I saw these on the news a while back. I keep hoping they will give some interesting snippet on something about the lives of the Britons, but it doesn’t seem to be something they ever mention, apart from some obscure references here and there. Hopefully one day there will be a tablet discovered, which says the Britons did this or that or said this in their own tongue etc and give us examples, but I very much doubt there is a lot more to be discovered now that will be so well preserved.
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“Si, and they overcook the pasta and their coffee is 'oriffico!” 
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Fascinating. Much coincides with my notions based on logic! Bits I find hard. Y Gododdin clearly means that incomers were being fought. Are these the Norsemen from Yorvik? I’m not sure how that dates.
I do have a theory that many villas were abandoned because the design was really better suited to a warmer climate. I think there is evidence of fires or braziers on mozaic floors. I don’t know if any of you know anything about this.
What I do know, as we all do, is that the land to the east ended up as ‘England’ speaking a Germanic off-shoot with later Norman wrappings and we got called by a word meaning ‘foreign’!
re-Augustine, definitely that was Pope versus a purer and older form of Christianity which had little heirarchical structure and valued kindness, welcome to strangers and humility in its leaders, not just in ‘other people’!
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Perhaps, although I doubt the Celtic Church was that ideal.
Very true. Yr hen ogledd predates the Viking Yorvik by at least 200 years
No, nothing is. But it seems to have been better than the Roman version, if only in terms of female equality!! Let’s face it, Romans never gave any rights to women!
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The Old English people didn’t speak a Saxon dialect / language though.They spoke an Anglo-Frisian language.There is very little genetic link between the original Saxons (I1 haplogroups, predominantely originally, although as the Confederation of Saxon tribes grew their genetic mix also changed) & Frisians (R1b-U106, predominently - descendents of proto-Celto-Germanic peoples).I1 is almost as common in Wales as it is in Southern England.It is slightly higher in Northern / Eastern England, though, who eventually spoke a more Norse influenced dialect of Anglo-Frisian - Danelaw.Most I1 was carried to Britain by the Norwegian Vikings / Northern Danish Vikings (Norse), a later invasion & not the original Saxons.The Frisians & Saxons were at war with each other at the time Anglo-Frisians entered Britain.
Frisians (in the what is now the Netherlands) were defeated by Saxons in 773?.Which was after they came to Britain.The Saxon elite then defeated the descendants of Celts predominently / Anglo-Frisian (Jutish) & Belgic tribes (of a R1b-U152 Alpine Celtic origin) etc. who became the confederated tribes of South & South West of England - Saxon areas of England.
Welsh is a P-Celtic language (although Wales is predominently R1b-L21, as is South West England to a lesser extent (descendants of a proto-Celtic haplogroup).P-Celtic has been said to be spoken by the Belgic tribes, thus spread to Wales by a different Celtic tribal grouping from La Tene culture.
Middle English is very much a different language to Old English.Middle English is argued to have Celtic syntax (or sentence structure) & is very different from German syntax.French has more of a similar syntax to German due to the Franks (originally partly Ingaevonic like the Frisians) adopting part of their language from German tribes.The Normans, who adopted the French language, transformed Middle English into Modern English without greatly changing it, however.
There is very little genetic trace of the people who built stonehenge (Megalithic people) left in UK, certainly nothing to with the Belgic tribes which are 2000 or more years apart.
Troy, which was said to be on the west coast of Anatolia was said to been have been built / occupied by a Proto-Celtic (including some proto-Celto-Germanic-Italic branches) R1b people from Maycop culture, way before the Galatian colony was formed.The people of Turkey are 20% R1b from this early expansion into Western Asia & the later Galatian colony.
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Fascinating stuff Paul. Not questioning your facts, but can you give any sources? I’d like to read a bit more around the subject.
I first got interested in this whole area when I got to wondering “what happened to the ‘Ancient Britons’ after the so-called Anglo-Saxon invasions?”. What we used to be told at school was that those who weren’t killed, were driven to the extremities of the west and south-west (i.e. Wales and Cornwall).
However, the more I read about the subject, the more doubt there seemed to be about that.
Trying to answer that question took me down all sorts of interesting avenues and by-ways, which I can’t go into here. But I got the impression that the conclusion of archeologists and historians nowadays was that there was no major “ethnic cleansing” of the then indigenous people. True there would have been battles and killings, but the survivors, by and large, remained where they were, and the invaders were gradually assimilated.
And the same was true to a varying degree for the later Viking and Norman invasions.
So the answer to the question: "what happened to the ‘Ancient Britons’ was: Look around you: their descendants are still here, mixed in with the genes of North and West Germanic peoples, and those of the Normans.
However, this does not quite tie in with your statement:
(Although obviously the Belgic tribes came a lot later, starting before the first Roman invasion I believe. However, I think they were confined to some distinct areas in the south-east, and may not have been all that numerous.
Edit: Actually, where I live, in the southern part of Oxfordshire, and a bit further south, was dominated by the Belgic Atrebates: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atrebates ).
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I am interested too. I always presumed the local women got to live and were mated and probably became the lowest classes. Only non-warlike men would have survived and might have found it hard to mate, as the invaders would have had first dibs! This would have been the same after all invasions. One would expect more native British (i.e. them as s=arrived as the ice retreated) in female mitochondrial DNA and for Male inheritance to be much more geographically limited.
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There is some fascinating stuff here. I will understand if we are herded off onto a new topic to preserve the original intention of this one.
Anyway -
I understood that the original Germanic Anglian dialects might have softened back to a more Celtic version, as the inhabitants couldn’t get on with speaking it.
I’m fairly certain that I gleaned that from the BBC/British Library survey material.
Edit -
I’ve deleted the link, and entered a different page of the source, just because after twigging it, the subject might not be to everyone’s taste. Thanks, John.
http://sounds.bl.uk/Accents-and-dialects