Originally Posted by
Boogie Knight
There's been a lot of talk recently in Britain about genetics due to the recent study that was done, which dispelled a lot of old myths. I read a university paper about the same time (I forget which university, though the paper was hosted on Medievalists) talking about the different ways in which Germanic migrant groups assimilated with the native culture of the areas they came to conquer. It mostly compared the Franks and Anglo-Saxons, though mentioned the Rus' as well. The most striking contrast was in just how quickly the Franks and Rus' conquered their new territories, and thus came to assimilate and meld with them in language and culture much quicker and easier, and how it took the Anglo-Saxons far longer to subdue their Celtic rivals and when they did, there was far less exchange of culture and language. As well as this, the paper also provided estimates based on what little evidence there is for the percentage these incoming groups would have made of the total population when included with the natives. The Franks were far fewer than their Gaulish subjects, the Rus' were an absolutely minuscule group compared to the Slavs, but the Anglo-Saxons - despite still only making up, at the most generous of the old estimates, 20% of the population of England on arrival - comprised a phenomenally higher percentage of their new land than the Franks or the Rus'. The recent genetic study can be interpreted in some strange ways, but according to the Guardian it shows England is, on average, (as it varies from one village to the next) 30% Germanic. This is quite astonishing, as for an incoming group to not only leave a noticeable imprint but to have increased it over time seems to be virtually unheard of for Germanic groups in the migration age.