Modern Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish people found to have Pictish ancestry
phys.org
phys.org
And who wouldn't want to be Roman when the simple words "Civis romanus sum" were an effective passport through an empire that stretched months of travel? When it opened commercial opportunities with a large and relatively effective bureaucracy? A nation that built roads and exported consumer goods, spices and wines and finery, like none had ever before it? Most of Europe is still interconnected by the roads the Romans paved. They've been repaved with macadam, but the lines are the same.
People imitated the Romans because they were powerful. They formed alliances and married their daughters off to Romans who would keep them in relative luxury. The conquest was equally about minds as of arms.
This has been true in all conquests. Some have been more brutal about instilling their culture than the Romans, and to that end, they were more effective at suppressing or destroying the previous culture. But ultimately, it is the conquered people taking on the aspects of their conqueror more than genocide and recolonization that has succeeded in spreading cultures throughout history.
That's painting with a bit of a broad brush. The Romans had no problems killing off large swaths of the population.
Depopulation was a tactic that was absolutely on the table. For example, during the conquest of Gaul, ~1/3 of the population was killed and another ~1/3 were sold off as slaves. The tactics you're talking about were used on the remaining 1/3.
Those tactics, admittedly, work quite well when you only have to deal with the friendliest 1/3 of a population.
And that one small, pesky village of Gauls the Romans just could NOT conquer, try as they might.
Hence the comment about the tactics working on the "1/3 of the friendliest population".
Caesar recorded it himself in his annals. They are not entirely reliable, but the essential points are probably true.
This is probably a misremembered quote from Plutarch:
> For although it was not full ten years that he waged war in Gaul, he took by storm more than eight hundred cities, subdued three hundred nations, and fought pitched battles at different times with three million men, of whom he slew one million in hand to hand fighting and took as many more prisoners.
The total population of Gaul was certainly higher - contemporary estimates range from 5 (assuming very high mobilization and highly exaggerated Roman numbers) to 20 (taking the highest ancient numbers at face value) million.
I'll give it a re-listen to see if I can find the source he was quoting from, but if anyone's heard the episode, it's the part where he's explaining why it's sometimes called the "Celtic Holocaust".
…are a singular example. I can name a singular counterexample: the R1 Y-chromosome haplotype completely replaced the preexisting indigenous Y-chromosome haplotypes across Europe, indicating that the male population was replaced wholesale. In more recent history, North American and Australian populations were also predominantly replaced with settlers, as were parts of South America.
The deaths caused by europeans arriving in the americas (without fighting) are estimated at 10% of all living humans of that era.
At any rate, there’s no generalization to be made either way. In some cases, conquest involves an existing population accepting foreign rule; in other cases, it involves population replacement. Even counting which cases count which way is difficult and controversial.
> This has been true in all conquests.
You lost it at the end there. Compare the United States.
Some conquests are a small group installing themselves at the top of society. Others are a large group installing themselves at all levels.
This seems obvious. So what am I missing, as a layman?
It was known that there were people in the British Isles before the arrival of the Indo-Europeans. It was not known that these were the Picts. It was known that the Picts were regarded as culturally distinct, when they were around, from other populations which are regarded as having a continuous history to the present times. It was not obvious that there were any genetically Pictish people left, or, if so, where they lived. It was not obvious that the Picts were just the pre-Indo-European people of the British Isles. These things were among hypotheses offered, but genetic analysis has established that it is so.
I don't think that the article supports the theory that the Picts were descended from the pre Indo European population. It's actually somewhat unclear on this
> The analysis revealed that Picts descended from local Iron Age populations, who lived across Britain before the arrival of mainland Europeans.
Iron age populations on the British Isles and Ireland are generally associated with Celtic, Indo European, cultures. The Iron Age in Scotland is generally considered to have lasted from around 700BC to the start of the Medieval Era.
The pre-Indo-European populations would date from the Bronze age and the Mesolithic - which the article makes no mention of, so it's not clear what relationship the Picts had with the populations before the arrival of the Indo-Europeans.
In any case it's not widely believed that there was an "Indo-European" invasion, or arrival. Instead the genetic and archiological evidence points to a diffusion of small groups across Europe which seem to have spread their culture and language by "elite capture" rather than by wholesale population replacement.
The general consensus until now is that the Picts spoke a variety of, or something closely related to Brittonic, the Celtic, Into-European language spoken across the rest of Britain at the time, ancestral to modern Welsh.
Modern England is largely made up from those descended from earlier immigrantion waves of mostly European origin that displaced original iron age occupants.
The "fringes" (for want of a better word) of the modern UK and Republic of Ireland (Scotland, Wales, the island of Ireland) still retain populations that are largely descended from OG occupants.
This I didn't know. Thanks. I guess I need to brush up on my knowledge of English history.
Going further back in time, I'm guessing you're aware that modern Scotland corresponds roughly to the area of Britain that the Romans weren't able to conquer. The Roman settlement of Londinium became London. We also get our English word "pound" and its abbreviation "lb." from the two halves of the Latin phrase "libra pondo", dating back to Roman Britain.
Not swamped. They first had up to 80% of their existing population eliminated by diseases that early european explorers bought with them.
I grew up near lots of Pictish stones, and had just assumed too.
I hope that after I die I go into spectator mode, but with the added ability to move myself through time so I can see all kinds of stuff like this play out.
There are so many historical questions that I want better answers to.
The Picts are one of those historical questions, for me.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Several_Species_of_Small_Furry...
>Several Species of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together in a Cave and Grooving with a Pict
omission from the title does not mean that the unmentioned nation has zero Pictish ancestry.
It is the United Kingdom of Great Britain (England, Scotland, Wales) and Northern Ireland.
Northumbria, however, does not exist anymore, its now a bunch of English counties, and the southern half of Scotland (south of the Firth of Forth).
Without more details on which part of Northumbria is meant it's impossible to know if Enlgand should be included, it may also be wrong to include England if its only a small part and its most / all of Scotland, Wales, and Northen Ireland
The author may be getting confused with the similarly named modern county of Northumberland. You'd be surprised how often the border region between England and Scotland is confused, misplaced, or forgotten about.
[Source: I'm from Northumberland, technically Tyne and Wear, but thats splitting an already split hair]
Edited for clarity
I thought it odd to include Northumbria in one list, but leave it (or England) off the other. But then including a historic county along with countries is odd anyway. I assumed they meant northern England because the parts within Scotland wouldn’t need to be called out again within a list.
It gets even more perplexing when you consider someone like .. well, me .. who would say "I'm from X, but not of X".