The standard history of england is of a series of invasions in which each replaces the last. So the celts invaded and then the romans came and pushed out the celts and then the anglo saxons came and took over england and then drove the romans and celts into wales and then the saxons were replaced by vikings and finally by the normans.
The common strand being bloody war in which one population was forced out completely by the next.
Except this is increasingly rejected by modern historians. The Celts are increasingly seen not as one single invading army that conquered from the balkans to ireland but rather a set of languages and art that spread through a bunch of different people by trade.
And the idea of the anglo saxons being an invasion is increasingly seen to be the invention of a man named Gildas for use in a sermon rather than actual history. What it seems to be instead was a relatively peaceful immigration on a much smaller scale than imagined. Dna indicates that less than 40% of english even have one anglosaxon ancestor. When they dug up a saxon graveyard in yorkshire, there were more immigrants from cornwall than germany. There was undoubtably continental new habits catching on here (burial with weapons for instance) but that doesn't mean the british were forced out anymore than our watching american tv means we were driven out by yanks in the 1980s.
And again the number of scandinavian settlers is increasingly being questioned. And the normans saw a replacement of the noble class only, which seems far closer to the new theory about the danes and the saxons.
So a more modern theory is of a singular british people who rather than being forciably replaced, like say the natives of the usa, merely adopted the language and cultures of numerous foreign aristocracys. So we picked up the word beef from the normans and the word anger from the vikings but the people using them are mostly the same bunch who were there 2 and half thousand years ago.
The common strand being bloody war in which one population was forced out completely by the next.
Except this is increasingly rejected by modern historians. The Celts are increasingly seen not as one single invading army that conquered from the balkans to ireland but rather a set of languages and art that spread through a bunch of different people by trade.
And the idea of the anglo saxons being an invasion is increasingly seen to be the invention of a man named Gildas for use in a sermon rather than actual history. What it seems to be instead was a relatively peaceful immigration on a much smaller scale than imagined. Dna indicates that less than 40% of english even have one anglosaxon ancestor. When they dug up a saxon graveyard in yorkshire, there were more immigrants from cornwall than germany. There was undoubtably continental new habits catching on here (burial with weapons for instance) but that doesn't mean the british were forced out anymore than our watching american tv means we were driven out by yanks in the 1980s.
And again the number of scandinavian settlers is increasingly being questioned. And the normans saw a replacement of the noble class only, which seems far closer to the new theory about the danes and the saxons.
So a more modern theory is of a singular british people who rather than being forciably replaced, like say the natives of the usa, merely adopted the language and cultures of numerous foreign aristocracys. So we picked up the word beef from the normans and the word anger from the vikings but the people using them are mostly the same bunch who were there 2 and half thousand years ago.
