Ancient population of Britain and Celtic invasions

In ancient times Britain was joined to the rest of the continent and the first people came there over dry land. They were hunters searching for food.

The first tribe for whom the historical name exists came to Britain in about 3000 B.C. They were called Iberians or Megalithic people. They were called Iberians because they probably came from the Iberian Peninsula (present territory of Spain and Portugal). They were called Megalithic (mega = big, and lith=stones) because they worked with stones every day. The brightest monument of the period and the most ancient monument of GB is Stonehenge.

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In about 2000 B.C. the second tribe came to Britain this time from the east of Europe. They were called Beaker people. They are called like this because of the characteristic pottery that was found in their graves. These two tribes intermixed and that's created the basis of the future British population.

The Celts are supposed to have come to Britain in 800-700 B.C. They came in 3 groups: Gaelic [ˈ ɡ eɪ lɪ k] Celts came in 800-700 B.C., occupied the territories of Scotland and Ireland, and their language gradually developed into such languages as Scottish, Gaelic and Irish Gaelic. The second group – Brithonic Celts – came in 600-500 B.C., occupied the territories of present-day Wales, also north-western England and south-western Scotland. Their language developed into modern Welsh.

The 3rd group – Belgae [ˈ bɛ ldʒ iː ] – occupied the territories of central England in 100 B.C.

Celtic legacy ( наследие )

The Celtic influence in language is naturally mostly felt in Scottish, Welsh and Irish.

· Scottish prefix MC in surnames is Scottish by origin and means “a son of”:

· The word “clan” in Scottish meant a big, very united and friendly family.

Even in English there are many words that have Celtic origin.

Severn comes from the name of the Celtic goddess Sabrina.

Avon means water.

The name Britain is also Celtic and comes from the name of the second group of Celts (Brithonic).

Even the name London is Celtic. It is believed that the Celts built a small village in the estuary [ˈ ɛ stjʊ (ə )ri] (устье) of the river Themes and called it Lindin (lin=lake, din=fort).

Linguistic influence

The Celts were pagans [ˈ peɪ ɡ (ə )nz] (язычники) and believed in different gods mainly connected with nature. The most sacred tree for the Celts was an oak tree. They also had a tradition to decorate their homes with branches of mistletoe (омела белая) and believed that it would protect them from evil spirits. This tradition came to our days in the form in Christmas trees.

The Celts were pretty advanced for their times. They already knew how to produce corn (зерно) in good amounts and also knew how to use tin (олово).

 

ROMAN AND ANGLO-SAXON CONQUESTS

The Roman invasions

There were 3 main reasons why the Romans wanted to conquer Britain:

1. The Romans were interested in the corn and tin that the Celts produced.

2. Rome was a slave owning society while the Celts were not, so the Romans wanted to get fresh supplies of slaves there.

3.  In that time (the 1st century B.C.) Rome was in war with Gaul, and the Celts in Britain supported Gaul in that war, so the Romans wanted to punish them for this help.

The process of the conquest took about a century. At first in 55 B.C. Caesar attacked Britain but the Celtic opposition was very strong and he failed. In 54 B.C. he came back with a large army of 25 thousand people and conquered a small area near present-day London. His aim however was not to stay in Britain. He took everything he needed (corn, tin, slaves), imposed high taxes on the Celts and left. Only 90 years later in 43 A.D. Emperor Claudius finally conquered the present-day territory of England and pushed the Celts who lived there to the mountainous areas of Scotland and England.

The Romans brought reading and writing to Britain.

The Romans built a large network of military roads, some of them exist even today (the road that connects London with Chester). The Romans lived in military camps (военный лагерь, лат. castrum - castra), later these camps developed into a big number of towns. If today the name of an English town ends in -chester, -caster or simply –ster, it means that the town was founded by the Romans ( Manchester, Lancaster, Chesterwood ).

To protect themselves from the Celts, the Romans built a number of defensive walls, at least one of them exists even today, for example, Hadrian's wall on the border between England and Scotland, built in the 2^dcentury A.D.

The Romans brought the tradition of baths to Britain. They found hot mineral springs and established the first SPA area in Britain, it is the town of Bath.

In language the Romans had the following influence:

· words connected with building: street, wall, road;

· words connected with food and drinks: wine, cheese, peas.

· words connected with clothing: shirt, belt.

· words connected with Christianity: monk, monastery, bishop, Mass and some others.

In the 4th century A.D. the Roman Empire started to be attacked by the Germanic tribes and all the Romans were withdrawn from distant areas to protect Rome.

In the year 476 the Western Roman Empire collapsed, which marked the beginning of the new period in the history of Europe - Middle Ages.

ANGLO-SAXON CONQUEST

In the middle of the 5th century three Germanic tribes arrived in England: Angles, Saxons, Juts. The Angles and the Juts came from the Jutland peninsula (Denmark) and established the following small kingdoms: Northumbria, Murcia, East-Anglia and Kent. The Saxons came from Northern Germany, to be more precise, the territory between the two rivers: the Rhine and the Elbe and established the following small kingdoms: Essex, Wessex, Sussex.

Innovations:

They introduced the 1st administrative system in Britain. The smallest element in this division was a village which consisted of 20-30 families, and the local problems in a village were solved at a special meeting Moot. Villages were united into hundreds, and the main person in a hundred had a title of Alderman. Hundreds were united into shires, and the leader of a shire was a sheriff. And finally, shires created one kingdom. The king was often assisted by a special council of nobles called Witan which is considered to be the predecessor of English parliament.

The Anglo-Saxon rejected slavery and introduced a new system of relations between land-owners and land-users. In this system the users of land had to pay to the owners for the right to use it. They founded feudal relations.

In the year 664 Christianity was officially adopted in England at the Synod of Whitby (прочитать про постепенное распространение христианства в Британии до его официального принятия).

Before the adoption of Christianity the Anglo-Saxons were pagans and this is reflected in modern English in some of the names of week-days: Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday.

· Tuesday: Tue was the god of war.

· Wednesday: Waden-Weden-Wedn was the god of kings and power.

· Thursday: Thur/Thor was the god of storm and thunder.

· Friday: Frigga was the goddess of love and beauty.

The first written examples of literary works appeared in England in that time: ‘ The poem of Beowulf’. A bit later –‘ King Arthur and Knights of the Round Table’.

By 829 the Kingdom of Wessex had become the strongest one and it united all the other small kingdoms into one country - England. The first king of England was Egbert. The reason for the unification was the threat of the next invasion, this time from Denmark.

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