quote:

Originally posted by Duncan A:
A fair point but by the same logic we would expect to see a huge Vulgar Latin influence on Welsh if that was the language spoken in what is now England. We don't.

If the dialects of British that were spoken in the Romanized parts of England have disappeared then how would we know? There is certainly a fair number of Latin words in Welsh, but I am unsure as to the effect on sentence construction etc.

quote:

Originally posted by Harry Amp:
Dr Geake is rather more professionally known in her position at the university of cambridge.

Yes, Harry, as many here know already, I'm sure. However, considering that Helen also holds the position of a regular member of the Time Team, I think that here on the Time Team Forum it is a more appropriate way to describe her. Helen has posted here in the past and has always been most helpful.

quote:

Dr Geake is rather more professionally known in her position at the University of Cambridge.

No disrespect was intended towards Helen, whom I know personally. I meant that she had expressed that view on a Time Team programme. It is the only time I have ever disagreed with her!

quote:

No disrespect was intended towards Helen, whom I know personally. I meant that she had expressed that view on a Time Team programme. It is the only time I have ever disagreed with her!

Hi Jean,

I'm glad you and Steffan have explained!

best

HA

Duncan - Since Harry has answered your questions more thoroughly than I could, I will only add that we need to be careful in assessing the genetic evidence. The male (Y-Chromosome) and female (mDNA) lines can give very different pictures.

To take an extreme example, suppose you have an island full of people A. An army from people B invade, kill all the men and boys and take the women as slave concubines. If we looked at the resultant population after a few generations, we would conclude from the Y-Chromosome that it was totally composed of people B. If we looked at mDNA, we would see only people A.

Things are rarely so simple. In the case of the Anglo-Saxons, there is evidence of whole families arriving and settling. At the same time, we know that slavery was a part of A-S society. We can easily imagine an element of keeping British women after their men were slaughtered.

This pattern has important implications for language. The dominant language in that situation is that of the conquerors, though genetically the population could be mixed.

quote:

Things are rarely so simple. In the case of the Anglo-Saxons, there is evidence of whole families arriving and settling. At the same time, we know that slavery was a part of A-S society. We can easily imagine an element of keeping British women after their men were slaughtered.

Jean,

Have you seen "Evidence for an apartheid-like social structure in early Anglo-Saxon England"
by Mark Thomas, Heinrich Härke and Michael Stumpf?

http://www.ucl.ac.uk/tcga/tcgapdf/Thomas-PRSB-06-Apartheid.pdf

The use of the word Apartheid in the title is bad because the media started using terms like rigidly enforced. In fact, the mathematical modelling gives Britons and Anglo Saxon males an equal opportunity. It is the preference for Anglo Saxon males, due to their higher elevated status, amongst British women which causes more AS yDNA but also, as you say, more British mtDNA.

best

Harry A

Yes I saw that when it first came out. I still feel that we need to take slavery into account. We know that Britons were enslaved.

quote:

Yes I saw that when it first came out. I still feel that we need to take slavery into account. We know that Britons were enslaved.

jean,

Interesting point but, would bringing slaves into the model raise or decrease the number of british males? In the model, all me have an equal chance. You could bring in a slave factor by increasing the AS chance over the RB chance but, wouldn't you allow male slaves to father children with RB women? You end up with 'free slaves' that way.

best

harry A

Slavery increases the chances of A-S men to reproduce by controlling the options of British women. In periods of conquest, it is safer to kill off or drive away enemy warrior males, than keep them as captives. Women can more easily be kept as captives.

All I'm saying is that a model which supposes that British women actually had a free choice at all times seems naive.

Mind you in the later Anglo-Saxon period, both male and female slaves were held. That is clear from the law codes.

I have an article on Saxon slavery online. It is just a popular piece, but vaguely relevant.

This forum software won't let me link to it direct. I just tried breaking up the url, but that was blocked as well. So let's try this. Go to http://www.buildinghistory.org . That redirects to my site. Then add /Bristol/saxonslaves.htm to the end of the url.

Hi Jean,

Thanks for that, an interesting piece and quite relevant to point out that any defeated enemy, even another AS group, would be a source of slaves. I expect the initial struggles between Deira and Bernicia would have one such example though I guess slaves would have been 'own use' rather than 'international trade'. However, West Heslerton shows trade with the Rhineland and I've often wondered what they traded in return. Maybe slaves were a sort of international accepted currency?

You can see how whale oil and amber and exotics like walrus ivory and amber would be traded, but West Heslerton didn't have anything like this. They were importing basics such as quern stones which one would think could have been sourced much closer. Why did they trade over such a distance and with what did they pay?

best

Harry A

quote:

any defeated enemy, even another AS group, would be a source of slaves.

Absolutely. It would be a huge mistake to take the figure of 10% slaves at Domesday and translate that as all of British origin. I just feel uneasy with a model that ignores slavery.

quote:

Maybe slaves were a sort of international accepted currency?

They certainly were.

Haven't we rather skated over why the present day Scots speak English? It's generally agreed that the Anglo-Saxons only ever ruled the far south-east quadrant of Scotland, and it's also generally agreed that there was precious little intercourse between Scotland and England (beyond cattle-raiding) so how were the presumed Celtic/Pictish Scottish population 'persuaded' to speak Inglis?

quote:

I just feel uneasy with a model that ignores slavery.

Hi Jean,

It can be factored in, though I don't know what figures one would use.

There are two population groups, A and B and the initial population figures are Na and Nb resp.

The proportion of people belonging to group A who can marry with group B is denoted by D. The way this model was run, D was set to 1 but setting it to, say 0.8 could represent a hypothesis that 20% of British males were denied the opportunity, because they were slaves.

Similarly U represents the proportion of people in group B who can marry people from group A. Again, this model was run with U set to 1 but if you wanted to deny say 10% of anglo saxon males the chance to reproduce, you'd set U=0.9.

There are some other factors which can be set, n, p and S.


n represents the number of individuals in the 'losing' ethnic group, p the probability and S is a factor which describes the additionally reproductive advantage enjoyed by one of the two groups.

My guess is that female slaves could be accounted for by appropriate vales of S.

When I asked about S, Dr Thomas replied:

"we are not tied to a specific mechanism (female mate choice, marriage system, infant mortality, adult male competition, etc) by which elevated status translates to reproductive advantage."

best

Harry A

quote:

It's generally agreed that the Anglo-Saxons only ever ruled the far south-east quadrant of Scotland, and it's also generally agreed that there was precious little intercourse between Scotland and England (beyond cattle-raiding) so how were the presumed Celtic/Pictish Scottish population 'persuaded' to speak Inglis?

That's the same for the Irish and Welsh too. It's not just Scotland. How and when did they start speaking english?

We can get into a muddle with terminology here as Scottish, Scottish English, Scottish Standard English and Scots, are terms often used loosely.

Lowland Scots or Lallans and Doric are better used to described the language of the germanic language derived from the settlers. Scottish Standard English better describes the 17th cent. transistion, that is, english from England rather than 'home grown' anglish. Lallans and Doric speakers refer to Scottish Standard English as 'standard english spoken with a scottish accent'.

Lallans and Doric too are influenced by english from england but in addition, they are influenced by Gaellic, the Q celtic language brought in by the Yrum (Hibernians, I won't use Scotti as it further complicates the terminology). They do not seem to be influenced by a Britonnic language, the P Celtic variety however, the supposed language of the Caledonians, possibly also spoken by the Picts.

For information about Scotland's home grown anglish language, see the Wir Ain Laid (Our Own Language) site:

http://www.scots-online.org/grammar/index.asp

As to why the Gaellic speaking part of Scotland picked up english from england, and the same for the welsh and irish, I'm afraid I can't help you, other than to say it is about 1000 years after the period we are discussing. I'm tempted to refer you to studies on 'The Celtic Englishes' but they are more concerned with grammar.

This page gives you some examples of differences between Scottish Standard English and Standard English but nothing about the history:

http://www.arts.gla.ac.uk/SESLL/EngLang/LILT/scottishse.htm

As far as the languages of the Caledonians and Picts are concerned, the original inhabitants, we know virtually nothing about them.

best

Harry A

quote:

we are not tied to a specific mechanism (female mate choice, marriage system, infant mortality, adult male competition, etc) by which elevated status translates to reproductive advantage.

That satisfies me completely. Thank you.

Welcome to the TT Forum Mr. Harper. I wondered if Duncan was you in disguise, but here you are in person to defend your views.

I have to agree with Harry that I see no mystery in the development of lowland Scots in the very region of Anglian settlement. (By the way another clue to the degree of A-S settlement in S-E Scotland is the development of villages there at roughly the same period as in England.)

quote:

Originally posted by Harry Amp:

quote:

2. How could that same language become the tongue of most of lowland Scotland, including areas where the Anglo-Saxons never reached i.e. most of the country?

Lallans and Doric are meant to represent the development of the language of the 30% of the population by germanic settlers proposed by Capelli.

I've had a good read through the Capelli paper Capelli et al and find that this was really a counter to the Weale et al paper which proposed clear genetic evidence for ethnic cleansing in Anglo-Saxon England and evidence of a clear ethnic divide either side of Offa's Dyke. The Capelli paper found that this was a gross over simplification and proposed a much subtler shading of ethnic boundaries with Norfolk and York being over 50% north German/Danish but the majority of England being clearly in the minority. Stonehaven, on the east coast of Scotland, was 30% north German/Danish.

Though seemingly at odds with the Sykes and Oppenheimer findings we must remember that:

1. The Capelli survey was based upon a smaller sample and only looked at yDNA whereas Sykes and Oppenheimer studied mDNA as well as taking a much bigger sample. Sykes has published his results at Blood of the Isles

2. The pattern of Germanic overlay in the east rapidly fades as we move further west.

The Harke and Thomas paper that has been mentioned in the context of creating an apartheid like social structure such that the 'Celts' were bred out by Anglo-Saxon males within a couple of generations strikes me as an ingenious but fundamentally flawed attempt to close the stable door after the horse has bolted. Nonetheless, it could be true but it still doesn't explain why the sons of Welsh mothers and Anglo-Saxon fathers would speak English rather than Welsh. Surely when Dad was in the fields or out enslaving Welshmen the kids would be learning the lingo from Mum?

People, I think the Scottish case really is of the utmost interest in this debate. Capelli has found evidence for a 30% genetic input of Y-Chromosomes from north Germany and Denmark in eastern Scotland. Harry, you suggest that the people carrying these Y-Chromosomes could be responsible for the speaking of Doric along the east coast of Scotland. Do we have any evidence for such a large Anglo-Saxon presence up there? I thought the Angles under King Edwin were soundly beaten at Nechtanesmere and never went back? Alternatively the DNA could be Danish but then we would expect the population up there to be speaking Danish surely? Of course, if they were already speaking English on the east coast then the problem is solved.

Harry asks:
<<That's the same for the Irish and Welsh too. It's not just Scotland. How and when did they start speaking english?>>

You're getting the drift, Harry. The situation in Ireland and Wales is just the same as in Scotland and in England. The aboriginal people of all these places spoke English, and the Celts/Gaels/callemwhatyoulikes came later and settled the western littoral of both islands. It's just a straightforward application of Occam's Razor.


There's no need to get into a muddle over Scottish terminology, Harry. There's one language We can loosely call English (which includes Lallan, Doric, Scottish Standard, Gorbals Gorblimey etc etc). And there's another language loosely called Celtic (which in this context includes Scots Gaelic, Erse and, so far as we can tell, Pictish.)

I'm not surprised you are somewhat nonplussed by English's very remarkable gallop across Scotland because, unless you start from the assumption it was already there, there are no reasons. Leastways if you actually peruse the various sources, everyone just says variations on, "Oh, it must have happened since it did happen."

Remember the problem: there's a tiny Anglo-Saxon population in the south-east, there's virtually no other contact with England and yet the minute we get the first firm evidence of what the Scottish demotic actually was, in the fourteenth century, it's English. The urgent question then beomes: How did this (let's be charitable) ten per cent of Anglo-Saxon speakers persuade the other ninety per cent of Celtic-speakers in the rest of Lowland Scotland to adopt their language? And unlike England, you won't be able to call in aid either ethnic cleansing or cultural trickle-down because the Anglo-Saxons never ruled these parts.

quote:

've had a good read through the Capelli paper Capelli et al and find that this was really a counter to the Weale et al paper which proposed clear genetic evidence for ethnic cleansing in Anglo-Saxon England and evidence of a clear ethnic divide either side of Offa's Dyke.

Hi Duncan,

Weale states that the genetic evidence would support this view, he doesn't say it happened that way. An alternative explanation may be that they entered largely empty landscape.

The Weale study is mainly about timing. Having found large numbers of 'frisian' genes in the area of study, they ran many simulations, dating from the neolithic and found that a 50% to 100% gene replacement around 60 generations ago best explains it. Note the wide range, 50-100%.

Capelli's primary finding is that there is considerable heterogenity in the genepool of the UK, but it is consistent with the frequencies found by Weale for the area he studied. He did pick up a cline which Weale didn't but he wasn't attempting to 'time' when those genes arrived. The models used for analysis are different from those Weale produced and so it should not be suprising that the results differ.

The Capelli study also used another method entirely, Markov Chain Monte Carlo, the results of which are in the supplementary data. They still show a non uniform distribution of north germanic genes but are consistently higher than those indicated by the PC Plots, which are not meant to be used to derive percentages from. the MCMC analysis gives:

Norfolk 72.5%
Chippenham 70.8%
York 70.6%
Cornwall 57.7%
Morpeth 57.1%
Penrith 54.4%
Southwell 52.9%
Uttoxter 49.6%
Faversham 49.5%
Dorchester 36.0%
Midhurst 24.4%

As you can see, these are different again. Again, this is not suprising as it is a different method. It doesn't detract fom the primary conclusion though, there is considerable heterogentity.

Goodacre et al using the same MCMC method for Orkney, Shetland and the Western Isles found yet different results. However, they used 'private alleles' and used a different population to represent the indigenous inhabitants.

These studies are also concerned with the modelling programmes and the sampling methods. They also duplicate some work of a previous study. It's all about evalution, verification and testing new hypotheses. It is of no surprise when one set of results does not match another set.

Nonetheless, the frequencies of all these studies conflict with Sykes and Oppenheimer.

quote:

2. The pattern of Germanic overlay in the east rapidly fades as we move further west.

I'm not too sure Capelli's results show that for the area that Weale studied, which still have Southwell and uttoxeter around the 50%, within the Weale range. It is true in the south and once the pennines get in the way, which should be no surprise. The south too was a suprise, but in this case, it was the low level of germanic that was unexpected.

quote:

Surely when Dad was in the fields or out enslaving Welshmen the kids would be learning the lingo from Mum?

This is the basis of the claim that English shows a celtic substrate. Mum, a native brittonic speaker spoke german as a welshman would and so the kids learned to speak old english in an odd way, ie a dialect.

quote:

I thought the Angles under King Edwin were soundly beaten at Nechtanesmere and never went back?

That's looking at the history from the Northumbrian point of view. It doesn't preclude germanic speakers from still being there. Capelli too found this a suprise. I suppose the scenarios are that they were always english speakers, that there was a later migration from england to scotland which history has not picked up or that AS settlers settled in eastern Scotland around the same time that they setled in parts of england. I don't know which is correct but, given that most history in England never bothers with Northumberland north of the Tees, what comes as a surprise to you and I, and capelli for that matter, may not come as a surprise to those who have studied it.

I notice Jean for example was quick to point out the place names. I have asked her to elaborate as it's soemthing which has never crossed my mind.

best

harry A

quote:

By the way another clue to the degree of A-S settlement in S-E Scotland is the development of villages there at roughly the same period as in England.

Jean, this is something I haven't come across. Can you give us some more detail?

best

HA