same way that the Anglo-Saxons were later subjugated by their Norman conquerors, but large-scale genocide seems unlikely. "Celtic" Scots and Welsh have plenty of Anglo-Saxon blood, while the English have plenty of Celtic blood.
The Normans (Northmen) were Danes who lived in France long enough to speak French.
Which goes to show identity is a lot more fluid than people in the 19th and early 20th Century thought.
There was a recent study that shows that a significant fraction of Mongolians, and Mongolian-influenced areas like Kazakhstan, trace their Y chromosomes back to a single man (or at least a single family) sometime in the 12th-13th century. Most likely Gengis Khan. Maybe the same principle applies on a smaller scale here.
England was a real melting pot. In addition to the Normans and other Scandinavians like the Danes and Vikings, there were the Romans and their slaves from the entire empire and also Protestant refugees from France, Germany, and Central Europe.
I read somewhere that the percent of people with original Briton blood was actually pretty small.
Viking-descended Normans wouldn’t have been all that different genetically from Germanic Saxons, so it may be hard to pick out their contribution to the blood line.
Since the Normans were Vikings, they are likely difficult to distinguish between the other Norse immigrants in Britain and Ireland.
Anybody ever done anything on Frisian DNA and its presence in cross-Channel venues?
Celt/Roman/Anglo Saxon/Viking/Norman French, those Brit girls get around.
No idea, but it would be interesting since Frisian is supposedly the language closest to the "English" of the original Anglo-Saxons.
The Normans were either Celts or Francs or both. I am not sure. Rollo, a Viking, came to rule by conquest, which came to by the Duke of Normandy and through succession William the Conqueror. Brittany is Celtic, as we know from the Breton language.
Saxon, you can waste your stitches
Building beds for bugs in breeches:
We have woad to clothe us, which is
Not a nest for fleas.
Invasion, yes.
Genocide, not usually.
Intermarriage and servitude was the more common strategy.
Could also be West Flemish as those areas of the Belgian and Dutch coast, where it was spoken, are the closest to England. Proto-English
It depends on the numbers. If the invaders/conquerors are small in number, genocide isn't practical because there aren't enough hands to go around to run the farms. If invaders have the numerical advantage, either genocide or whole-scale displacement is the norm. Saxons were a minority with respect to Celts, just as Normans were a minority with respect to both, so subjugation was the strategy that made sense.
But there is also the cultural distinction as well: the invaders were generally herdsmen, not farmers.
They would want to keep the farmers right where they were, producing - and just make sure that the rent and obeisance went to them instead of the rulers they displaced.
The notion of "total war" is about as new as the notion of "equality."
Wars were fought, for the most part, while the common peasants sat and watched.
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