Couple of surprising facts

[Didz]

Not quite on topic, but with remembrance day in a few days the TV in Britain has been broadcasting a lot of interesting history programmes and as I've been watching I was stuck by a couple of surprising facts mentioned in passing by the presenters.

1) A higher percentage of male population of Britain were killed in the English Civil War than were killed during the entire of WW1. (That was surprising, but I suppose as we were killing each other it was probably easier to rack up a high body count.)

2) More men were killed on the last day of WW1, than were killed on D-Day. (Again surprising given that D-Day is often cited as a major loss of life, but presumably that level of loss was a normal daily occurrence in WW1, unless there was something special about the 11th November 1918.)

3) Apparently, it is now considered unlikely that the Anglo-Saxon invasion of Britain actually happened. In fact, there is now some doubt that there ever was a race of people who could have been called Anglo-Saxon (which is personally perplexing as my surname is supposedly Angle in origin, and I always assumed that my ancestors came to Britain as invaders after the Romans left). However, apparently, they were only ever mentioned by Bede, and as he never ever left his monastery in Northumbria he would never have met one, and its thought he actually made them up. He also mentioned the skies being full of fire breathing dragons just prior to start of the viking invasions so by comparison a new race of germanic warriors was a minor bit of creative writing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Joud...om=PL&index=17

Has anyone else been surprised by something a similar sort of fact from the past?

[Skins]

Number 3 is a tricky one there was never any proof that a invasion occured but it was kind of a educated guess the new line of thinking because there is no evidence of any kind of massive culture change be it burials or worship or infact battles is that it was not a invasion but more a imigration over time by the Anglo's brought on through trade and then settlement in England in short nobody knows for sure.

On a side note the nearest form of the ancient Britanic dialect left is the Welsh language

[Didz]

On a side note the nearest form of the ancient Britanic dialect left is the Welsh language

Yes, I've always understood that Welsh, Cornish and to a lesser extent Gaelic are of Celtic origin, Gaelic being a corrupted version heavily influenced by the Danish invasions and settlement of Scotland and Ireland.

However, according to the current thinking Anglo-Saxon was simply an adopted language of Britons living in the area usually referred to as Angle-Land. Presumbly, because it made it easier when trading with the Angles, Saxons and Jutes of Northern Europe, and it seems now that rather than an invasion there was more of a cross-fertilization of culture, language and genes.

I suppose from my point of view, my early ancestor may still have landed at Willington in his Dragon boat and founded his settlement just up the road at Hatch, but the difference is that apparently he didn't slaughter all the local Celts in the process, but probably traded with them and then married a local wench.

[Skins]

I think it was more a case of the two languages were over time were merged forming a new variant I was suprised to find out recently that Orc/Orca and Elf are Anglo Saxon words and the true meanings of the words are not big green monster and magic big eared forrest dweller it seems to me when you dig a little into languages it then becomes a rather complex and interesting subject in its own right.

Oh from what I read Orca is a hostile invading army barbaric in nature a orc is someone from that army and a Elf is someone/something who lives within a forest

[Juvenal]

Beware of revisionist historians... they will usually have some axe to grind. Combine this with journalists and you have a recipe for a very warped view of history (the recent story about the English not being outnumbered at Agincourt being a case in point).

Although the Anglo-Saxon invasion did not exist as such, there was nevertheless a substantial migration combined with defeat of the Brythonic Kingdoms by the newly emerging Anglo_Saxon Kingdoms. Despite DNA studies, the size of the Anglo-Saxon migration still isn't clear, although it definitely did occur.

For sources we have Bede's Ecclesiastical History (reasonably reliable despite the comment about dragons), and that marvellous resource: The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Again a valuable source even if stuffed with legends and eulogies for patron kings.

If you look at place-names you will see that the Anglo-Saxon impact was profound, especially in the South and South East (in the North-East, Danish place-names have supplanted the Anglo-Saxon ones).

The Anglo-Saxon language also effectively replaced Latin (we even name half our days of the week after Norse gods).

[Didz]

Beware of revisionist historians...

I tend to beware of historians of any flavour as they all have hidden agenda's, even if its as simple as maximising the sales of their next book. However, I have a lot more faith in archeologists, who at least feel an obligation to support their opinions with some sort of tanglible evidence.

It is in fact the archeologists who are challenging the historians over the invasion theory, pointing out that there is actually none of the evidence one would expect to find had the east of England been invaded.

There is certainly evidence, for example, of the Boadican revolt, the entire of Colchester being built on a layer of ash from her sacking of the city. But apparently the villages of eastern England are completely untouched and all the evidence is that of peaceful evolution and growth from Roman times, through to the middle ages, and there are no battlefield grave pits. New villages certainly sprung up, but it seems they supplemented rather than replaced the established ones, suggesting peaceful co-existence rather than an armed struggle.

Bede of course had one major agenda for his writing, as it was intended to convince his masters in Rome that England was a barbarian land that needed their continued investment to save and bring to civilsation.

In fact, England had its own thriving christian church derived from Roman times and when he arrived to save the Barbarian's he found that they were actually more christain than he was with an existing ecclesiastical order of bishops and a tradition of christain worship. However, rather than report back that he had been sent on a fools errand he decided to create a spin based upon a ficticious invasion by a barbarian horde intent on imposing paganism on the christian population, and thus justify the continued investment in the 'Save the Angels Project' confident in the knowledge that they could not fail as they had already succeeded.

He got a bit carried away with the Dragons though

[Juvenal]

It is in fact the archeologists who are challenging the historians over the invasion theory, pointing out that there is actually none of the evidence one would expect to find had the east of England been invaded.

Well it wasn't an invasion in the modern sense. It was a transfer of power from the Brythonic Kings to the Anglo-Saxon Mercenary leaders, with any disagreements decided by a few battles.

...apparently the villages of eastern England are completely untouched and all the evidence is that of peaceful evolution and growth from Roman times, through to the middle ages, and there are no battlefield grave pits. New villages certainly sprung up, but it seems they supplemented rather than replaced the established ones, suggesting peaceful co-existence rather than an armed struggle.

Dark Age battles were rather small... you can easily do them at 1:1 scale in RTW. It takes only a single battle to defeat a Brythonic King and his retinue. Does the place-name evidence support your assertion that Anglo-Saxon villages were mostly "green-field" sites?

Bede of course had one major agenda for his writing, as it was intended to convince his masters in Rome that England was a barbarian land that needed their continued investment to save and bring to civilsation.

In fact, England had its own thriving christian church derived from Roman times and when he arrived to save the Barbarian's he found that they were actually more christain than he was with an existing ecclesiastical order of bishops and a tradition of christain worship. However, rather than report back that he had been sent on a fools errand he decided to create a spin based upon a ficticious invasion by a barbarian horde intent on imposing paganism on the christian population, and thus justify the continued investment in the 'Save the Angels Project' confident in the knowledge that they could not fail as they had already succeeded.

Are you sure you're thinking of (7th Century) Bede? He was native English. Your account sounds more like that of 6th Century Augustine of Canterbury. Augustine was sent by the Pope to convert the heathen English, which he did by persuading English Kings to convert and relying on them to instruct their people to do likewise.

The Celtic Christian Tradition existing in the North and West (the form reintroduced to England, after the Anglo-Saxon takeover, from Ireland by St. Columba in the 5th Century) was effectively subsumed into the new missionary Roman Church after the Synod of Whitby.

[Didz]

Are you sure you're thinking of (7th Century) Bede? He was native English. Your account sounds more like that of 6th Century Augustine of Canterbury. Augustine was sent by the Pope to convert the heathen English, which he did by persuading English Kings to convert and relying on them to instruct their people to do likewise.

Possibly...I'm actually paraphrasing from my recollection of an hour long documentary, but generally speaking I find it laughable that historians put so much faith in the scribbling of a doddery old monk who thought dragons really existed. But I suspect in the absence of any real evidence it was the easy option to assume he was telling the truth.

One weakness I thought did exist in the Archeologists arguement was that by their own admission the gene tests of the English population clearly showed a 100% north european 'Y' chromosome presence in the native population of Eastern England. On the face of it this would appear to undermine their arguement that we are still the descendants of the native Celts, and support the idea that the Celts were driven west and replaced by Angles, Saxons and Jutes. However, they seem to be countering this with some sort of 'Roger your way to victory' theory, where basically my randy ancestor jumped off his Dragon ship and proceeded to get every Celtic wench he could find up the duff. Presumably, he was too knackered by the time he made it to Cheshire, so the Welsh girls missed out.

[Skins]

I wouldn’t put too much faith in the writings of a monk unfortunately the Celtic culture did not think much of leaving written documentation for anything and the Anglo Saxons were not that much better a lot of things that were thought true from Christian monks and such (because unlike the others Christian Priests/Monks did have a culture of documentation) have been proved to be guess work or them misunderstanding their subject.

A example even though it’s a Pagan one would be a Roman writing back to Rome on what the British Celts were like he wrote the report and had not actually even visited Britain but based it on the Gauls classing them as roughly the same and these are the things we use to base so much of our thinking on.

I suppose people think of migration events we do know about for example Australia or on the other side of the scale 1950 Britain when the call went out to the Empire for people to come and work in Britain now what would historians make of that one in 300 years if no records survived

Oh and the naming of the week days are not confirmed as being named after Nordic gods there are Roman and also Celtic gods with similar names and similar roles in a way the same deity’s but slightly different names