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Comment by hrktb | Hacker News Reader

It’s always funny how the Franks are seens as “us”, when looking throught history France has been washed by waves of invasions that all left deep cultural mixes.

Going to Normandy nowadays and looking at general public exposition it’s make pretty clear their ancestry is mostly from the Vikings and Nords.

In the east it’s also clear that their frenchness is a fluctuating and partial attribute.

All around the country, each region have a very clear multi-cultural past. And Paris and its periphery is a huge Petri dish of people coming from around the world with a significant number of families that have no ancestors that were in France more than four or five generation ago.

Books still present Franks as french people’s ancestors, but I wonder how teacher make it match with the reality when they teach their students.

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The battle of Alesia took place several centuries before anyone heard about the Franks. The "us" the OP is referring to, is the Gauls.

I won't argue with the essence of your point though, although, for what I know, much of the nobility up to the 1800's was of Frankish descent, while Gallo-roman blood dominated among the commoners. So some heritage was there indeed.

> Books still present Franks as french people’s ancestors, but I wonder how teacher make it match with the reality when they teach their students.

I think the goal of using 'our ancestors the Gauls' was to create a shared history, to promote a national identity, without any regard to the actual ancestry of the actual population.

Also you have to put back the origin of this idea in his context: it's coming from the XIXth century, when moving away from the monarchy. The Gauls served as a common ancestry, without any reference to the previous monarchies, which explain why it was pushed by Napoleon III (who started up excavation looking for the site of Alesia) and the IIIrd Republic.

The Franks are not depicted as ancestors of the French people in general but rather as the founders of France.

Sorry I mixed up Franks and Gaulois, which are two different things altogether.

The part I had in mind is the old “our ancestors, the gaulois” which is not taught as is anymore, but still stays very present in the minds through an almost exclusive focus on Gaulois’ side when depicting that time period (not just fantasy depictions like Asterix, but also a lot of documentaries and reconstitutions funded publicly)

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nos_ancêtres_les_Gaulois

Well, in fairness it is true that 'modern' French have Gauls among their ancestors.

French people are about as Frankish as Bulgarians are Bulgars or Hungarians are Magyars (i.e., not very), right?

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