My 1st reaction to this Title, (even though, I am Conscious in Thought and Reaching for my Higher Mind): ▶ *What kind of Title is this?* In an era where DNA exists? When the original English Male DNA is 98% replaced by Germanic aka Anglo Saxon? News Media has affected the Ethics of even the Academic interests. Presumes all living through their: Lower Mind, aka Ego Mind aka Adolescent Mind ... There was an expectation of greater Maturity, and now, there's no confidence in the content. *A shared honesty, absent in Judging.*

When the Romans moved out of Britain and the AngloSaxons moved into Britain the British people knew that AngloSaxon people were coming and they were welcomed into Britain by the British people because of religion! These people were all the same religion and then after the AngloSaxon settled in Britain ALFRED THE GREAT WAS THE KING THAT MADE CHRISTIANITY IN ENGLAND THE RELIGION! It’s very easy to understand because my family was there and we are happy the AngloSaxon people moved to Britain!

@f1s2hg3 WTF Germanic paganism quite different to both P-Celtic & Q-Celtic Pagans & christians

Very good points.

Exactly. If the situation was as 'gentle' as all these theorists suggest- why did the Saxons not learn to speak Brythonic and the country remain Brythonic culture? The language and cultural change is evidence enough. As is the fact that the Brython/ Welsh were pushed out of their own land and into the West, by the Saxons. The Welsh had been fighting for centuries with the Saxons to retain their land. However they want to downplay it, an invasion happened. Whether it was slow and steady over time- which is likely. It still had a hugely negative effect on the Brythonic population.

Look at the illegal immigration to the United States as a current modern-day invasion which might mirror the Anglo-Saxon invasion. It’s not particularly violent, but there is definitely a cultural change.

The Anglo Saxons took the opportunity to settle in the East of Britain after the Romans left , leaving empty builds that the bare arsed brits wouldn't use due to them being afraid of the old owners spirits in them . It left no standing army , or defences so the invaders mearly intigrated with these very similar natives . After all they had been crossing the north Sea to regularly trade with the fresians .

The standard picture is of raids quickly growing in size to withstand defences and then staying over, living off the land by conquest. Even the romans had trouble defending the shore from the saxons, by time they left the AG's were coming in large numbers forming territories they would defend from the british counter attacks.

If they didn't abandon their language after centuries of Latin-speaking Roman domination of all areas of their society, I find it really hard to believe an entire country just started speaking Anglo-Saxon because a handful of handsome Frisians showed up in one or two villages here and there.

Precisely, thank you 🤗 It's simply not true what he is preaching - he just wants it to be true based on no evidence whatsoever, only his feelings 🙄 Hav(e) en god dag [daygh] 🤗 ( Danish ).

Blame it on the teenagers they always reject the words of their parents and adopt foreign words ,

@Bjowolf2 tak

@Neil Franklin - hahah peppering your language with a few foreign loanwords that you picked up from online games and movies is not quite the same as an entire society abandoning their language and culture for a foreign one brought by a few stray travellers.

Probably they were already speaking it!

Trade with a people who have more economic reach can be a powerful incentive to adopt their language. For example, the English language started displacing Irish Gaelic from the 12thC onward, beginning with Dublin and spreading from there. That was centuries before the Plantation. Lots of people in continental Europe use English as a _lingua franca_ in the absence of any sort of invasion or colonial displacement. If post-Roman Britain was a patchwork of Celtic dialects and vulgar Latin, a trade language would have a lot of advantages.

@Damon Roberts Thank you for informing me of Yola English in Ireland - something I was completely unaware of before now. However I'd humbly suggest that neither this example or the English-in-Europe example are suitable alternatives for the situation in post-Roman Britain. For example, sure, the Romano-British traded, but my understanding is that most of this trade was with southern Europe and the Byzantines rather than with English speakers either in Britain or back on the Continent. Plus, assuming the trade was two-way, there's the question of why the language shift wasn't in the opposite direction. In any case, my understanding is that Yola English in Ireland was on the way out within a few centuries, as the local English were gradually absorbed by Irish culture and language - in much the same way as the German invaders of the Roman Empire adopted the local form of Latin. And regarding English-in-Europe, while it's the European lingua franca ATM, it isn't displacing native languages in those countries - any more than French did when it was Europe's lingua franca a few centuries ago. However I'm happy to discuss this further.

@Max Fan When England conquered Wales in the 1200s, anti-Welsh language laws were brought in. For example, all official proceedings were to be held in English. Adopting an English identity and language enabled social mobility. So the Welsh essentially became second-class citizens in their own country. What followed, was a form of forced assimilation and a huge effort to stamp out any kind of 'Welshness' and Welsh identity. There has been a long history of trying to eradicate the Welsh language. Up until around 150 years ago, there were a high number of Welsh speakers in Wales. Events such as the Blue Books report (that declared the Welsh language to be 'evil') contributed to it's decline and also mass migration from England with English people refusing to speak Welsh. (Although there were English incomers who did try and learn, but most didn't) The Welsh language only gained equal status in Wales (their own country!) in the 90s, when they repealed most of the anti-Welsh language laws. I don't think it's a stretch to think that something similar happened after the AS colonisation of Britain. Forced assimilation and outright banning of the Brythonic language. The theory the Brythonic people just stopped speaking their language willingly, is absurd and goes against human nature.

@TurquoisePink And yet the Scots language became the dominant language in Scotland over Scottish Gaelic long before the union of the crowns. Scots is a Germanic language closely related to Anglo-Saxon. This appears to have occurred because the population found it beneficial to switch and not as a result of conquest or force. The Welsh example shows that it isn't easy to suppress a language forcefully, but the Scots example shows that populations adapt and can switch to a new language without any kind of force at all.

I was actually wondering that -- archaeological evidence, even much more of it, would paint an incomplete picture.

Definitely MMIV - 2004!

Since that time its been found that Britain was colonised by Middle-Eastern farmers, about 1000BC. So Britain is NOT ethnically Celtic - although it got a Celtic language! (See: Mass Migrations into Britain in the Late Bronze Age). I think the people are darker the further west you go - which would fit in with the newcomers idea. Ancestry DNA has some interesting results for Britains DNA: something like 10% Norse, 22% Irish, 38% Great Britain, 24% NORTHWEST Europe, 4% Iberian.

Why aren't the long held traditions more trustworthy than modern interpretations of scattered archeology. They were compiled and rewritten from various separate earlier sources (Bede 700s, Nennius late 700s early 800s and Gildas in the 500s.), A hell of a lot closer to the events than Francis Pryor is and so there was less time for oral tradition to be forgotten and distorted than 1500 years later. Once Francis has dug up every bone and dna tested every sample of that era and finds an ancient written account saying that it was a peaceful migration made at the request of the British Kings, then it is just a weak theory based on a picked small selection of evidence that suits his narrative. He's a publicity sl-t losing his relevance, and looking for a way to get in the limelight again.

@Bruce Ironside I completely agree with you. Every literary source we have from Gildas to Bede, without exception, testifies to invasion and conquest. The archeological evidence is capable of quite different interpretations to those preferred by Pryor. But above all, the proof is in the outcome. Beyond a very general outline, we have no real idea of events in Britain/England from about 410 until nearly 800, but at the end of that period, there is nothing left of the Romano-Britons east of the Severn. Only a few place-names survive. All law, custom, art, authority, society, field systems - everything - is Anglo-Saxon. This was not immigration. There was no integration. This was the erasure of an entire people.

@Bruce Ironside there are no reasons why long-held traditional interpretations of the past need to be considered wrong or flawed. Nevertheless, there is no reason why they shouldn't be challenged. Francis Pryor is an accomplished archaeologist and academic, and it's his job to do this. If his ideas are flawed the academic community will say so. Frankly, however, IMO his argument carries some weight. In my university education in History there was little mention, if any at all, of an invasion, and a peaceful migration and integration seems perfectly feasible. The fact that your id bears that of a legendary Saxon implies your pending disagreement. As a DNA-proven Brit with no English in me whatsoever, you will understand that whatever you think I won't give a shit.

@Mike Barrow Sorry Mike I have never communicated with you before. So know nothing of your opinions or views until now. Don’t actually know why you are jumping in now, ages after the fact. I’ve only communicated with 1 other person on this topic, so it’s refreshing to get other insights. I actually agree with more or less what you say. The issue I have is that some people are taking this video as gospel (a matter of almost religious faith) and what is being postulated as FACT, when it has yet to be PROVEN, beyond rough theory. Just because it is said by my lord god Francis Pryor. Francis Pryor was a great hero to me for years, and he and the rest of Time Team got me into archeology. I understand that he wishes to maintain the level of lifestyle he had become accustomed to after many years on Time Team. I don’t begrudge him that, I just expect more balance from someone of his stature in the Archeological Field of study. Actually my surname is from Danish Viking heritage, that is why it is Ironside, not Ironsides. And almost half of my genealogy is Scottish from the Fraser clan and the other half Danish. I also have no English of significance. But that does not make any difference to the larger body of evidence currently available supporting an initial migration by mercenary troops at the behest of the British people to protect them from raiding Picts and Irish (small war bands, not Roman sized armies), followed by staggered small take overs of territory over probably around 150 years, until dominance over the indigenous peoples was achieved. Whether you choose to call it an “invasion” or not, it has not yet been proven as a 100% peaceful migration. It just seems odd to me that anyone would think that the British were so used (after 350 years) to being under the control of a foreign power, that when said foreign power left, they felt the best option was to get another foreign power in to dominate them. Perhaps a few tribes did feel that way, but impossible to think the whole of the island felt the same way. Therefore if any of the tribes who didn’t approve of the takeover resisted, then it was an “invasion”. If anyone can prove that every tribe in Britain welcomed the Angles, Saxon’s and Jutes as their new overlords without hesitation and without regret. Then I’ll believe it. Until then logic rules supreme.

bias, impure and simple.

@mizofan It's not bias. Other than what Celts were already there, they don't factor into the very early equations. Ireland, Wales, and Caledonia (Scotland) were all independent nations at odds with "Britannia" in this time period. Everyone was trying to get a foothold. You're right about everything else, but those Celtic origins you're defending didn't come into place until much later.

The point is that there is no archaeological evidence for such an event taking place.

@Aaron B The same could be said for every single event in the Bible. The difference here is that we DO have historical references, AND we have evidence that it happened. They just didn't mention any of it here.

@Aaron B it's not an event. It's a 200 year period of history.

Observing that invasion doesn't change a language fundamentally, doesn't justify assuming a greater invasion would. France & Spain were invaded by germanic tribes too and Spain had a long Arab occupation with similar word additions. There archaeological evidence of small saxon/viking conflicts, so if there were Romano-briton/Saxon ones there should also be finds.

There are two forms of English. Onshore English is the language that is spoken in day to day life. It has a very low frequency of latinate words derived from Norman French. Offshore English is the 'posh' language that is written and used in formal situations..and crucially taught overseas. When I work with people who were not brought up in England, even if there accent is perfect, this difference gives them away immediately.

Additionally, "Old English" isn't Angle-ish at all, it's Brythonic, just like Welsh, Manx, and the Irish and Scottish dialects of Celtic (That's pronounced with a "k" at both ends, as "keltik", NBA fan, as witnessed by a famous Irish book from around 1000 AD, "The book of Kells"

@Aaron Kulkis your wrong, Old English is definitly Germanic that’s why Icelandic people can understand it without much issue, whereas they can’t understand Celtic languages at all

This is my understanding as well.

This theory makes perfect sense. The same thing happened to Romans in mainland Europe. They hired mercenaries like Attila the Hun who then used his knowledge to conquer large parts of the empire. Saxons probably did something similar.

@savvageorge Same thing happened in France a few hundred years later. The French king got fed up with raids on his coast and on Paris, so he allowed some Northmen to settle in what is now Normandy in exchange for protecting his coast and the Seine.

It does not fit the multicultral narritive..... They need more African Doctors and Engineers to come across the channel..........

@C.E.T Gale lol! 🤣

Exactly also some brought over as mercenaries for protection...

Agreed, but the fact this guy actually thought there wasn't a Saxon invasion is bollocks , there were invasions but there were some peaceful immigrations.

All of the western Roman empire was conquered by Germanic tribes, but Germanic foederati were also present in large numbers within the Roman army itself.

@Judge Magister have you read any of Gunnar Heinsohn's research into stratigraphy?! The "Saxon" Lundenwic (wic=vic=VICUS) was built next to, and in the same stratigraphic layer as the "ruined", walled Roman settlement of "Londinium"! Fascinating!

Another 'i believe' You can't know what happened.

they are looking at the evidence of a post-"roman"/"saxon"/"celt" cataclysm, and completely ignoring it! :P

Actually the Vikings may have contributed more than that linguistically. Despite what this program may have said, structurally English is more akin to Danish than Celtic in its grammar in that both share some unique features. Since it is much more difficult to change language structure, the Danish impact on English, may be said to be enormous. Also when the Vikings "invaded" (a slightly exaggerated account since while some raided, others did come and peacefully settle like ASs) the linguistic differences between Scandinavian and AS English would have been slight and mutually intelligible. Rather the same way the various Scandinavian languages today are different yet mutually intelligible to native speakers, especially with a little practice.

Actually in each invasion - roman, saxon, viking, Norman - the language of the common people evolved and took in words and phrases that remain to this day. The language we speak today is nothing like like the language even 400 years ago. Even in relatively unscathed areas of Britain the language has evolved to be almost unrecognisable to 1400 years ago (cornish, Bretton, Irish and Scots). Time, dominance and education are what gets the biggest changes in one language over another. But integration and intermarriage plays a huge part too. The Norman's tried not to intermarry and hence we don't speak French. But the saxons and vikings did intermarry and were closer in status to the common people of Britain and now we have mostly a language based on germanic and viking.

"a hybrid of two languages" But English does not seem to be a hybrid of the two languages, as far as I can tell. I'm not a linguist, so I may have missed it, but I don't see that there is any significant influence of Brythonic on English. The word order in English may be different from other Germanic languages, but it is different from Welsh too, and there seems to be very little of Brythonic in the vocabulary either.

@Pyriform Indeed, it is more a hybrid of various Germanic languages and Norman French / bastardized Latin, with a smattering of Celtic vocabulary here and there. English at the core remains Germanic, in structure and basic vocabulary. But over time it incorporated a rather large vocabulary from French and Medieval Latin, just the same way many languages today might be incorporating many English words and common tech phrases into their language.

@A. Westenholz the vikings already spoke a language closely related to Anglo Saxon Frisian etc, some even came from the same regions so i presume they could easily understand each other.

they'd been comming over for thousands of years before that, some of the tribes in what is now England were Belgae and had arrived on the Island only a few hundred years before before Caesar crossed the Channel. The Iron Age Parisii near the Humber, guess where they came from....the Paris basin the list goes on. There were Irish in what is now Wales and England. The idea that the people in what is now the UK were a homogenous bunch of 'Celts' ( whatever one thinks they are ) is ridiculous.

@k c Indeed to English are mongrels and mongels are the strongest of dogs. My great grandad was an Anglo Saxon from Hereford on the Welsh border. His wife was a Celtic Bevan from Wales. They emigrated to Yorkshire in the 1872 agricultural recession. My other granddad was the statutory Irish fugitive sheep thief from Dublin. My grandmother was from a Norwegian area of the Yorkshire dales and her family name of Summersgill means 'sommer scali' which is Norwegian for the summer shepherds huts.. Her husband had a Norman French name. I have lived in the USA for 14 years and have adopted nothing of the local accent or language, (eg "I should of went"), so the idea doesn't ring true for all the Yorkshire farmers imitating Friesian coz it's trendy......

The Angles were already living among the Brits. They were already there when the Romans arrived.

I find it curious that the area's the Anglo Saxons are supposed to come from overlap the area's that were involved in the Frisian trade. Also that the start of the Frisian trade started in about the same period as the Anglo-Saxon "invasion" is supposed to have happened.

Even Tacitus wrote down about the family-links between Gaelic and British tribes

It's interesting - If you only know German, Frisian will be quite difficult for you to learn, but if you know both English and German, Frisian will be very easy to pick up.

Makes sense since the place where the Saxons originate from is actually part of what is now France , but back then during the Roman period would be a Germanic tribe, the area where the saxons come from would then become Francia Wich would split with the Western half becoming France and the Eastern half Germany. The middle half become other kingdoms. Francis was split in 3 by 3 rulers, Charles the fat being one of the 3 brothers. Funny how Charlemagne's empire he built barely lasted a over a century.

@KissMyArse93 The Anglo-Saxon homeland was likely Schleswig Germany north of Holstein, which is far from France, however their were Anglo-Saxon settlements between the Weser and Elbe river in Germany.

i like this theory too but all the continentals seem to think he was a breton!

@Steven Lynaugh But continentals trying to say Riothamus was a Breton miss the major fact that it records that he crossed the sea in a boat to get to Gaul.

Nonsense. The most fitting person to be King Arthur is the King Arthur of Gwent named and thanked in the Llandaff Cathedral Charters several times for his land grants to the Church in Wales. How much evidence can you lot ignore?

@Petrovonoc Cymro source please?

@Rama find the sources yourself. Search the Llandaff Charters, or, as I have, go to the Bodlian Library in Oxford where the Bruts of England state plainly that King Arthur was crowned in south Wales or look at the works of Wilson and Blackett over the past forty years……

In that case using place names, look up Proto- English, this suggests English was spoken before the Roman invasion, it's here on TRshow but also papers on the net.

Woden & Odin are similar names for the same god.

@Mark Davids That's exactly what I said if you read the whole posting. I was emphsising that the anglo Saxons used the anglicised nme of Woden rather than Odin so it was anglo SAxons rather than Vikings who influenced place names. If it were the other way around Wednesbury would have been more like Odinsburgh

Honestly, they probably haven't. Pretentiusness and preciousness about unspoken dogma rules much of academia. Unless rich parasites see opportunities (like techno-freakery), funding does not flow towards new challenging ideas. See how the astronomers dismissed Velikovsky, and how rapidly historians dismissed Morosov. Archaeology is highly interprtative - anything they find in Britain, they automatically label as Roman or Anglo-Saxon, based on the flakiest stretches of 'evidence', especially in the latter case. It hasn't changed. With Saxon Thing Charles, inflating the anglo-saxon past theory is a trend they have no motivation to change. The geneticist on this programme was honest, it makes logical sense that they cant date migrations with genetics. Maybe they can suggest migrations, possibly a sequence, but not with dates. Carbon-dating cant date either lol. And, come to think of it, Geology has no test-retest reliability either (see how 'Lake Conibus' in the USA, from lake-bed analysis, was dated to tens of millions of years ago, by idiots unaware that it appeared on all pre-1800s maps) Historical 'sciences' in general, have no test-retest reliability. They are just theory. Maybe this guy is wrong, maybe he is partly right, but the conventional stories from the mists of time, are built on very little at all ...

The Welsh annuals, Irish annuals and even Romans record that barbarian germanic tribes attacked and took over parts of Britain. Not in 1 large 'invasion' to be fair. But several staggered small invasions just as the vikings did 300 years later. Nenius, Gildas, Geoffrey, and the bardic traditions also comfirm it was NOT a peaceful migration by invitation. However they do admit that the mercenary army they hired were given land to settle - so there was some peaceful settlement by arrangement - but as always that wasn't enough. And because they were the hired muscle for the island, they knew there was little to stop them taking whatever they wanted.

@therachelsam - It's an island, dude. Do we really have to go over the reason why they definitely travelled to Britain, however long ago, isntead of "originating" there?

@David Ben Yehuda there is no evidence to support your comment. None. Nada.

😉

Depends on how you look at it. I see it as a tension between competing cultures and world views giving rise to something uniquely British! But then I'm more of a David Starkey kind of guy. I think he gives a good take on the complexities of the situation. Certain Frankian notions came from Roman traditions, and were eventually seized upon by those who Would Rule. The notion of a Church-Approved Anointed King was a huge deal for obtaining at least the perception of legitimacy. The idea of absolute rule by the monarch and absolute authority of Lords and Ladies over tenants on land that was parceled out by kings to lords and ladies.... That's more of a Frankian/Roman thing. The Danes, Swedes, Norse, etc., brought a nice infusion of "Yeah, you're the top dog, but you're only 1st among equals, and you only lead on the sufferance of those who agree to be led." It made it harder for them to organize, which is why Alfred eventually beat them off by building a system of fortified boroughs. To accomplish that, Alfred and his descendants very much used the church as an arm of the government. But at the same time, the pagans from the continent brought a lot of concepts and attitudes towards lords and ladies that eventually led to Magna Carta. Thank the Germanic and Nordic tribes for a lot of that. In many ways they were more tolerant people than Christians of that day. And remember, virtually everything Christian was the direct result and under the direct guidance of the Pope in Rome. Christianity took over from paganism because it was very much in the interest of kings to have a strong church backing them. The Romans were masters at weaponizing religion, and when Christianity started getting traction in spite of all efforts to crush it, the Romans switched to Christianity and pushed it the same way they pushed the previous religion, whose name escapes me. But active "evangelizing" was a big part of the Roman model. Burn the temples, send in your own priests and build NEW temples. Or just hijack the temples already built. Just stick a cross up on the steeple and call it good. In North America, it's fascinating how many Native American principles and ideals have percolated into the larger culture. There's a brand of stoicism there that would put Marcus Aurelius to shame. We exaggerate the regret of things lost, but in the larger scheme, we recognize and celebrate the mingling of genes and cultures, mostly for the benefit of all involved. Not entirely. Nothing's all one thing. But I'm not going to be mad at Asia because that tall, blonde Swedish woman has a deep tan and beautiful cat eyes from Asia.

Its unlikely that the Anglo-Saxon migration would have been large enough to entirely replace an entire population.

@Aaron B Nowhere I stated that they replaced the entire population. They replaced the spoken language and a part of the culture by numbers. From all the groups living in the South and East of England they probably were the largest and after they had settled their language and culture spread over the rest of England to the North and West.

Yung Blood Even with the first two words you are wrong. They have their roots in the Indo European languages, from which Latin and Greek also derived. Furthermore in Indo Germanic languages, and West Germanic languages. Seems you do not have any linguistic knowledge at all.

The Romo-british population had more of a population (The Active army was sent back to Continental Europe) , but the Germanics had a tactual edge because they had been employed by the Romans as border Guards and had more trainable warriors than the Brits.

decline doesnt mean end

Naw, the population of England at the time definately wasn't more than 7 million or so, and lots of available land, as the first Saxon mercenary must have saw, told his mates in Angle & Saxony, and they all came in huge numbers without the Romans trying to stop em. What were the native celts to do ? They already been subjugated by the Romans for 400 years and taxed, u think they give a shit about a new group of people coming over and not taxing them ?? Let alone the vast empty spaces available? Or maybe the natives just surrendered or wanted to carry on with their lives.

Exactly!! Like the Britons put out huge armies to fight against the Roman invasion, then when a load of Saxons came the idea is that the Britons just let their land go freely and live under Saxon rule, adopting their language and customs. It just doesn’t make any sense

@noorur would a Breton king give up his crown because there were a bunch of them with their own little kingdoms and lands

"Knowing how warlike these early people were," knowing? can i borrow your Tardis doctor? fact is we 'know' things based on whats been written down in the past, & from some archaeological remains, they even say in this with Bede he used some artistic license based on his own views. everyone does it, even now. Im sure there were some big battles, but the only way we can ever really know what happened in the past is by travelling back in the aforementioned Tardis & seeing it for ourselves..

That statement by Helen was completely ludicrous and is no different than saying "I wanted to appear important, so I made up a story of being conquered by a group of gangsters".

@Jason Penn no. That’s how people end up at the top.

Theodosius made Christianity the official religion of Britain around 386 after he wiped out the last of the Druids.

Constantine the Great was made emperor in York after his Dad died, which I guess means he grew up here. It makes me wonder whether Christianity was already here, he had some experiences with it growing up, and that inspired him to make the Roman Empire Christian. Apparently there was a Christian Bishop in York in his time.

The traditional view of church history sees Christianity reintroduced into England from Ireland and then Scotland. This is covered by Bede who argues that the Roman practice replaces the Celtic practice. Pryor conveniently does not address why Angle slaves from Britain would have been found in Rome.

​@allanp5 the Anglo-Saxons didn't invent slavery but got the idea from the Romans. Rather than destroy an enemy completely they can be enslaved and set to do all the hard manual labour - with optional castration for difficult males. After enslaving the defeated Britons and enjoying the benefits of a slave owning culture it would have been easy to transition toward enslavement of defeated enemies who were also Angli-Saxon. Profits could be made from selling them on to other slave-owning cultures rather than just burying an enemy with no profit apart from the land you stole. Arguably Britain's wealth all comes from slavery through exploiting the native population, past colonialism and through corporations who are the modern face of slave-ownership/wealth-accumulation and natural resources theft all over the world.

​@Irene it goes back past even the Egyptians. Us humans love our slavery

The Welsh spoke their language right up until the English government brought in anti- Welsh language policies, and there was a massive backlash and people fought for the right to be able to speak their own language. Up until 150 years ago, everyone in Wales spoke Welsh as a first language. The idea that the Brythonic people just happily changed language is absurd. It goes against human nature, people naturally want to speak their own language. This 'peaceful integration' theory is ridiculous. There is no denying that the Saxons drove the Welsh out of their own land and into what we now call Wales. If they had 'integrated' they would all be speaking Brythonic and not English. What this documentary is proposing- and also other newer books and articles proposing the same theory. Is it not only goes against human nature- but also as you say, we can look at other counties who went through similar changes and see that this 'gentle integration' theory would never have happened.

Yes and pesky natives could make useful slaves!

Yeh i remember hearing about this. All i can say is this documentary leaves out alot, mainly because its old but also a bit of dishonest hypothesis imo

I mean, at the same time the Slavs (Sclaveni, Venethi/Wends, and Antes) enter Central Europe and Balkans from the East, replacing populations that lived there for centuries (including some Germanic tribes). We know that this huge migration in the Eastern Europe happened after some kind of depopulation event, there's a lot of archeological and linguistical evidence suggesting almost a 100% replacement in a matter of 2-3 centuries after this event. I thing it all has to be connected.

This bothered me also.

@Mark Morris Documentaries should present unbiased facts. "But what about the other guy" is not an argument.

@Vercingetorix Nonsense. They are going to present the facts according to the documentary maker. These are not scientific papers that need to be peer reviewed, they are documentaries to entertain first, educate second.

@Jonny Lumberjack you have a point archaeology can support anyone's thesis

Right, did they just forget about Edwin, Oswald, Offa, Ethelbert, Cedric, Æthelwülf and many other Anglo-Saxon kings? The whole Anglo-Saxon chronicles tome is a record of all the Anglo-Saxon rulers from the 5th century on.

Thats not whats being asked here. Did you watch the documentary?

@Aaron B yep

@Hræfnwarian Cerdic was an Anglo-Saxon chieftain with a Celtic name. Caedmon ( the father of Old English poetry) was an Anglo-Saxon but his name definitely was not. This means that language/ethnic identity distinction between the Britons and the Saxons gradually overlapped.

Genetic evidence: Average English person is 60% Celtic

I will re-read when not tired ... I skipped from the point at the start about oral tradition (absolutely) ... to the end ... although I spotted 'mythology' ... and I can waffle a while how there are mythology words in english that sort of 'shouldn't be there' ... echos of an oral tradition time when people appreciated the very famous myths of a land far far away ... the myths aint real but the cultures with myths were real ... In case I 4-get, the best phatom-time hypothesis around (although Fomenko's highlighting of Joseph Scalliger is worth checking-out), in my semi-humble estimation ... is Gunaar Heinsonn (thankfully a nonsense club of you-tube rubbish hasn't started from his little known hypothesis, focussing on archaology, although the nonsense-club often refer to stuff that would add to his hypothesis (bizarrely buried old world stuff - they weave it into nonsense, but it adds to the Heinsonn theory)) Heinsonn explains his version of the King Arthur story, and it kinda makes more sense, since he removes the contradiction of Arthur v Romans and Arthur v later invaders. The Welsh claim there were two Arthurs instead. Phantom-time hypothesis dont have to necessarily delete 'dark ages' ... for example ... the jesuit chronicle-collators and editor-'translators' of the holy roman empire (Scalliger and co, funded by the Medici family and others), where western and meditteranean history-writing was briefly centralised ... well, they could have stretched some chronicles here and there ... to fit their agenda (stretching catholic imperialism and such back hundreds of years to glorify the dynasties and 'benevolence', and banish cultural memories of the old world, for the furthering of their power of the 'reborn' world they controlled) ... but stretching the dark ages (necessary if their agenda was anything like what I speculate) doesn't mean there weren't any, necessarily ... Anyway, such a possibility kind of renders pre-renaissance cross-referencing a bit futile (between stories of the lands concerned), since the chronicles could have been embellished and stretched and the cross-referencing already thought of by falsifiers ... at the very least the possibility casts a shadow of doubt ... Which would leave archaelogy as the main remaining jigsaw pieces we have of the old world ...

@The Re-Sis-Stance is coming there are greater sources than just the written record of structured civilisation - when you get a chance to reread my comment, you'll see what I mean. But you are correct that largely our knowledge of that era does come from archeology. However, as I raise in my earlier comment, that archeology is largely void of defining narratives - rather, it gives us a sense of the turmoil and the actors in play at the time. What the legends do is give us greater depth with which to view the archeology. Not verbatim, of course, but to see that they come from a source of truth that, in turn, has been embellished and distorted for one reason or another.

They miss that in the Documentary LOL that Germanic Tribes work for the Romans and acted has Border Guards on the frontier. This is an extremely important point they omitted from the documentary.

I agree with what you are saying, the Celtic and germanic languages were established in Britain before the arrival of the Romans. The primary mode of transportation and trade was by boat. Celtic language and culture spread up the western side of the British Isles from Europe via southern France and Spain, while the Frisian language influenced the eastern side of Britain. If there was an Anglo-Saxon invasion and population replacement in 500AD, was there also a Celtic invasion sometime in the past too? Other than the ramblings of a couple of monks, written centuries after the event, there is no evidence of an Anglo-Saxon invasion and population replacement. The narrative relating to an invasion of Jutes, Angles, and Saxons from northern Germany, is vague, inconsistent, and quite frankly not all that believable. For example, the Romans established Christianity in Britain, the Anglo Saxons replaced monotheism with paganism, and then miraculously a monk from Rome re-establishes Christianity and saves everyone from the heathens....again. Frisian has the closest lexical relationship with English and not German, - funny how that's never written into the Anglo-Saxon invasion storyline. We may never know the real reason why the Frisian language made its way into becoming the most dominant language in England, but the clergy had a good crack at filling in the knowledge gaps, which unfortunately have carried on through to today.

They still expanded. Land doesnt just empty as they expand, does it

Thats why i love British history programs, or history programs in generap

Good point.

😂

I remember reading a Roman account of Caesars invasion.mentioning there was essentially no difference between the languages of the southern british tribes and that of the Belgae.But no mention of a similarity with the Celts of Northern France.

Tbf modern welsh is heavily influenced by latin. Many words are latin in origin, as is the case in irish. But there was not a complete erasure of the brythonic language and culture like there was in england. I'm surprised they didn't dive further into the genetics. The genetics clearly shows the average Englishman is around a 1/3rd Germanic, either Anglo Saxon or possibly danish viking which Is almost indistinguishable from A/S. So while there wasnt a total replacement of britons in england they were very much dominated by Anglo saxons. Not only is this evidence in the language and cultural shifts but the contemporary Anglo saxons writers at the Time generally didn't have much nice to say about their british neighbors.

@Lock K they were very closely linked, both the belgae and the gauls had strong ties to Briton. There were a couple tribes that supposedly had territory both on the continent and in the British isles. It's likely why the cornish fled to brittany, they already had ties there. Then consider the fact that the same north germanic ppl that invaded britain also settled in the Netherlands and belgium etc. Its no wonder why english dna Is so hard to differentiate from other NW euros. They are essentially made up of the same stock.

@MrRomero00 Don't forget the Norman influence. We tend to think of them as French because that's the language they spoke but the Normans (Norsemen) were really just Vikings given land to end the raids. From the Anglo-Saxons to the Normans we end up with almost a thousand years of genetic influence from essentially the same source.

watch the video it explains it

@Ajrwilde no it doesn’t

I'll Go with that... it has been suggested that Edward III began this so called cultural change to England.? Normans becoming English...

More vikings from Swedish areas went west than east. In fact, if you went east, you were seldom a viking at all since viking is a pirate and Eastern travels were less commonly aggressive. And mainly a small region around Stockholm went east. There are more finds and as many runestones regarding western travelers. Your notion is wrong yet sadly still widespread. It stems from a false idea of a premedieval Sweden. In reality, there was no such thing as a Swedish viking and most vikings from what is now Sweden would have been regarded as Danes by British and Irish historians since they usually organized under danish leaders. F ex there was substantial "Swedish" contingents in both Sven Forkbeards and Canutes hosts of which a number of runestones can tell.

@oscar very interesting . The Swedes around Stockholm definitely made their mark then. There is no doubt they at least went East via Estonia and carrying their boats between lakes stopping off at different places because the Kiev rus emerged out of the Vikings/traders . The furthest east the Danes went was Estonia where the capital city Tallinn derives from Dani Linn in literally Danish town (Dublin is also a Danish city but unlike Tallinn does not capture) the same meaning) from an Irish perspective Viking does not necessarily mean pirate and this is also true in Estonia where the term was also used during ww2. A large Swedish minority lived in Estonia up until late 1930s. The Swedes not Danes or Norwegians made it as far as Constantinople and were reputed to become paid soldiers and bodyguards to the Byzantine. Of course they may well have been composed of others they picked up along the way while simultaneously leavin colonies along the way. Our understanding in Ireland is that the Danes settled in Ireland after leaving many place names behind even to this day. The Irish historical narrative is that they were well able to either pillage trade and then settle. The Norwegians on the other hand were not welcome in Ireland and were only allowed to restock including including taking females and then sent on their way by the Danes. The DNA of Iceland reveals ,not including, recent immigrants that 50percent is Irish even though some females were taken in Scotland which is for reasons I won't get into does not change the DNA record. The Irish historical record also demonstrates further proof of this because before the Danes were defeated by the Irish in 1014 the Irish were ordered to take family names by the Irish high king after the 1014 defeat Danes who had come into help fight were compelled to leave but the Irish Danes were allowed to stay within the country but also compelled to take surnames but not in the same fashion as the Irish this still gives an indication today . In addition Dublin was made a Danish Kingdom . Perhaps among the Danes who had to leave included Swedes and those went on to take over England two years later in1016. When the Normans from France invaded England of England had also been kings of Norway Canute and finally Harald. In addition to this Iceland gained independence from Denmark in 1944 but I have very little knowledge of how Denmark came to be in possession. Iceland also has a history of Irish monasticism with very many monks. Why I find it easy to accept the Swedish eastern theory is that there simply could not have been that many Norsemen. Of course Normandy can be considered west of Scandinavia but then we also have the Norman kingdom of Sicily which would have been easier to reach from Byzantine empire which had territory in mainland Italy . Unlike English language Irish language existed in written form since the fifth century as did Greek and Latin which evolved into a wester dialect and then french which is a hybrid the Normans arrived with after they conquered England. Apart from a few Norwegian anomalies in the Irish family names their is only one surname in Ireland which may have been Swedish but this also requires speculation through the Irish language.and then matching it with English. This is all I can contribute other than to identify that as the Romanov empire was rising in 18th century sweden was also an empire which taught against the Romanov Russian empire eventually relinquishing the province of Livonia which is all of Estonia and as far into Latvia as Riga and from Riga through Lithuania came under polish empire even though the Prussian empire had a language which may be similar to the Lithuanian and Latvian language. The Livonian language whose last native speakers died at the beginning of this century belonged to the finno Ugric group which in the north includes Finnish and Estonian but Finland has a second official language which is Swedish. Finland is also easy of Sweden but this may not have much to do with the Norsemen but more to do with the Swedish empiire which saw Finland becoming part of the Russian empire until 1918 and then under white Russians for a very short period of a year or two. This is all I can contribute . While I knew that Norsemen were in Russia eventually becoming Kiev rus and then Romanovs I always used to presume that they includ Norwegians Swedes and Danes and presumed ther were Swedes among the Vikings in th the north Atlantic archipelago but then I was told that the Swedes went east and now you tell us this. Perhaps the. Concept of. Sweden originated around Stockholm. For my part I do not approach with the view of the term Viking as.only pirates but also traders and settlers. 🤔😃🙋💛

Best wishes from the wirral ,site of the great battle of Brunanburh/Bromborough 937AD, where Angles and Saxons began to identify themselves as English, Wirral itself has Irish Irish placenames like Noctorum (dry hill) Hiberno Norse names like Irby ( place of the Irish) ,Wallasey ( Welsh island ) Angle place names like Eastham ,Bidston, I think people assimilated and paid their tithes round here probably at Greasby ( place of the reeve) which dates back as a settlement 3500 years..cheers / slainte....E

You can go further back than that. Alfred the Great (849 - 899) formed a 'navy' to defend the country from the attacking Vikings, THe Danes ruled northwest Britain from York which they knew as Jorvik until they were defeated by Athelstan (895 - 939) son of Edward the Elder, at, I think the Battle of Brunanburh in 927 He was king of the Anglo-Saxons 924 - 927 and then king of the English 927 - 939.. He is recognised as the first king of what is now England.

He sounds to me (especially at the end) like someone who is in favor of globalism, and not of Brexit.

And would they think that people from South Carolina were a different people from those of us in New York because of people in Upstate showing evidence of back strain - even though it would be because of our shoveling 10 feet or more of snow each average winter?

Maybe a peace sign….

They had their divisions (Roman army was segregated) . Germanics were 2nd Class Members in Roman society. They served as Auxiliary units and Border guards on the Frontier.

Yet their language script is Latin (Italic) rather than Runic (Germanic).

???? Celts didn't Sack Rome . The Sack of Rome on 24 August 410 AD was undertaken by the Visigoths(Germanic) led by their king, Alaric

They weren;t Celts - they had already been replaced in the Bronze age! See: Mass Migrations into Britain in the late Bronze Age. And the so-called Anglo-Saxons were very diverse, as a burial ground in Kent recently showed. See: Daily mail Updown.

@Robert Parker The Celts did sack Rome in the 4th c. BC. They crossed the Alps. The Celts used to settle all over Europe, from Asia Minor to the Channel and into the Spanish peninsula.

@william m. kydde Were not talking about that time period of the early Republic . The Time period being referenced is The Anglo-Saxon period 400-500 AD . You are 1000 years off

@john patrick Celtic refers to Their Religion and Culture , Early Bronze age the Beaker People Migrated to Britain(4000bc BC) . Late Bronze age Hallstatt culture (1400 BC) (Celtic )500 (900 BC) years Later the La Tène Culture (Celtic ) From there the Gallic Culture is Derived In Ireland (Around 300AD). The Brits were part of the Older Hallstatt Culture. The Period of the Ago-Saxons (Germanic-Also refers to Culture ) doesn't even Begin till after 500AD ALL of the Folks are Classified as R1b to their Parent DNA . Then there are sub makers to identify each group. Technically as far as Ethnic they had the same Mummy and Dadda

I also don't like, how they gloss over the DNA evidence.

Agree the idea that a people would suddenly give up their language with few native speakers to teach them and no formal methods of training seems absurd.

I agree completely. In addition, modern Welsh has masculine and feminine genders which are grammatically significant, while in modern English, gender is almost totally grammatically insignificant ("he" and "she" being the only difference I can think of). Modern Welsh still has well defined verb conjugations (although one can get round knowing most of them using the so called periphrastic construction) which English has almost totally lost, and of course a different word order (VSO, as opposed to English SVO).

@ᛄᚩᚾ ᛒᛇᚱᛒᚪᚾᚲ That's a good point, and I don't think anybody knows for sure. Happy to be corrected though. There are theories that a form of proto (Germanic) English was spoken (by some, at least) on this side of the channel prior to the Roman invasion, and of course well prior to the "Anglo-Saxon Invasion", but I don't think they are well-supported.

This is not a new phenomenon at all. When the Abassid Arabs conquered the Levant, Sassanid Mesopotamia, Egypt, Berber Libya and Maghreb most of the local population adopted Arabic and Islam within a hundred years. The same can be said of many Finno-Ugric, Baltic, Sarmatians and Turkic people who lost their tribal identities by becoming Slavicized in the area that became known today as Russia.

But in England, they didn't assimilate. :)

Perhaps what you’ve been taught is inaccurate.

And they were FORTS........ LOL

Why on earth would you go through all the huge and very costly efforts of building these sea forts, if they weren't needed? 🙄

'Both' would seem to be the most sensible alternative. When they weren't needed for defense (which would have been most of the time), they would have been used for trade. And, in times they were needed for defense, a fort is a pretty good place to secure trade goods

The whole film (2005?) is an attempt to prepare the ground for the acceptance of the current wave of immigration as sth benign: "the English nation does not exist", "we don't really know what happened", "it was an economic immigration". Right, in 500 AD, people move in in droves, occupy your land and impose their language. Looks like benign, doesn't it?

language is the 1st step to a new culture. The Old-English is a combination of Germanic(Germanic grammar Rule set and alphabet) and even Brythonic Celtic (Most Brythonic Languages were never in written a form ) . To be to able streamline words for 2 languages.

Compelled doesn't work, the Welsh were compelled to stop speaking Welsh but the Welsh language persisted. But the Scots language (A Germanic language related to Anglo-Saxon) became the dominant language of Scotland without any compulsion. Scotland conquered a small part of the Northumbrian Kingdom, yet rather than impose Scots Gaelic on that population, the Northumbrian language evolved to Scots and became the dominant language of the country, long before the union of the Crowns. Humans also frequently adopt new cultures willingly if not completely. For example Rock and Roll was originally American (and within America specifically African American Culture). yet within a decade it spread and influenced Europe and became the dominant music style in short order. In 1964 America saw the 'British invasion' where bands from Britain, such as the Beatles dominated the American music culture; and doing so playing a musical style that they had taken from American culture originally but adding a British style to it. To this day its hard to tell if a singer is American or British as so many sing in the transatlantic accent that was created by Americans trying to sound like a British band who were trying to sound American. Thus we can see that the adoption of a culture does not rely on compulsion; it simple relies on cultural contact. Cultures that persisted did so because of isolation.

@Dan McShain One could argue that Northumbria was a relatively wealthy region, densely populated, as opposed to the maily cattle-herding and valley-rading Gaelic regions. Then too, there may have been tensions between the Stuarts and the Highlands clans. And there was perhaps some prestige in speaking English, given the large neighbour to the South. What was the prestige of the "Anglo-Saxon" language for the Britons? Culturally, the colonizers were not superior, nor were they richer. All I see is force and better organization on the part of the "Germans".

@william m. kydde Northumbria was a relatively wealthy region, but my emphasis is on the word was. This prosperity occurred centuries prior to the Scots language emerging. In the 9th century Northumbria fell to the Vikings save a small rump in Lothian and the Borders, which then fell under the control the Gaelic speaking King of the Scots. By the time the Scots language emerged in Scotland Northumbria was no longer an independent Kingdom. the Scots language is not English do not confuse the two. Whilst Scots like English is a Germanic language and closely related to English, it is a separate language of Scotland, spoken by around a third of the Scottish population today (to various extents). Scots should not be confused with Scottish English which is a dialect of English spoken in Scotland rather than a separate but related language. The Stuarts did not speak Scots originally; they spoke French (and presumably Breton before this when they arrived in Scotland from Brittany). French was the court language of Scotland from the 12th to 14th centuries and was thus spoken by the nobility during this period. Somehow, despite having no political power and a tiny proportion of the population speaking the language initially, Scots became the primary language in much of Scotland (but not the Highlands) and then somehow influenced the elite and then the King to switch to speaking Scots. I find this fascinating. The prestige of speaking English came latter. Both literally as Scot speakers shifted to English following the act of Union, but also because English was not a prestige language when Scots became the courtly language of Scotland. The prestige of the English kings and their cultural impact on the initially Gaelic speaking King David is what lead to the Scottish court speaking French not English. This is because the English court spoke French in the 12th century. The English court continued to speak French until the 15th century, which means the Scottish court switched to Scots before the English court switched to English. I don't know why Brythonic speakers switched to Anglo-Saxon languages. We have almost no primary sources for the period. What we know from the development of the Scots language is that language changes can occur without population replacement, initial political dominance or even a significant population settlement. Thus we must conclude that a change of language on its own proves nothing beyond cultural contact and must look for other evidence.

@Dan McShain Very interesting, Dan. I was not aware of these nuances. Notoriously, in linguistics, "why" remains most often an unanswered question. Thank you very much. Is there a significant literary heritage written in Scots? Any newspapers? Did Robert Burns write in Scots? I know that the answer can vary from poem to poem, but, e.g., are "Scots Wha Hae" and "Auld Lang Syne" Scots or the dialect?

Classroom teaching is beyond boring. Teachers all sounds like the one in "Peanuts". Going ; Wha wha wha...😄 I read through my history curriculum book in a few evenings, and spent the rest of history classes in the school library. Reading encyclopedias. This was before Google ! I'm sure a lot of students today would learn more and faster on their own, given the chance.

@Nina Elsbeth Gustavsen The company that I work for booked me in for a one week occupation health and safety course a few year ago...things haven't changed Nina, it felt like the longest week of my life!

The Normans did change the landscape, they dug ditches and piled it into a mound and built a wooden fort , before eventually enlarging the ditches and the castles using stone . But the Norman invasion didn't affect the ordinary population, they didn't displace the local Celtic Germanic peoples with French or Norman people. Bbut Only the top end lived here, the lords barons who were given land for fighting for William. The Germanic peoples definitely came to Britain/England and settled here, It just didn't happen in the way old history books used to claim. But because of archaeology we know it wasn't a simple invasion like when the Vikings came, and they returned for easy pickings as well as good farmland. The Saxons didn't come with the big army killing everyone in their way burning churches raping and pillaging. The Saxons came over more subtlety, some were paid mercenaries and others came to take advantage of a leaderless country, after 400 years of Roman rule when they left everything changed, the monetary system reverted back to bartering, and most places excepted the rule of the new local chieftain / kings . But with much less violence compared to the Vikings. Take any English town with Celtic settlement then Roman and then Saxon, the archaeology shows the same story , the people carried on farming etc and with little or no violence new leaders are accepted, obviously there are a few exceptions, that wernt so peaceful, but generally speaking most towns like mine passed from old leaders to new ones , and work, farming etc continued as usual. .

yeah I tend to agree. absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. To me it was a bit disingenuous of him to completely disregard the genetic study in question. To me, larger studies on that front are the way to get at the real truth. Likewise, him saying without any real evidence that the collapse of the roman empire didn't imply a collapse of the local population. It really depends on how self-sustaining the locals are - If the boats that carried excess food stopped arriving and the technical know-how wasn't there, you BET there was a population collapse in the cities. That's why the guy he was talking to looked so incredulous when he made such a statement, and the most charitable he could be was 'well that's a farmers way of looking at it alright'

@Greg Mattson your absolutely right, it depended on how self sufficient , how adaptable , the people from other towns were after the Roman's left. Some adapted and remained unaffected by the administration and supply chain under Roman rule , and continued farming etc Others didn't or couldn't change and they were abandoned and their ruins are in the middle of nowhere. Towns like verulamium changed and adapted to survive and they did, and peacefully, no signs of attack or violence, , the people from the old Roman city at some point accepted the new king of the region & carried on farming etc , and eventually moved to the new Saxon town the church built on top of the hill , and the same thing, era after era the town adapted until the modern time & city it is today . I hate the generalisation that so many historians give , The Romans left and the Saxons invaded and took over England and wiped out anyone in their way... It was nothing like as simple as that, its more complex and interesting, and not as violent as historians try making it seem.

@hypppo yes I know about that , as I do most things that happened in my country's history. The north, east and west has always been a troublesome part of England, from Roman times & Saxon times and of course against the Norman barons & then the pheasants revolt.. Its been called the wild west of England.

It was really more about money. If you were wealthy you could have afforded better weapons, perhaps a horse, and that would have been what gave you an edge over everyone else.