Was England the First Immigrant Nation???

Question

The "English" are not the original inhabitants of what is now called England. Before being driven into Scotland, Ireland, Wales and Brittany, the land was inhabited by Celts, Welsh, Picts, Druids and others.

First came the Romans who settled there for a few hundred years. Then came the Angles, Vikings, Jutes, Saxons and Danes who came to England in the Dark Ages from what is now Norway, Denmark, northern Germany and Holland.

Then in 1066 came the Normans who were Frenchmen with some Scandinavian blood. They mixed with the locals creating the people we now know as the English.

So basically, the English are a German/French mixture with some Viking and Roman thrown in for good measure.

Is England the first immigrant nation? Or maybe the same could be said about other European nations?

Answer 1

Really, the same could be said of most of Europe. The Celts swept in from somewhere east during the La Tene period (approx. 4th century BC) They were followed by the various Teutonic tribes and later the "horse lords" likes the Huns and the Magyars during what is called the Migration Period (A.D. 300-700). Prior to both movements, there were other earlier Bronze Age immigrants into Europe. It's not a coincidence that Germans, Hindus and Afghans all count the Aryans among their ancestors.

There are three languages in Europe that don't "fit" into the European part of the Indo-European language tree: Basque, Finnish and Albanian. A curiousity that has turned up in the Human Genome Project is that Albanians and the Basque also carry genetic markers not shared by the European population at large. It is speculated that these two, mostly isolated until recently, people groups are, in fact, the oldest in Europe. Everywhere else, including Greece and Italy, are the products of immigration from somewhere or other.

Answer 2

Actually, all nations are immigrant nations, since human beings originated in Africa long before states were even created. Not only that, but there has been a constant flow of immigrants from country to country throughout history. Soldiers were sent throughout the Roman Empire and people moved freely through the Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian Empires and the Caliphate. Most people are a mixture of races and nationalities, even if that is not immediately obvious. Margaret Thatcher's daughter was given a DNA ethnicity test, which indicated that she was over 20 per cent Middle Eastern.

I have done a lot of research into my own roots and found Norman, Saxon and Celtic ancestry. Statistically speaking, all English people have Celtic ancestry as well. The Celts didn't all disappear or move to Wales, Cornwall or Scotland. Many "English" people have been in England for tens of thousands of years, according to genetic research. The Saxons and Normans and Vikings mixed with indigenous inhabitants.

In response to Toujours, Romans were very promiscuous. They slept with or raped many natives in all the provinces of the Empire. By now, every Briton must have a certain percentage of Roman ancestry.

Answer 3

Actually, Englands white population now is still a majority celtic, with a bit of Saxon, and in the North, Viking. The Romans and tended not to intermarry with the locals, and so when they were driven off the island they left with all their genetics too, and also the Normans formed the aristocratic class after the invasion, with the majority of the saxons before them still there. Apart from the Celts, and Saxons, the largest immigrant to destroy the gene pool here is from the invasion of immirgrants from the last 50 years. Hope this helps

Answer 4

Depends how you look at it.

A similar argument could be made for France. The French are a mixture of Celtic, German, Roman and, in the case of people from Normandy, Viking.