Timeline of the Origins of the Ethnic English
Introduction
Many people have questioned who the English really are and where they come from. This timeline sets out to answer that. The English are a Germanic race of people. Engles, Jutes and Saxons. It finds the English to be a very old people indeed. It explains some of the mysteries about the origins of the ethnic English. And tells of where some of the ancient symbology and old myths comes from. The White Dragon, Woden (Wotan,) and the Steadfast sword. It takes about 20 minutes to read. I suggest that it will be a valuable read indeed.
The First English and their ancient origins – a Scythian race?
The source stories of both the English and Scandinavian cultures claim that the Kings of both peoples originated from families which came out of ancient Black Sea/Macedonian tribes. Collectively they are known as the people of Allfather from the Middle Enclosure. The English stories claim descent from ancient Troy. The Scandinavians claim descent from the faraway south-eastern city of Asgaard, which no longer exists in fact or in the archaeological record. The Gauls Gallic tradition claims their descent from warrior tribes forced to wander landless out of the region of the Black Sea, through Europe, to the ends of the world... including the Britannic Island: Albion. Diodorus Siculus around 90 BC to 30 BC was a Greek historian, born at Agyrium in Sicily (now called Agira,) who describes the Gauls as a Germanic or Nordic type people.
"The Gauls are tall of body with rippling muscles and white of skin and their hair is blond, and not only naturally so for they also make it their practice by artificial means to increase the distinguishing colour which nature has given it."
Tacitus the Roman in his book The Germania (De Origine et situ Germanorum) describes the Germanic people as having Red hair, and blue eyes, and are of a large size. This is the same description that Herodutus gives of the Scythians based on the Black Sea earlier in 500 BC. (See below.) At this time there were 80 Germanic tribes. Some will be described later.
The Anglo-Saxon historian Bede records that the Picts own oral history claimed their descent from a tribe that migrated from Scythia to the North Sea, and then in long ships west by sea to Northern Albion (Pictland). Almost certainly via Norway.
The Celt myth and its answer.
Is this then why ‘Celt’ (a made up word,) historians get confused by claiming that modern Anglo-Saxon English and pre-Roman British (Alba) people are related through DNA. Thus mistakenly saying ‘we are all Celt’. In fact the Picts`/ Nordic-Scandinavians / Saxons and indeed many of the Welsh are all related Germanic / Black Sea peoples who have developed separately. They just arrived in Alba / British mainland at different times. They are Scythians. Irish Gaelic type ‘Celts’ they are not. The Picts arrived first – to be checked by the Romans and the Roman invasion of the British Isles, to then have a new wave of Scythian peoples arrive some four hundred years after the Romans came with the Saxon Advent in 449 AD. It answers the Celtic myth. In truth there is little if any historical factual basis for the Celts, the word being modern, attested from 1707. In the late 17th century the work of scholars such as Edward Lhuyd. It has more to do with ‘Irish revivalism’ than anything else.
The Gaelic Irish
So where does this leave the Irish? The Irish are the greatest proponents of the ‘Celtic’ myth. Occupying the Island of Eire, if anything the so called ‘Celtic’ Irish are most certainly nothing to do with their other ‘Celtic’ friends – the Scots and Welsh or Gallic Francois (French,) for example. The Irish claim to descend from seagoing tribes from the Middle East, which migrated firstly to the tip of Iberia (Portugal) and then northeast to Eire land. But male DNA profiling (the one to use,) shows no link between Irish and current Iberians. The Irish Gaels show different genetics to the English, most of the Welsh and Pictish Scots, and have a different history entirely. The Irish are in truth a completely non-Germanic non-Black Sea peoples. Not Scythians. Nothing to do with the Teutonic Gauls, nor the Picts or most of the Welsh. No connection. But the general Irish do have a strong Viking influence, having being invaded by the Vikings. The Irish come into English history through their courage in promoting Christianity.
The Vikings
Viking like Rus in Russian means ‘pirate’, in the sea going sense. They and other Scanian peoples less the Finns who have a different origin, were those Germanic peoples who did not leave Scandinavia, but paused a while to begin various Viking invasions of mainland Britain and Europe from 700 AD onwards. They are direct relatives of the Angles and Saxons. They became active after the Saxon Advent in 449 AD. It is one of the reasons why they share the mythology of the ancient English, and why the Viking who invaded England over several hundred years prior to 1066 AD were so readily absorbed by the English. In the UK television programme ‘Blood of the Vikings’, the project team found it impossible to tell the English Anglo-Saxon DNA from the Scandinavian Viking. Because they are the same Germanic people.
The Black Sea Origins of the English
Perhaps the ethnic English, too, came out of the eastern Mediterranean/Black Sea region following a forced displacement... refugees from western Asia entering the Northern reaches of an inviting new post-glacial paradise. The key to the mystery may lie in the post-glacial factor...
With melting perma-ice the seas rose for centuries after the Ice Age ended, and eventually inundated what now looks to have been a high Neolithic culture existing in the Mesolithic Age, around the Black Sea basin, then several hundred feet below existing sea level. Essentially settlements around a small inland lake.
Evidence points to the dispersal of that culture after the very sudden flooding of the Black Sea basin (after the breaching of the Dardanelles) by rising Mediterranean Sea levels, over six thousand years ago.
The refugees, those fleeing the Flood, possibly crossed the populated Middle East and went into the Mesopotamian basin, crossed the populated Ukraine and entered Western Europe and the North Sea, and fanned out beyond the populated Macedonian peninsula to the islands of Crete and Malta and the Nile delta, and so caused the sudden co-incident appearance of advanced Neolithic cultures where there had been none. If the Black Sea flood was indeed Noah's flood of the Christian Bible fame, and all of the displaced tribes had to travel far, in all directions, to find new homes for themselves, it would go far to explain the many similar origin stories amongst the Nordic / Germanic Pictish and Germanic Engles and Saxons. As well as the sudden arrival of similarly advanced Neolithic cultures in so many of the archaeological records of Europe and the Middle East over six thousand years ago. That makes the English a very old people indeed. And the big shock of truth for the Pictish Scots and many of the Welsh and the English is that they share a common heritage. They are all ultimately of Germanic and Scythian origin.
If there was a centre of high culture in the pre-flood Black Sea basin, it would have been an early Neolithic city. Such a centre of commerce would have attracted tribes from all over the Black Sea basin, and beyond. If it was Noah's city, it contained enough distinct tribes to have earned a reputation for confusion... a tower of Babel.
Asgard? First home of the English?
Somewhere else North of that Scythian region, along the course of the Don River, it is said that the mythical city of Asgard also sat, guarding the way from Asia into Europe; so long ago that there was no trace of it left when Rome held the gateways to Asia. Perhaps there once was a transitional Mesolithic civilization serving the tribes of those central plains. A civilization which contained briefly, somewhere in that vast, endless country, the lost village of the Nordic gods. A place used by the ancestors of the English on their move northwards.
Evidence of Nordic Peoples in Scythia - Herodotus
As has been alluded to above. The English may have been known about 500 years before Christ. The only historical evidence of Nordic peoples in this region prior to the Roman period is the account of Scythia by Herodotus (500 BC) in which he writes:
"The Budini, a numerous and powerful nation, all have markedly blue-grey eyes and red hair; there is a town in their territory called Gelonus, all built of wood, both dwelling-houses and temples, with a high wooden wall round it, thirty furlongs each way. There are temples here in honour of Greek gods, adorned after the Greek manner with statues, altars, and shrines - though all constructed of wood; a triennial festival, with the appropriate revelry, is held in honour of Dionysus...
The language of the Budini is quite different, as, indeed, is their culture generally: they are a pastoral people who have always lived in this part of the country..."
The fortified settlement of Gelonus was reached by the Persian army of Darius I (549 BC to 486 BC,) in his assault on Scythia, and burnt to the ground in around 512 BC, the Budini having abandoned it in their flight before the Persian advance. As there were no blue-eyed, red haired people living in Scythia by the time of Roman dominance, these people must have resettled in the North. Was Gelonus the mythical city of Asgaard? Did the Angles and Saxons swap the Black Sea for the Baltic and North (Nordic) Sea by way of extended migration? Where they part of the Budini?
The only other thing which Herodotus mentions which is peculiarly Nordic in content is the account of a one-eyed people living far to the north of Scythia whose gold hoards are guarded by griffins. This could be a telling of the all-seeing one-eyed god Wotan (the Saxon God Woden,) and of course the dragons which were thought to dwell underground guarding their golden hoards. The future White Dragon of the English?
Enter the White Dragon of the English
In early medieval art, the dragon is represented as a winged serpent, or worm. How did the winged fire breathing serpent enter the world view of the early Northern world? The answer is found in the famous Viking Saga Beowulf. The vivid description of the dragon as a worm, coming out only at night when it is seen blazing through night skies cloaked in flame, and doomed to seek out hoards in the ground perfectly describes meteor strikes and shooting stars. It is a frightful, yet reasonable, interpretation of natural phenomenon. They saw a serpent breathing flame flying across the night sky. If it was flying, it clearly had wings. Rarely, a daytime meteor strike was visible, and word of its appearance would make the rounds. Any time a meteor strike was tracked to ground, and the result of its fiery impact into soft ground was investigated, it would seem that the dragon had buried itself deep underground. The Danish buried treasure underground. The dragons must do the same. They come to ground to bury treasure hoards deep in the earth. They do not seem to return to the surface, since none are ever seen emerging from their pits. They must stand guard over their hoard, deep underground, in these unseen lairs. Any man who entered such an underworld would have to do battle royal to steal the dragon’s treasure. This traditional view of a relationship with serpents, griffin, worms and dragons was carried from Asgaard to Scandinavia and ultimately to England. It is the reason why The English share so much mythology with the Nordic Vikings.
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Map of possible Neolithic origins of the English 4000 BC
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Due north of the Black Sea is Scandinavia. The former Budini peoples, the Angles and Saxons moved due North, with their families, Gods, myths and traditions. Imagine the stamina required to move over vast tracks of endless forest, bog, rivers, and marshes. Fighting off many other tribes as they went. The perma-ice would have receded by this time, but it would have been very challenging. This experience would have produced a very tough survival instinct. An ability to be technical in looking forward to solutions. Storage of food. Forging metals on the move. And techniques for defence. Imagine that they would have used the round wooden stockades similar to the later Saxon burgh design for medium term defence of family groups. Easy to build in the huge forests. They built Grubenhauser, which are similar to the sunken round houses of the nomadic First Nation Indians of the North Americas. Built on well drained land with a two foot deep pit as the base, a sloping roof would be built around the pit which gave camouflage and wind chill resistance. In case of sudden attack on the move, the Shieldwall would have provided a quick defensive tactic in unknown territory. One which would quickly turn the battle on the side of the future Scanians. These ancient English would have quickly formed a homogenous group who could easily punch above their weight and fight off larger tribes of unknown people. Sound familiar? This same characteristic founded New England in the USA.
Yet this move would not have been unplanned. Caesar describes the move of the Helvetti in his work Gallic War. 263,000 people moved with huge baggage trains. It took 3 years to plan and execute. A whole nation on the move. The Germanic Scythians would have been the same.
Alba – Albion – Land of Picts and Britons
Britain as is today was known as Alba at the time the Angles and Saxons were moving north some 6000 years ago and occupying Scania. . It was occupied by Hibernians. They occupied the land before the arrival of the Germanic Brythonic peoples, and the Germanic / Nordic Picts. The Picts came from Norway into Scotland via the Shetlands. They were of the same Black Sea ancestry as the Angles and Saxons. It is true that long before the Saxon Advent of 449 AD Germanic people were settling along the east coat of Alba. Many of the Welsh or Wealh in old English meaning foreigner or slave were the teutonic Gauls who by Gallic tradition a ‘made it’ to Alba. Clearly cultural language differences remain to this day.
Yet as time was to play out and we fast forward for a short while, the Brythons (very similar to the Teutonic Gauls,) were conquered by the Romans forming the Romano-Brythons. After the massacres of the male populations by the Romans following the defeat of Boudica’s revolt in AD 60 or 61, the Brythons began to take on a very Roman look. A short Mediterranean type of people began to occupy what we know as Alba or Britain. No longer the tall Germanic people who looked like the Gauls. Alba became Romanized with various squabbling disparate Romano-Brythonic tribes under Roman control, who ironically often used Saxon and other continental Germanic tribes to keep the peace. And keep the Picts out of Roman lands! Little did the Romano-Brythons know of the characteristic for movement that these Germanic mercenaries ultimately had within them.
1000 BC: The English move across the Baltic Sea to Jutland.
Some 3000 years ago the Scanian people moved across the Baltic and occupied the Jutland and thence south to occupy the lands of the Rhine, Elbe and Wesser. This great advance into what is now Germany was assisted by various Nordic peoples coming at different times across the Baltic. Sea going skills, toughness and re-deployment of the ancient skills of clearing forest to form burghs and Grubenhausen came to the fore.
250 BC: Move into the Germanic Central Uplands
Around 2250 years ago these Nordic peoples started to move into the Central Uplands of Germany from the Jutland peninsula. Over the following 200 years these people took control of the land between the Rhine and the Vistula, and the Danube and the Baltic. They were so successful that they spread out across vast areas. They became 3 Germanic peoples:
> Germans of the Sea
> Germans of the Forest
> Germans of the Stepps
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Map of the movement of Germanic tribes from Scania 1000-250 BC
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50 BC to 150 AD: The Germanic Peoples of the Sea and the Saxon confederation
50 BC saw the Germanic people of the sea worshipping Ing from who they believed they were descended. They consisted of four tribes who operated as a federation:
> The Engle – later the Angles – The English.
> The Seax – named after their fighting knife – later the Saxons (Sons of the Sword.)
> The Eote – later the Jutes.
> The Friese – The Frisians.
Accomplished fishermen and sea raiders, they were skilled seafarers long before their cousins the Vikings Occupying the Northern part of Germania, they kept in contact with other Nordic peoples, and understood the North Sea and Baltic well. They also know of Alba, its fertile lands, and eventually when the Romans occupied the island, its weak set of Romano-Brythonic tribes. These were warlike times when leaders of people were supreme warriors. They would old the arts in contempt. Illiterate for the most part, they were oddly enough to later produce some of the most startling manuscripts and jewellery ever seen. The description of the individual Germanic Sea tribes below thus needs to be put in the context of these times. They are described as confederation by the Greek Ptolemy in his work Geography in 150 AD.
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The Jutes
The Eote as they were known or Ytene as the Saxons called them later. They gave their name to Jutland, where they are still known by that name.
The Frisians
Occupied the distinct set of islands just off the North German coast. Isolated and resourceful they would have fitted well with the confederation of Germanic Sea Peoples.
The Seax - The Saxons (modern term,) – ‘Sons of the Sword’
Truly a formidable Germanic sea people. Charlemagne (742 AD to 814 AD,) called them ‘ferocious’. In 470 AD Sidonious tells of how they would offer to the ‘mighty spearman of the sea.’ He describes how after raiding lands to the South, they selected one tenth of the prisoners to be crucified or drowned in the hope of gaining favourable seas. They raided coast lines as far south as Spain. Eutropius reported that by 280 AD they were prolific pirates.
The Sons of the Sword were a truly merciless tribe. Tacitus tells of how their own ‘sodomites and lawbreakers’ were drowned in bogs. This ferocity translated to the battlefield.
On land the Saxons were a much feared enemy. An example of Germanic ferocity is that of the Battle in the Teutoburg forest (German Teutoburger Wald): In 9 BC, Hermann a Germanic war lord ambushed three legions in the forest. Over two days days, whilst thunder and lightening crashed overhead, the whole Roman army was annihilated and Germania remained independent from Roman rule. Roman legionnaires were hung from trees or thrown into wolf pits. Skulls were nailed to trees. Clothes, weapons. horses, tack, and saddles were destroyed. One can see this later in the Saxon invasion of Britain from AD 449. The Suth Seax under Ælle trapped a host of Romano-Brythons in Pevensey castle in the South coast of what is now England and killed every one of them to honour Woden. In Suffolk a county of modern England there is a place called Woolpit. It was not for wool. When the Saxons moved into Winchester also in the South of England it had a fully functioning Roman style forum. When the Saxons had finished it was and still is hard core.
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The area in blue is continental Old Saxony by the 10th century.
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The Engle or Anglii (Latin) – Angles
The Engle lived in southern Jutland and worshipped the Nerthus or Earth Mother. Their land was called Angeln. They were known for their ability to fish (where angling comes from.) And one can see how the Angles and Saxons fed off each other. The Angles providing fish and boats, the Saxons keeping the region safe to the south. They practised sacrifice of animals which were often thrown into bogs. Unfortunately for their owners the expensive horse tack etc often went too! They like the Saxons worshipped Woden. They sacrificed humans (probably criminals,) as offerings to Woden. Tacitus tells of how they would be stripped, bound and hung from a tree.
Their land was marshy and prone to flooding. A factor that would tip the scales towards moving with the Saxons from Jutland to Britain in 449 AD.
Steadfast
The Engle above all have given their name to the English. Down through time the story of King Offa I of the Engle transcends. Of his challenge to Meaca King of the neighbouring Myrgings at the age of 13 to meet him in personal combat. Upon hearing this his father Wermund gave him a sword to match this young boys extraordinary strength. The swords name was Steadfast. Armed with Steadfast and his shield Offa killed Meaca and another Myrging. When they sailed to England two of the greatest Kings of Mercia (Middle Engles,) Penda 577 AD to 655 AD and Offa II claimed the young Offa I as their ancestor.
200 AD: The ancestry of Woden – poet and the supreme Germanic God.
The Jutes, Angles and Saxons had been settled in Germania for over 1000 years. By now Magna Germania was established and the Germanic people, whilst often different and often at war with each other, were forming a society based on a simple warrior culture and the spoken word. Deeds, seasonal rhythm, song and the 9 Values. There were four main Germanic gods - Woden, Frig, Tiw, and Thunor, Woden was the most important .Why is it important to bring this into the timeline of English ethnicity? The English are mainly Christian after all. Firstly it would leave a big gap in the story – but secondly it is very likely that he was actually a real person to whom the early English looked with reverence. The section in bold italics below is his ancestry. It tells of how all early Germanic English chieftains and Kings subsequently descend from Woden, a real man who lived in Odense in the second century AD.
Scyld lived in the land of the Angles and Saxons, around the Baltic Sea. His son was Scyld, and his grandson was Beo. Nothing is known of them except that they were warriors of the middle iron age. They lived in the far North, over two thousand years ago, shortly before the age of Christians had begun. They were pre-reflective men, not hobbled by a particularly sensitive conscience. They were men of action, herdsmen, hunters, and warriors. Like the people of Gaul and Britain / Alba, Iberia and Eire. Like the earlier heroic people of Homeric Greece, before civilization. Before the philosophers.
Beo's son was Taetwa, the father of Yeat. Taetwa could have seen the unusual star of Christmas when he was younger, when Jesus was born far to the South in the town of the Hebrew king David's sacred threshing floor, Beth le Hem (meaning House of Bread). But Taetwa would find no such meaning in it. He may have concluded that things signified differently for each of us, and learned not to interpret portents. If that star signified for good or for bad, and for whom, he knew not. He taught his son, Yeat, how to live and when to fight. That was what he knew. Yeat's descendants were his son Godwulf, and his grandson Finn. Finn's son was Frithuwulf, and his grandson was Freotholaf. Woden was the son of Freotholaf.
According to the geneology of the Saxon kings of Wessex, recorded in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles, their ancestor, Woden, would have lived in the second Christian century. Since the Saxons practised hereditary kingship, Woden was evidently one in a line of warrior chieftains whose community survived the ages, into historical times. The most likely home of Woden's family was at Gudme, on the island of Fyn, off the east coast of Jutland in the Baltic Sea. There is a settlement there called 'Odense', which is said to mean: "Woden's sanctuary". The first century settlement at Gudme, on the isle of Fyn, was at its most prosperous in the late Roman Iron Age, from the years of Our Lord 200 to 300 (using the calendar popularised by the Anglo-Saxon chronicler Bede). So, it prospered initially towards the end of Woden's stewardship, and flourished for several generations afterwards. Excavations there yield some of the most spectacular treasures of the age. The gold and silver trade goods, gold coins, jewel encrusted weapons, and masses of bog sacrifices, testify to an exceptionally favoured community. Somehow, the era of Woden came to be known as the days at the beginning of time. Woden's name, in particular, became associated with all the great traditions which survived from that era. He was, according to tradition, the master of all poets. In the Scandinavian custom, the poets were considered able to converse with the gods of Asgaard, the home of their ancestor heroes. This high esteem for great poets was typical of all primitive western cultures, where the oral history of the tribes was preserved in epic verse. Influential poets would presumably be close relations of the chieftain. The family of the chief warrior and the chief poet were Royal in the most direct sense. They were extremely important men and women, who interpreted with wisdom all the events of our lives, and directed the community with authority.
A Scandinavian biography of Kings entitled "Heimskringla", written in the early 1200's, credits Woden with having established the rites of worship and burial observed among the early Scandinavians.
"He decreed that all the dead should be burned, and put on the funeral pyre with all their possessions. He also said that everyone should come into Valhalla with all the property that he had on the pyre, and he should also enjoy the use of what he himself had buried in the earth, and the ashes should be carried out to sea or buried in the earth, and mounds should be raised in memory of men of rank...
And there should be a sacrifice at the beginning of winter for a successful year, and at midwinter for regeneration, and a third in summer which was a sacrifice for victory."
By the early middle ages, the local traditions of the late Roman Iron Age had evolved into the religious traditions which we now associate with the Viking people of the Baltic. The 10th century English chronicler, Æthelweard, says of Woden, the ancestor of the Anglo-Saxon kings, that "the unbelieving Northerners (Vikings) are overwhelmed by such great temptation that they worship him as a god even today."
So, the memory of Woden – quite possibly a real Saxon poet of the second century had evolved from that of ancestral chieftain, as held by the English, to that of a founding god in the Norse pantheon of creation myth.
Woden's son was Baldaeg, born at the beginning of the third century. His descendants were, in order, son Brand, grandson Frithugar, then great grandson Freawine, born at the beginning of the fourth century.
In the last one hundred years of the Roman Empire, Freawine's son Wig lived in the Baltic among the Angles, with his son Gewis, and grandson Esla.
After the German people crossed the Rhine into Gaul in the year of Our Lord 407, and conquered all the Roman Legions, Esla's son Elesa was born, and then his grandson Elesa's son, Cerdic, heard from other Saxons who had been to Britain how good that land was, and how weak the Britons had become since the departure of their Roman Legions. Cerdic was not invited to Britain, as had been the first Saxons, but he decided to take his people from the boglands of Jutland where they lived, to the good new land of Britain. And so, the Angles and Saxons invaded Britain, landing at Portsmouth 1 and settling inland from there, by force of arms. Leading them all, was Cerdic. Cerdic's son was Cynric, which is a name taken from the Britons, who called themselves the Cymri. Cynric, or King Rick we might say, was the father of Ceawlin. The stories of their battles are found in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles. Everything they did was memorized and told to their childrens' children. When they learned to write, all the stories were committed to paper manuscripts, and so preserved for one and a half thousand years until today, in books called the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles.
1 Cerdic landed at Calshot Spit near Southampton in the Solent area of modern England. Calshot – corruption for Cerdic’s Shore.
For more on Woden and Old English language and runes read Woden and the Runes.
406 AD to 455 AD: The German breakthrough on the Rhine
By the end of the fourth century AD the Germanic tribes were spread far and wide across Northern Europe. Magnus Germania. The Germans of the Forest were growing strong. Various tribes were being created. Over 80 Germanic tribes were known to have existed. But some of the main ones included Vandals, Swabians, and Burgundians. Those who were to really change central Europe were:
The Goths - There were Western (Visi)goths and Eastern (Austro)goths. Austria is still their home today. They originated from the Germans of the Stepps.
The Allans - The French still call the people of Germany "Allemandes" today.
The Franks - Named after the Francisca throwing axe. The tribe which settled west of the Rhine in old Romano-Gaul, which is today called France, (they refer to themselves as Gallic Francois). The same throwing axe went to North America with French settlers and became the Tomahawk. They gave their name to France.
The Dutch - The Germans call themselves Deutche, and so do the modern German people of the Nederlands (underlands: because they are below sea level at high tide).
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Map of the explosion west of the Germanic tribes
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In 406 AD a force of Vandals, Swabians, Burgundians, and Allans formed a confederation on the east bank of the Rhine. They had defeated the Romans several times. Omens were sought, runes read, and lots cast. A runic spear thrown. The assault across the Rhine went well. The Germanic hosts were suddenly into Romano-Gaul. Rome quite rightly panicked. Legions were withdrawn from Britain to help. But nothing could stop these invading tribes. The Vandals went through Romano-Gaul and Spain and in 429 AD they captured Carthage in North Africa. In 410 AD the Goths took Rome. By 455 AD Vandals were attacking Corsica, Sardinia, and the Balearic Island. Within Europe the Romanized Christians who lived among the Germans tried to keep on reading and writing, but the great Roman libraries were destroyed by the Germans (who only valued gold and slaves and bravery in war). It may have been with the blessing of the young Roman Catholic Church, which viewed the cosmology espoused by classical writings with suspicion and contempt. By this time, the Irish monks became literate Christians and loved to make books. They kept literacy alive in Europe. Eventually, the Irish monks won over the hearts of the Germanic peoples with their courage and wisdom, and taught the Anglo-Saxons how to read and write in the great monasteries such as Lindisfarne. But, that came later.
406 AD: The Roman Legions leave Britain
The Romans had conquered Britain in 43 AD, and four hundred years later it was not ready for the changes happening on the continent. Rumours would have been rife. The withdrawal of the Legions was a traumatic time. The Romano-Brythons thought they would come back. But the Legions went to Romano-Gaul and lost to the Goths and did not come back. The Romano-Brythons were exposed to attack from Picts and Irish. They managed to defeat the Picts in 410 AD. But in 430 AD Pictish and increasing Saxon sea borne attacks began again.
449 AD: Adventus Saxonem or Saxonum
The Saxon Advent. The Anglo-Saxon invasion of retain. The Coming of the English. Hengest and Horsa. Ælle. Cerdic. The ultimate creation of a united country. Alfred the Great. The fearsome Athelstan. The Battle of Brunanburgh.
For the timeline that leads to the creation of modern England read the history articles.
Summary – The origins of Ethnic English Nation
The English – descended from the Engle Jutes Friesians and Saxons - gave their name to England. An ancient peoples related back 6000 years to many of the Welsh and Picts who arrived a while before them. A Scythian Germanic Race who have travelled a tortuous route over the millennia to give their name to England. They have created a truly global phenomena. There is no one in the world who has claim to England but them. Those before them are either gone or absorbed. Homogenous, resourceful, successful, the ethnic English have as much right to give their name to England as the Franks to France, the Allemandes to Germany, The Dutch to Holland, or the Austro-Goths to Austria.
Any who claim to be ‘Celtic’ or not English within borders of England who have ancestry in England are deluded. Regional separatists for example. They are English as anyone – if they claim not to be so, then it is because they do not know their true history or ethnicity. Even the Normans (Norsemen,) who invaded in 1066 AD are a Germanic Scythian people by origin. They like the Vikings before them were of one origin. And were absorbed.
England and the ethnic English nation are one inseparable being.
M.A. Hall
English History Teller
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