Ye Olde Antique Racisme

[Donna Ferentes]

It's a question I've asked a lot and never had a real answer to. I'm not sure if Sowray's History of Roman Britain deals with it but unfortunately I must go in three minutes and can't check...

 

[rhys gethin]

That part of Europe below the Rhine I guess you mean.
Agree with the latter two, not sure that Ramano-Britons spoke "British" (whatever that is supposed to be ) tho'

Read some linguistics. There was no way languages outside the Empire were threatened by Latin, obviously. British - sometimes called Brittonic to pretend it is somehow other than British - was the language everyone agrees to be the ancestor of Breton, Cornish, Cymraeg and the now-lost Cumbrian, the language of all Britain with the not-very-convincing exception of Pictish. Did you suppose Martians brought them here, 'driving' no doubt, the Venusians before them?

 

[A Dashing Blade]

Dashing Blade - Try
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/british_prehistory/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/romans/overview_roman_01.shtml
and especially
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/british_prehistory/peoples_01.shtml

And you criticise me for citing Wiki . . . .

Oh, here's a quote from your final "source"
"By AD 300, almost everyone in 'Britannia' was Roman, legally and culturally"
which is something I have mentioned. But the writer goes on to suggest
"even though of indigenous descent and still mostly speaking 'Celtic' dialects"

Hmmmmmm, seeing as how there's something approaching zero, null, nada contempory written sources covering Britannia during the Roman period (it isn't quite zero but you get the order of magnitude I'm trying to convey) and that pre-Romanic Celtic didn't have a written language, that final statement is somewhat "assertion without proof".

But hey, you decide.

 

[A Dashing Blade]

Read some linguistics. There was no way languages outside the Empire were threatened by Latin, obviously. British - sometimes called Brittonic to pretend it is somehow other than British - was the language everyone agrees to be the ancestor of Breton, Cornish, Cymraeg and the now-lost Cumbrian, the language of all Britain with the not-very-convincing exception of Pictish. Did you suppose Martians brought them here, 'driving' no doubt, the Venusians before them?

Had you used Brittonic (also spelt something like Brythanic iirc) to begin with then I would have understood what you were wittering on about.

 

[rhys gethin]

And you criticise me for citing Wiki . . . .

Oh, here's a quote from your final "source"
"By AD 300, almost everyone in 'Britannia' was Roman, legally and culturally"
which is something I have mentioned. But the writer goes on to suggest
"even though of indigenous descent and still mostly speaking 'Celtic' dialects"

Hmmmmmm, seeing as how there's something approaching zero, null, nada contempory written sources covering Britannia during the Roman period (it isn't quite zero but you get the order of magnitude I'm trying to convey) and that pre-Romanic Celtic didn't have a written language, that final statement is somewhat "assertion without proof".

But hey, you decide.

Decide what? What is your point here?

 

[Belushi]

We DO know that the land-owning aristocracy spoke Latin extremely well

And continued to do so for some time after the collapse or Roman authority, when I've got a moment I'll try and dig ana rticle I found on the net about post-Roman Latin inscriptions in Britain.

it's the ordinary people we don't know about. I'd guess they spoke some sort of a patois, but who knows?

There are those Latin derived words in modern Cymraeg, Pont, Piscod, Ffenestri etc.

 

[rhys gethin]

Had you used Brittonic (also spelt something like Brythanic iirc) to begin with then I would have understood what you were wittering on about.

I do not witter. The point is that all these peculiar terms are racist - they are designed to pretend that the British people suddenly disappeared from history to be replaced with Germans. They didn't. The language of Britain is British. 'Brythonic' is the word you want: it means 'British'.

 

[rhys gethin]

And continued to do so for some time after the collapse or Roman authority, when I've got a moment I'll try and dig ana rticle I found on the net about post-Roman Latin inscriptions in Britain.

There are those Latin derived words in modern Cymraeg, Pont, Piscod, Ffenestri etc.

Belushi - Oh yes - sure. Some of that is certainly to be found in 'British Archaeology', and it belongs to the school of Ken Dark (I think it is). I don't think that there's much doubt that Latin (and of course British) survived in the West. I think that the point is that the people who spoke them were fighting those who had gone in with the mutiny of the barbarian troops around London. For my money (given conditions at the end of the Empire) the easterners had very good reason to do that, whereas conditions in the West were probably better. A lot of it's bound to be guesswork, at least for now. That's what makes it interesting, I think.

 

[A Dashing Blade]

The language of Britain is British.

Not sure what lanuage you speak (let alone write) but I speak English

 

[A Dashing Blade]

Decide what? What is your point here?

That using non-academic, populist on-line articles does not proove any point at all and that even academics who write such articles are forced, by reason of brevity, into making sweeping generalisations.

 

[rhys gethin]

Not sure what lanuage you speak (let alone write) but I speak English

A Germanic language heavily influenced - though not in its vocabulary - by the British spoken as a first language by the vast majority of its early speakers in this Island, yes. You suffering from indigestion of something? B-R-E-A-T-H-E: it is only a webthread, and will disappear, like everything else. Not worth getting so worked up about, man.

 

[rhys gethin]

That using non-academic, populist on-line articles does not proove any point at all and that even academics who write such articles are forced, by reason of brevity, into making sweeping generalisations.

Well, I certainly prefer books myself.

 

[Donna Ferentes]

That using non-academic, populist on-line articles does not proove any point at all and that even academics who write such articles are forced, by reason of brevity, into making sweeping generalisations.

Indeed so.

That's why when I started the previous thread, I was hoping to find somebody who knew what was happening in contemporary historiography, as opposed to asking whether people were capable of Googling to find random articles on the subject....

 

[Jonti]

What do you think of Professor Oppenheimer's findings?

 

[Donna Ferentes]

What do you think of Professor Oppenheimer's findings?

I don't know: that's why I'd be keen to see scholarly responses to it. I do recall Pryor (see previous thread) being scathing about a similar study, its methodology and the conclusions it felt it was entitled to draw.

 

[A Dashing Blade]

. . . I think that the point is that the people who spoke them were fighting those who had gone in with the mutiny of the barbarian troops around London. . . .

Which "people" and "mutiny" are you talking about . .

1)the supporters of the 354AD revolt by Magentius (visciously supressed in Britain by Constantius's thug Paul "The Chain")?

2) those Roman troops who had deserted because of semi-permanent barbarian incursions into SE England in 360, 364 and 367 that were put down by Theodocious in 367-9?

3) those disenchanted by Emporer Stilicho's millitary intervention in Britain 396-9?

4) the Marcus/Gratian/Constantine "revolts" of 407?

and what is the London connection?


sources:
The Fall Of The Roman Empire, Heather 2006
The Decline & Fall Of Roman Britain, Faulkner 2004
An Age Of Tyrants, Briton 400-600AD, Snyder 1998
The Classical World, Fox 2005
before I get accused of reading right-wing racist panygerics again

 

[A Dashing Blade]

Well, I certainly prefer books myself.

I'm not disputing that but I am tempted to dispute that you read them.

 

[Jonti]

Hmmm.

It's a tough one. But the history has to be read against the background of the facts. The English do derive most of their current gene pool from the same early Basque source as the Irish, Welsh and Scots. The main immigration, of hunter-gatherers, appears to have occurred between 15,000 and 7,500 years ago. There was a secondary influx of Neolithic herder-farmer types around 6500 years ago. This was all post Pluvial (after the melting of the ice caps but before the Channel was cut through, which I think was about 5000BC). During the ice-age before then, the Basque country had still been habitable, and it was from this region the incomers came, the first wave of whom presumably still speaking their ancient, non-IndoEuropean, tongue.

Probably for reasons of trade and cultural dominance the second wave seems to have spoken a Celtic language. There's evidence that proto-Celtic was spread by a wave of agriculturalists who dispersed 7,000 years ago from Anatolia, travelling along the north coast of the Mediterranean to Italy, France, Spain and then up the Atlantic coast to what became the British Isles.

Whatever, since then, no individual event has contributed much more than 5 per cent to our modern genetic mix, but there have, of course, been a heck of a lot of them in that time. The English blood-stock seems to be about 64 per cent descended from that source, with about 20% "anglo-saxon". Britons, and the English in particular, retain their claim to being a mongrel people, I'm happy to say.

Them's the facts on the ground, as they seem to be emerging. It seems these facts fit uncomfortably with how history has been read. In particular, it is utterly at odds with the idea that the English are descended from Anglo-Saxons, who invaded eastern England after the Romans left, while most of the people in the rest of the British Isles derive from indigenous Celtic ancestors with a sprinkling of Viking blood around the fringes.

 

[Jonti]

We DO know that the land-owning aristocracy spoke Latin extremely well - it's the ordinary people we don't know about. I'd guess they spoke some sort of a patois, but who knows?

According to britannia.com, it was a tongue called Brittonic ...

Apart from the villas and fortified settlements, the great mass of the British people did not seem to have become Romanized. The influence of Roman thought survived in Britain only through the Church. Christianity had thoroughly replaced the old Celtic gods by the close of the 4th Century, as the history of Pelagius and St. Patrick testify, but Romanization was not successful in other areas. For example, the Latin tongue did not replace Brittonic as the language of the general population.
source

It may be worth reflecting that Scots and English both developed from Brittonic over the next thousand years or so. Scots and English are very similar languages -- sister tongues -- but of course the Romans never controlled Scotland, nor was it invaded from the continent by Angles and Saxons. This suggests to me that the impact of the Anglo-Saxon invasions on ordinary English people (and the earlier Roman invasion) has been somewhat exaggerated. The developing English language absorbed the invaders' languages and developed in a slightly different direction to the Scots branch of Brittonic. It's hard to see this happening if the Roman, and later Anglo-Saxon, invasions into England had utterly dominated and driven out the indigenous population.

 

[rhys gethin]

According to britannia.com, it was a tongue called Brittonic ...



It may be worth reflecting that Scots and English both developed from Brittonic over the next thousand years or so. Scots and English are very similar languages -- sister tongues -- but of course the Romans never controlled Scotland, nor was it invaded from the continent by Angles and Saxons. This suggests to me that the impact of the Anglo-Saxon invasions on ordinary English people (and the earlier Roman invasion) has been somewhat exaggerated. The developing English language absorbed the invaders' languages and developed in a slightly different direction to the Scots branch of Brittonic. It's hard to see this happening if the Roman, and later Anglo-Saxon, invasions into England had utterly dominated and driven out the indigenous population.

No - those two languages are Germanic, not British. British was spoken in Galloway until about 900/1000 AD, and gives rise to placenemes like Ecclefechan, but the other languages spoken there come from elsewhere - Ireland and Germany as we've certainly been told up to now.

 

[rhys gethin]

I don't know: that's why I'd be keen to see scholarly responses to it. I do recall Pryor (see previous thread) being scathing about a similar study, its methodology and the conclusions it felt it was entitled to draw.

I have now got round to reading Oppenheimer's article, which is very interesting - though I don't think his idea of English - or something like it - having existed in the Roman period would be accepted by many linguistics people, and I don't think Salway deals with the question at all, tho' it's a long time since I read him. Oppenheimer's idea would certainly explain a lot, but there'd be all sorts of problems like the very large number of river names with British rather than German meanings. I think 'The Celtic Roots of English' (Eds Filppula. Klemona and Pitkanen, Joensuu University, 2002) gives some more acceptable reasons for the difference between English and the other Germanic languages, though it's obviously worth buying the next Prospect to read all the indignant letters and seeing if they give booklists.

I shall get to work and read the 'Invasions' thread. Something like the discussion we are now having is to be found at

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/mbhistory/F2233812?thread=2998683

I am extremely bad about noting down titles, but some of them are mentioned in that marathon argy-bargy, that I do know. Most of the contributions are well worth skipping - especially mine, as Dashing Blade is itching to say.

 

[A Dashing Blade]

Most of the contributions are well worth skipping - especially mine, as Dashing Blade is itching to say.

Telepathic as ever Sir!

 

[rhys gethin]

As Donna has pointed out the Invasion thread covered this in some detail, some very good contributions on there, esp from Agricola.

What happened to this Invasion thread? I can't find it anywhere.

 

[Belushi]

Here you go mate

http://www.urban75.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=162088

 

[Jonti]

No - those two languages are Germanic, not British. British was spoken in Galloway until about 900/1000 AD, and gives rise to placenemes like Ecclefechan, but the other languages spoken there come from elsewhere - Ireland and Germany as we've certainly been told up to now.

I stand corrected (unless another reader knows better ).

I feel cladistics can be misleading, but vocabulary control is essential if this thread is to get anywhere.

 

[jayeola]

Sorry rhys looking at all that bunched up text just makes my eyes hurt, can you not split it up a bit .. paragraphs perhaps ?

Uh-huh. There's a guy who writes like this at work. I tend not to read his emails ever. Sooo hard.

 

[rhys gethin]

Uh-huh. There's a guy who writes like this at work. I tend not to read his emails ever. Sooo hard.

Folly - he might be offering you all his money! Effort brings success!

 

[rhys gethin]

Here you go mate

http://www.urban75.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=162088

Thanks, Belushi. I shall get reading.

 

[rhys gethin]

Thanks, Belushi. I shall get reading.

Which I did, and found I contributed to it. Oh dear - Dashing Blade has been transmitting amnesia by telepathy! He obviously plans to drive me somewhere!

 

[Karac]

Hmmm.

It's a tough one. But the history has to be read against the background of the facts. The English do derive most of their current gene pool from the same early Basque source as the Irish, Welsh and Scots. The main immigration, of hunter-gatherers, appears to have occurred between 15,000 and 7,500 years ago. There was a secondary influx of Neolithic herder-farmer types around 6500 years ago. This was all post Pluvial (after the melting of the ice caps but before the Channel was cut through, which I think was about 5000BC). During the ice-age before then, the Basque country had still been habitable, and it was from this region the incomers came, the first wave of whom presumably still speaking their ancient, non-IndoEuropean, tongue.

Probably for reasons of trade and cultural dominance the second wave seems to have spoken a Celtic language. There's evidence that proto-Celtic was spread by a wave of agriculturalists who dispersed 7,000 years ago from Anatolia, travelling along the north coast of the Mediterranean to Italy, France, Spain and then up the Atlantic coast to what became the British Isles.

Whatever, since then, no individual event has contributed much more than 5 per cent to our modern genetic mix, but there have, of course, been a heck of a lot of them in that time. The English blood-stock seems to be about 64 per cent descended from that source, with about 20% "anglo-saxon". Britons, and the English in particular, retain their claim to being a mongrel people, I'm happy to say.

Them's the facts on the ground, as they seem to be emerging. It seems these facts fit uncomfortably with how history has been read. In particular, it is utterly at odds with the idea that the English are descended from Anglo-Saxons, who invaded eastern England after the Romans left, while most of the people in the rest of the British Isles derive from indigenous Celtic ancestors with a sprinkling of Viking blood around the fringes.

This appears to be what the latest genetic evidence is saying-if Oppenheimer is correct.
And it does seem to be utterly at odds with the generally perceived history of the British isles.
I personally found his view on the origins of the English language fascinating-a prototype of a Germanic language was being spoken in Eastern Britain from well before Roman times-theres little historical or archeological evidence for this-but theres little for Celtic languages being spoken there either.
Linguists are notoriously shy about dating language age or splits-but English appears to be a lot older split from German than 1400 years -maybe a few 1000.