Origins, England -the indigenous people.

(Jody Gray)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_England#English_unification

Prehistory - Stone Age. (The time from Britain's first inhabitants until the last glacial maximum). Archaeological evidence indicates that what was to become England was colonized by humans long before the rest of the British Isles because of its more hospitable climate… (Norfolk) includes the oldest human footprints found outside Africa and points to dates of more than 800,000 BP (Before Present years, a time scale used mainly in geology to specify when events in the past occurred.)

(Kent) The region has numerous remains from the Mesolithic, Neolithic, and Bronze Age, such as Stonehenge and Avery. These earliest inhabitants were communal hunter-gatherers… Low sea-levels meant that Britain was still attached to the continent for much of this earliest period of history, and varying temperatures over ten thousands of years meant that it was not always inhabited… Later Prehistory - Bronze Age (ability to manipulate tin and copper into objects e.g. swords and axes)… Settlements became increasingly permanent… Atlantic trade system… It’s possible that the Celtic languages developed or spread to England as part of this system…

Genetic history of the English. In 55 and 54 BC, Julius Caesar, as part of his campaigns in Gaul, invaded Britain… Roman historian Tacitus: Britons shared physical characteristics with continental peoples. The Caledonians, inhabitants of what is now Scotland, had red hair and large limbs, indicating Germanic origins; the Silures, inhabitants of what is not South Wales, were swarthy with curly hair, indicating a link with the liberians of the Roman provinces of Hispania, in what is now Portugal and Spain; and the Britons nearest the Gauls of mainland Europe resembled the Gauls… Some archaeologists and geneticists have challenged the long-held assumption that the invading Anglo-Saxons wiped out the native Britons in England when they invaded, pointing instead to the possibility of a more limited folk movement bringing a new language and culture which the natives gradually assimilated.

    Debate however is ongoing surrounding the ultimate origins of the people of the British Isles…. Researchers at the University College of London have conducted genetic tests which confirm biological differences between the English and the Welsh, with the native English population having DNA which correlates to others found in Germanic parts of Northern Europe traceable through their Y chromosome…

Roman Britain. After Caesar’s expeditions, the Romans began their real attempt to conquer Britain in 43 AD… Hadrian’s Wall was built along the line of the Stanegate in 138 AD…

The Anglo-Saxon invasion. In the wake of the breakdown of Roman rule in Britain from the middle of the fourth century, present day England was progressively settled by Germanic groups. Collectively known as the “Anglo-Saxons”, these were Angles and Saxons from what is now the Danish/German border area and Jutes from the Jutland peninsula… The Battle of Deorham was a critical battle that established the Anglo-Saxon rule in 577: between the West Saxons and Britons of the West Country (Bath, Gloucester and Cirencester). It led to the permanent cultural and ethnic separation of Dumnonia (Devon and Cornwall) from Wales. Some academics believe the battle was also the starting point when Welsh and Cornish began to become two separate languages. Germanic-speaking Saxons now held the lands between the Celtic peoples in South West England and those in Wales and the English Midlands, whose territory would be conquered by the Angles of Mercia in the 8th Century.
Saxon mercenaries had been present in Britain since before the late Roman period, but the main influx of population is thought to have taken place after the fifth century… (one source, composed in the 6th century) states that when the Roman army departed from the Isle of Britannia in the 4th century CE, the indigenous Britons were invaded by Picts, their neighbors to the north (now Scotland) and the Scots (now Ireland). The Britons then invited the Saxons into the island, hoping to repel the invading armies of the north. To their dismay, the Saxons themselves turned against the Britons after vanquishing the Scots and Picts.

  Seven Kingdoms are traditionally identified as being established by these Saxon migrants: Sussex, Kent, Essex, Mercia, East Anglia, Northumbria… Mercian power reached its peak under the rule of Offa (from 796)... From Offa’s death in 796 the supremacy of Wessex was established under Egbert (defeating the Mercians in 825)... by the combination of military conquest and cultural assimilation, until by the 8th century some kind of England really had emerged.

Christianisation began around 600 AD, influenced by Celtic Christianity from the northwest (Ireland) and by the Roman Catholic Church from the southeast. In 601, Augustine, the first Archbishop of Canterbury, baptized the first Christian Anglo-Saxon king, Ethelbert of Kent. The last pagan Anglo-Saxon king, Penda of Mercia, died in 655… practically all of the Frankish Empire was Christianized by 800… and by the early 9th century the “Mercian Supremacy” was over.

Viking challenge and the rise of Wessex. The first recorded landing of Vikings took place in 787 in Dorsetshire, on the south-west coast. The first major attack in Britain was in 793 at Lindisfarne monastery… However, by then the Vikings were almost certainly well-established in Orkney and Shetland (Northern Islands of what is now Scotland). Records show the first Viking attack on Iona (Western Coast - Island group of what is now Scotland) took place in 794.

(Jody Gray) I end, here, this Wikipedia page continues with the Viking Invasion, which I have included in my previous Blog Posts for the House of Wessex and it's Kings...

xxx