[Stones] Anglo-Saxon apartheid (modified)

[Ric]

[copyright file was attached for information - not for publication - but was apparently too large for Stones List] - [file: 'capelli CB_03' from "Mark Thomas" m.thomas at ucl.ac.uk ]
   
  Mark also sent other papers presumably to give a broader context on this issue? - for example, speaking of - 'the most surprising conclusion is the limited input in Southern England, which appears to be predominantly indigenous and, by some analyses, no more influenced by the continental invaders than is mainland Scotland'.
   
  ric
  

littlestone <littlestone at supanet.com> wrote: 
          Just finished reading Thomas' (et al) paper Evidence for an apartheid-like structure in early Anglo-Saxon England.
   
  It's quite true that in the paper words like 'Anglo-Saxon genetic dominance' and 'Germanic genes' are not used (although in the M&C news report Thomas is quoted as saying, "We believe that they (the Anglo-Saxons) also prevented the native British genes getting into the Anglo-Saxon population by restricting intermarriage in a system of apartheid that left the country culturally and genetically Germanised. This is exactly what we see today - a population of largely Germanic genetic origin, speaking a principally German language." Perhaps this quote is from a separate interview/correspondence with Thomas.
   
  Anyway, putting all that to one side (though actually I found the M&C news report provided, in a couple of minutes, the gist of the paper while the paper itself took fifteen minutes or so to absorb) we're left with a fascinating picture of 'English' society from about the fifth to the ninth centuries. During that period there's a minority ruling class of Germanic people with a larger indigenous 'underclass' (the Welisc) serving them. The Welisc may have been an underclass but they were not without rights as they were eligible to Wergild (blood money) though at a much lower level than for a freeman. The indigenous people were not wiped out, nor displaced en masse, but lived alongside the English, intermarrying with, and influencing them both linguistically (re: the flexible word order of modern English) and almost certainly culturally as well for several centuries.
   
  At this point my imagination gets the better of me and I can't help wondering what this society, some fifteen hundred years ago, of English and Welisc peoples would have been like at places like Avebury and Alton Priors/Alton Barnes. Did the two peoples respect each other's religion? Did the Welisc continue to worship at the stone circles and sacred wells while the English did the same to the Germanic gods at their (wooden?) shrines? Was there any fusion of these two (even multiple) religions before it all came under the dominance of Christianity?
   
  As BuckyE said elsewhere, "So much history, so little time!"
   
                   .......................................................
   
   
  no eternal reward will fogive us now for wasting the dawn ...
   
  Jim Morrison
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