Why does the UK have three types of local groups: the native Britons, the Anglo-Saxons, & the Norman?
The Britons were the first to arrive and were pushed into the celtic fringe so they cling on in in the west country. wales and scotland I think the irish and scots were there first possibly picts? I dont know if they were celts, some parts of The outer scottish islands sound irish to me and when they speak, not just accents but rythms of speech.there were areas of the north which were part of the danelaw and there is a large study which showed the danes probably married into the local population no rape and pillage . my home area is kent which was an independent kingdom (remember King Knut who tried to show he could not control the sea) and as William the bastard .as we call him , chose not to fight the men of Kent so our motto is INVICTA or unconquered. I recently came across a book of kentish words and dialect we became the standard for southern english as used by shakespeare, the well know Brummie. so all the other points remain about migration but there were more than 3 groups.
What is the impact of the Anglo-Saxon conquest on Britain?
For starters:The rural inhabitants went from living in round to rectangular housesMost of the Roman towns were abandoned, for an agrarian lifestyle. The languages changed from a mix of: Latin, Greek and Byrothic to various Anglo-Saxon dialects, with some Latin creeping back later.A proportion of the population decided to emigrate to Brittany in France, as well as Wales.Clothing styles and Jewelry changed.The Gods changed for some, from Roman, native and Christian deities, to the Norse gods. Though the Christian deity made a come back later, then went away, then came back yet again.Legal codes changed, from Statue to Common law.Kings were introduced, and elected by a ruling oligarchy of Earls (War Lords).Ale and Mead replaced Wine as the favourite tipple.Brick and tile buildings were no longer built.Common names changed. The genetic mix of the population changed slightly.
Help with Anglo Saxon history?
Danelaw was the theory and practice of law in northern and NE England during the 9th-10th centuries and influenced by Danish practice (few people know that Denmark, the smallest of the Scandinavian countries, was the power of the day and invaded and colonized that portion of England). In 878 The Saxon king Alfred (Alfred the Great) met with the Dane Gundelaw and legally divided the country. The Saxons were allowed to adhere to their own laws and the Danes to theirs, with no interference. This arrangement lasted until 1066 when Harold (actually, he was Harald, a Dane) was defeated at the Battle of Hastings by the Norman William the Conqueror, ironically a descendant of Vikings and the Britons (Gaels, related to Scots, Irish, and Welsh) who fled to France when the Angles and the Saxons invaded after the Romans left, about 250 a.d. C'mon, ask me a hard one . . l
We're Anglo-Saxon english or german?
They were neither. They were like some contributors have already pointed out tribes form Jutland then called Anglii and from Saxony. Anglii is what we today call Denmark and Saxony today is a province in the German Federation. However the boarders of today's Denmark or Germany can't be used as a reference as to where the Anglo-Saxon tribes came from, because there habitat stretched into what we today call Jutland,Northern Germany and Dutch Friesland. Viking tribes also inhibited the some area, Normans were Viking tribes that had habituate Lower Brittany( France) the local tribes called them Norsemen. It would be the Norseman of Lower Brittany that would invaded Greater Brittany in 1066. Today Viking DNA is the most prominent DNA of the Basques of Northern Spain, Iceland and the Faeroe islands are nearly all 100% Viking DNA. The word England is Norse and means Eng = pasture and Land = land therefore the word England: meaning Pasture-Land. English must be a slang word of someone like me who was born in the Pasture-lands of Greater Brittany. Cnut the Great one of the Viking kings to rule over Eng-land.
Are Irish Anglo-Saxon?
No, I dont beleive so, they are Celts. P.S. I thought you asked for a simple answer! Just look at some of these dissertations!
Do English people have more Celtic dna than Anglo Saxon dna?
It would certainly appear to be the case, though it can vary depending where you live--more saxon in the east and parts of the middle, more celtic in the west.. Remember,even if every saxon in Saxony migrated to England (top estimate is 200,000 and that's probably way too high) there were already 3 million people there. Pretty unlikely they could 'kill off' that many--especially since there doesn't seem to be the mass graves you would expect if that was the case. Recent isotope testing on an early 'saxon' village also found that about half the people there were native to Britain, and where I live pagan saxons were being buried near to Christian Britons so there must have been an uneasy peace in some areas at least. Roger, you can tell the difference by mutations in the dna. As our ancestors spread out across Europe, even though they came from perhaps one source, they would eventually gather small changes in the dna,showing roughly the different directions they took. For instance my own mtdna is found quite commonly in Italy, Eastern Europe/Russia and in western Britain/Ireland. My background is Irish. the sequences in eastern Europe aren't that close to mine; we do share a common female ancestor but possibly over 10,000 years ago. My best matches were actually in Spain,although my haplogroup isn't that common there; another good match came from ancient Pompeii. This shows that my ancestors probably came up through the Mediterranean to Ireland, using the old western seaboard route, perhaps as long ago as 6-7000 years; rather than coming across from central Europe. Germanic peoples also have higher amounts of R1a than English people and also have higher amounts of A type blood,whereas English have more R1b and type O blood.
Are the people of England, Anglo Saxon or Celt?
The notion that the Anglo-Saxons came and slaughtered a huge chunk of the population of the British Isles has been debunked for years. Per the following article: "The genetic evidence shows that three quarters of our ancestors came to this corner of Europe as hunter-gatherers, between 15,000 and 7,500 years ago" "Another wave of immigration arrived during the Neolithic period, when farming developed about 6,500 years ago. But the English still derive most of their current gene pool from the same early Basque source as the Irish, Welsh and Scots." "Celts were not our main aboriginal stock" "The orthodox view of the origins of the Celts turns out to be an archaeological myth left over from the 19th century" -http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/mythsofbritishancestry/#.UiBZ9yDD_tQ So your probably not even Celtic, Roman, Germanic, or Scandinavian ;) Only to know 100 per cent for sure, would be to get your DNA tested or extend your family tree back hundreds of generations.