When The Anglo-Saxons Arrived In England Many Centuries Ago, Which Race Lived Here???

Question

Was it the Celtics (present day welsh)???

Answer 1

The folk who inhabited the Island of Britain back when the Anglo Saxons began arriving [Immigrants] were indeed the Celts of the same race group as the Welsh, Cornish and the Bretons of Britanny - yeah I know, hard to believe but we've got Celts in what was then still Gaul who are related to us.

The surving Celts from the time when the Anglo Saxons arrived are living in Soth East England, in particular the county of Kent and were called the Kentish Folk back then. The Saxons did not settle for very long in Kent but instead headed for the less forested counties of Wessex, [West Saxons] Essex [East Saxons] and Sussex [South Saxons].

Most of the West of England remaind occupied by Celts. Indeed many of the inhabitants of the so-called West Country are of Celtic descent as modern DNA studies being carried out by Oxford Uni are showing.

Many thousand of the Celts of Cornwall and Wales have an ancestory going back about 12,000 years. This is based upon DNA tests taken by Oxford Uni.

Until now, no one knew for sure who any of us really were.

The bulk of the modern pop of UK is made up of 85% of people who are usually called the English. These are people with a mix of race backgrounds, including Celts, Anglo Saxons, Normans, Vikings and everyone else, including the Dutch and Germans etc who settled here over the years.

The next lagrest race group [if that's the correct terminology] are the Celts of Britain, including the Irish, Welsh and the Scots.

The oldest and longest surviving race group of Western Europe are the Celts of Northern Spain, the Basques. They are to some extent related to the Irish and Mister Devalera probably belonged to this group of Celts - the Basques and not directly of the Irish. He was Irish non-the-less.

Today the classification of people living in Wales is much looser than it might have been in the past. Everyone born in Wales or whatever race group or background is classfied as Welsh, including such as Shirley Bassey etc. There are for example, quite large numbers of English living in South Wales, who's ancestors probably arrived in Wales along with the Normans. No one is quite sure but that seems to be the case.

Neil Kinnock, is Welsh by virtue of his birth there, but his parents came from Scotland and are probably of Viking orgin, although Kinnoch or Kinnock is probably Scottish.

Why is Kent still largely populated by folk of Celtic descent? Because Kent then was one massive forrest and extremly difficult to navigate around.

Just have a look at some place-names to give you a clue.

Kent = CANT after the Cantiacii [native Celtic inhabitants of Kent] also Canterbury [city of the Cantiacii...etc]

The we come across such names as SHEARNESS - not very English sounding, more Scottish, but of Celtic origin.

In the south west of the county of Kent, we come across Dunegoness [another ness as in Loch Ness - Lochness].

Place names are a clue to the origins of the people who lived there.

Until the reign of HM Queen Elizabeth First of England, half the population of England still spoke Welsh as a first language. Indeed, her father, HM King Henry VIII was Welsh and often told people so, as in, "I'm Welsh, by the way".

If you visit the town of Shrewsbury in England, Welsh is still spoken there, as a second language.

It gets just more mysterious the deeper you dig.

Brythonic Celt [Welsh] - here's a small Welsh phrase for you;
Celtii bew [the Living Celts].

Answer 2

DNA wise, most people of Britain & Ireland seem to have a close affinity to the Basques of Spain--this includes the Irish & Welsh (in particular), but also the Scots,and,yes, the English too. These people would have been sheltering in Basque country during the last ice age,and when the ice started receeding , crossed the land-bridge that then existed between Europe & Britain & settled.
The next great incursion of people was in neolithic times, probably of people coming up the Atlantic seaboard, possibly more from Spain & also from Brittany. Some also crossed the north sea.These are the people who started farming and then building huge stone monuments like Stonehenge & Avebury. We cannot know their language but possibly it was proto 'celtic'.
At the end of the neolithic you also see a shift in culture,a difference in burial customs and the use of beaker pottery & the first gold & metalwork. At one time it was thought this was due to an invasion of people from the middle Rhine, but now it seems more likely it was a small group of travellers, traders passing on new ideas,although we do know there were some foreign settlers--a very wealthy beaker era man was found 3 mi from Stonehenge & isotope anaylsis on his teeth proved he was from the Alps. The beaker people may also have spoken an early form of celtic.
The celts traditionally arrived in about 4/500 BC,but again, modern thought on it, is that it was not a large scale invasion, and if the earlier people did speak some variant of celtic language, they just quickly assimilated the newcomers. it is interesting that caesar said that a) some tribes in Britain's heartlands claimed they had been there 'since time began' & b) druid religion was founded in Britain,which means it would have had to have spread to the European celts FROM Britain rather than be brought IN by newcomers.
Re: the Saxons, I always doubted the wipe-out theory and the dna findings generally seem to bear this out,although a few places seem to have been more 'saxon'. Possibly the locals fled. Apparently in English women's mitochondrial dna the 'saxon' dna markers are NOT found at all! It looks as though the saxons were mostly a ruling aristocracy,and again their ideas,dress etc spread into the populace over time.
You see this all through history. When the English themelves were nailed under the thumb of William the Conquerer, they had wonderful names like Ethelwulf & Freawaru, but soon took on their rulers' names such as William,Matilda, Robert, etc etc

Answer 3

That is the conventional answer, but DNA research has blown it to kingdom come.
It seems the gene pool has varied very little and the Anglo-Saxons were no more numerous than the Normans, like an warrior aristocracy and its supporters. It is also likely that the people in the south and east of Britain already spoke a Germanic language before the Anglo-Saxons.

Answer 4

Romano-Celts, Celts (proto-Welsh), Picts (proto-Scots), Gauls from Britany,

400 or so years after the Anglo-Saxons (Danes and Germans) arrived, the Vikings showed up. And then, in 1066, the Normans (who were essentially the grand sons of Vikings, and who had Frankish Christian mothers).

Answer 5

The answers above aren’t quite correct. Many of the original Celtic tribes were pushed outwards to the edges of England and Wales following the Roman Invasion, some left and settled in brittany. The Romans never subdued Scotland.

See last 3 paras for a note on use of the term Celt.

These Ancient Britons were divided into many different tribal territories under various tribal kings. There was contact between Britain and mainland Europe and these tribes traded and intermarried. They also had cultural similarities. Hill forts, styles of decoration, religious practices etc.

After the Roman invasion the British people (Britons) who were left or decided to co-operate (The Romans rewarded tribal leaders for loyaly) were of this Celtic origin (The rebellion by Boudicca involved a east Anglian tribe called the Iceni) and spoke a language called Brithonic, but the Romans also brought with them many peoples from other lands that settled and intermarried. The Romans ruled Briton for 400 years so the cultural impact was quite pronounced.

Legionnaires for example at the end of their service were given a parcel of land in the country where they had served longest and allowed to marry. And Legionnaires (Batavians, Thracians, Mauretanians, Sarmatians, even Africans etc.) were deliberately posted outside their own country of origin in case tribal loyalties came into play.
In the 3rd century serving soldiers were allowed to marry as postings to a country often lasted their whole career.

So these peoples remaining after the Romans left are called the Romano-Britons and referred to as such to distinguish them from the ancient ‘Iron Age’ Britons or Brythons who were the inhabitants of Britain the Romans conquered.

The term Celt was really an invention of the 18th century; the name was not used earlier. The idea came from the discovery around 1700 that the non-English languages (Gaelic, Welsh and Cornish) relate to that of the ancient continental Gauls, who really were called Celts. But it’s a handy shorthand for these pre Roman ancient Britons, if not very exact and now overlain with lots of pseudo history from a modern day romanticised imagination.

And when you look closely at different periods of pre Roman Britain over thousands of years (from early stone age to iron age) there were many different cultures and migrations as well as regional differences, so these peoples are better referred to by separate names rather than just clumped together as ‘The Celts’.

Celt is really better used to describe a language group that was used in parts of Europe as well as Britain.

Answer 6

The British ,until the Anglo Saxons arrived there was no England.Celts,Pict's and Romano British lived there.

Answer 7

First the Picts, then the Celts. After that came the Roman conquest, but the Romans left before the Saxon invasion.

Answer 8

The peoples now known as Picts,Welsh,Cornish and pre-Romano/Viking Manx,inhabited 'Britain',tens of thousands of years before the Celts came!

Answer 9

The Celts and Picts, depending on which part of England you're talking about.

Answer 10

definately the celts, proven in the book of Beowolf which is a book on the Celts. As well historically from the mid to late 10th century to the 11th century the Celts moved from Norway to England in which they fought the Scots, the English and the Irish for land. Historically there are some artifacts left of them but not many. Hope that clearified your question.