The Origins of the British: The New Prehistory of Britain (41 page)

This is our earliest British text, written around
AD
540–560, describing an unwise invitation made to Saxon warriors in the previous century, and their subsequent turning on their hosts. The story, as told by Gildas, continues with further incursions, some battles won and some lost, and culminates in the domination of England by people we now call Anglo-Saxons and who gave England its name and language. Gildas, or St Gildas as the Welsh later knew him, describes an inferno of rapine, bloodshed and genocide which has formed the basis for a persisting view of the Dark Ages ethnic cleansing of the ‘Celts’ from England. Significantly, some modern authors infer a population replacement by a combination of peoples from the coastal Germanic-speaking mainland of north-west Europe, including the Saxons, the Angles, the Frisians, the Jutes and even the Franks. Despite Gildas’ nationalist agenda and endless religious ranting, this extreme view can still be regarded as an orthodox position, held as it has been by a number of historians, not to mention linguists, archaeologists and some geneticists.

Of course, there is a sceptical camp, particularly of archaeologists, who view any extravagant claims for migrations as unwise and prefer to point to the more fashionable option of elite takeover and dominance by small groups of nobles. The problem with this ‘soft option’ is the
apparently
overwhelming
body of evidence for cultural, linguistic and genetic change after the Dark Ages, with little in the way of cultural carry-over from the conquered peoples.

In this third part of the book I hope to show that, rather than supporting a sudden replacement, this striking evidence is also consistent with a more prolonged cultural and genetic interchange between England and its neighbours across the North Sea, one that began even before the Roman invasion. Elite takeover by small groups of nobles is made easier if cultural links already exist. There are other, older explanations than sudden replacement for the clear genetic differences between England and the Atlantic fringe of Britain, as I have laid out in
Part 2
. The elite linguistic, cultural and genetic incoming influence may also have included southern Scandinavians as much as people from the more traditional Anglo-Saxon homelands of Schleswig-Holstein and north-west Germany.

I shall be discussing linguistics, historical texts and archaeological evidence, followed by genetic analysis; but I should like first to recap briefly on the background to the British east/west divide. To avoid repetition in this introduction, I shall not differentiate male from female sources of gene flow, although most of the geographical detail I shall later present refers to the Y chromosome.

Much of the genetic input of north-west Europe derives from re-expansion from Iberian refuges after the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), and before the start of the European Neolithic 7,500 years ago. The persisting Iberian influence is more evident in the British Isles than in the neighbouring Germanic-speaking regions of Europe. While the older Iberian post-LGM influence reaches its highest rates in Ireland and the west coast of
Britain, it is still present in 60–75% of males, even in England. This English genetic conservatism tends to undermine the idea of complete recent replacement by Anglo-Saxons, since the effect is seen whether one looks at broader gene groups or exact matching gene types between the two potential sources of gene flow – Iberia or the ‘Germanic-speaking’ regions.

In the Neolithic or before, an east/west division, or differentiation, began and progressed. The dividing line stretched from the Scottish Grampians in the north to Wessex in the south, between the west and east coasts of Britain. The differences are apparent in male genetic lines and cultural influence coming in from two distinct sources. The Atlantic regions of Ireland, Cornwall and Wales all received cultural input from Brittany and Iberia. Ireland and Wales received rather little Neolithic genetic input, but what there was all came via the southern source. Cornwall was a little different as far as its people are concerned, in that it shared in a general south-coast genetic melting pot of eastern and western Neolithic influences. The south coast and Channel Islands as a whole received a modest (15–25%) genetic input from
both
the north and south Continental sources during the Neolithic, although rather more from north-west Europe.

On the east coast of Britain, the Neolithic cultural influence was more clearly derived from north-west Europe, which is consistent with the introduction of new male gene lines to England from that part of the Continent. Norfolk and York and the islands of Orkney and Shetland received slightly more Neolithic input than did other parts of the east coast, but together with the earlier post-LGM period this leaves even less space for any post-Roman invasion. What is striking about these regions, especially the north-east of Britain, is the relatively high
proportion of the Neolithic input, both cultural and genetic, from Scandinavia.

During the Bronze Age, cultural interchange with the Continent intensified, particularly with the north-west part of Europe. The genetic picture of ancient British pony breeds gives us another tantalizing glimpse of connections between northern Britain and southern Scandinavia. In the south, the Wessex elite Bronze Age cultures acted as a cultural and trade centre between the east and west of the British Isles in their contacts throughout the Continent. The main evidence for genetic inflow, however, is in eastern Britain from across the North Sea, although even that is relatively small. My overall estimate for further male gene flow into the British Isles during the immediate pre-Roman period (Bronze and Iron Ages) is about 3%.

Along with my queries about English identity and origins, I left a language question hanging at the end of the last chapter. It may seem academic, but this question goes to the heart of Anglo-Saxon cultural identity. Before plunging into the quagmire of unreliable historical texts from the Anglo-Saxon period, I shall restate it: given the increasingly close cultural and genetic relationships between north-west Europe and the British North Sea coast before the Roman invasion, what languages were spoken in eastern Britain at that time?

Linguists interested in this period, who by default are mainly celticists, assume that a form of celtic, most likely ‘British’
(Brythonic), was universal at the time of the first Roman accounts (see p. 325). Language is as much a cultural as a genetic marker, so it might be reasonable to ask whether any languages of the Germanic branch of Indo-European were spoken in some parts of England even before the Romans came.

The classical writers are not much help here, mainly because Britain and Ireland were islands off the far end of the Continent with their own names, and most authors were not very interested in languages. As I pointed out in
Chapter 1
, no classical author referred to any Britons as being Celtic, let alone celtic-speaking. Strabo in fact
contrasted
the Britons racially with the Celts – in his usual disparaging style, when writing at the limits of his knowledge. It is obvious that his direct experience was confined to seeing a few slaves from England being paraded half-naked in the markets of Rome:

The men of Britain are taller than the Celti, and not so yellow-haired, although their bodies are of looser build. The following is an indication of their size: I myself, in Rome, saw mere lads towering as much as half a foot above the tallest people in the city, although they were bandy-legged and presented no fair lines anywhere else in their figure. Their habits are in part like those of the Celti, but in part more simple and barbaric.
¹

So, if in these lines Strabo is referring to lads from England as different from his idea of Celts, what about the other tribes in Britain during the Roman occupation? What did they look like, and what sort of cultures and languages did they share? We do have some first-hand accounts from other Roman commentators, in particular Tacitus, who wrote about the British tribes in a laudatory biography (
AD
98) of his famous father-in-law,
Agricola. In the following passage, the Silurian part of which I have already cited (in
Chapter 1
), he asks the questions, but acknowledges how few of the answers he has. Even the gaps, however, are revealing:

Who were the original inhabitants of Britain, whether they were indigenous or foreign, is, as usual among barbarians, little known. Their physical characteristics are various and from these conclusions may be drawn. The red hair and large limbs of the inhabitants of Caledonia point clearly to a German origin. The dark complexion of the Silures, their usually curly hair, and the fact that Spain is the opposite shore to them, are an evidence that Iberians of a former date crossed over and occupied these parts. Those who are nearest to the Gauls are also like them, either from the permanent influence of original descent, or, because in countries which run out so far to meet each other, climate has produced similar physical qualities. But a general survey inclines me to believe that the Gauls established themselves in an island so near to them. Their religious belief may be traced in the strongly marked British superstition. The language differs but little …
²

Taken together, Tacitus’ three examples have a curiously anachronistic ring (Plate 22). Even then, it seems, Scotland (Caledonia) was notable for red hair; and the suggested Germanic connection anticipates modern research on the specific genetic types associated with redheads in Scandinavia and Europe and my discussion on Neolithic Scandinavian genetic influence during the Neolithic in
Chapter 5
.
³
If heard today, such remarks about redheaded Scots, Mediterranean-complexioned Welsh and the Dutch sounding a bit like the English might well be dismissed as ethnic stereotyping, but I would take it seriously. Hearing
the same remarks repeated from a time capsule two thousand years ago might suggest that whatever the intervening political upheavals and ethnic label-changing, some things like genes may not really have changed much at all.

Perhaps the most tantalizing opinion Tacitus records here is the last comment quoted in the extract above – that between Britain and Gaul ‘the language differs but little’. This statement is some what opaque when taken out of context, since he did not specify which of the peoples and languages of Gaul he was referring to. But in the context of the second half of the extract, we can see that he is referring specifically to those tribes living in what we now call the south of England, and by the ‘nearest Gauls’ it is more than likely that he was referring to the Belgae, Continental Gauls who lived north of the Seine.

Caesar seems to confirm this interpretation in his
Gallic Wars
when he describes the Britons of south-east England whom he met on his second expeditionary invasion in 54
BC
, as migrants. So for Wessex and West Sussex we read:

The interior portion of Britain is inhabited by those of whom they say that it is handed down by tradition that they were born in the island itself: the maritime portion by those who had passed over from the country of the Belgae for the purpose of plunder and making war; almost all of whom are called by the names of those states from which being sprung they went thither, and having waged war, continued there and began to cultivate the lands.
⁴

And for Kent (the Cantiaci tribe), the area later supposedly occupied by the Jutes:

The most civilized of all these nations are they who inhabit Kent, which is entirely a maritime district, nor do they differ much from the Gallic customs. Most of the inland inhabitants do not sow corn, but live on milk and flesh, and are clad with skins.
⁵

So, both Tacitus and Caesar seem to be saying that the people of coastal south-east England spoke like and were culturally like the Belgae, and were both agriculturalists and pastoralists, while those of the interior were aboriginal in some way and practised pastoralism. From the distribution of languages elsewhere in the British Isles, it seems likely that the languages spoken by those ‘aboriginal Britons’ of south-east England to which Caesar refers were celtic. There is certainly evidence for celtic-derived place-names and personal names in some parts of south-east Roman Britain, especially north of London and the Thames, although they are thinner on the ground along the south coast of England when compared with Caesar’s Celtic part of Gaul (see p. 48, and
Figures 2.1b
and
7.2
).
⁶
However, for the coastal Belgic colonies in England, the language type is not obvious. We have already noted that Caesar reserved the designation ‘
celtic
in their own language’ for Gauls living
south
of the French rivers Seine and Marne, so it is not immediately clear what language (or group of languages) was being spoken by the Continental Belgae, who lived north of this boundary.