archaeogeek
Banned
That's not certain. The genetic studies remain ambiguous and have given results suggesting both (A) it was mainly a case of Anglo-Saxons acculturating Britons or (B) The Anglo-Saxons went further than we thought and almost all the "Welsh" population are mostly English by blood, being only culturally Brythonic. Which if anything just shows that DNA studies aren't trustworthy yet.
There is hard evidence for small communities of Britons living side by side with Anglo-Saxons until relatively late (for example, the small village of Wales near where I come from was a mediaeval Welsh community remaining in England) but anything more is just supposition.
The DNA studies have the problem that they can't go back far enough; most of them looked for people with 12 generations locally, but 12 generations ago there was a lot of welsh (and irish, since 12 generations is not even 4 centuries) emigration to England proper (even before; a lot of the people who joined up glyndwr's army were said to have been from the welsh areas outside wales proper). Well that and Oppenheimer, their author, is a) a fan of kooky linguistics (he believes a fringe theory where english split from german 3 or 4000 years ago, which makes no sense, the split is pretty well studied and visible at the time it happened) and b) apparently this particular genetic study in Britain has been panned in peer reviews.
And yes there were revolts, "their rulers resisted" is all we get for the basic reason that little history came of the people, and yet we do know of specifically welsh (and "cornish" for a certain (rather large) definition of Cornwall) revolts in the middle ages.
And Haplotypes are only a good indicator of ethnicity for very isolated groups, so could we please quit pretending there?
Last edited: