WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:04.200 Picture a mist -covered Bronze Age battlefield. 00:00:04.500 --> 00:00:08.000 You've got these like incredibly fierce tattooed 00:00:08.000 --> 00:00:10.939 warriors charging over the hill. Oh yeah, the 00:00:10.939 --> 00:00:13.160 classic image. Right, and they're blowing into 00:00:13.160 --> 00:00:15.859 these massive towering bronze trumpets that are 00:00:15.859 --> 00:00:18.440 shaped like snarling wolf heads, creating this 00:00:18.440 --> 00:00:22.460 terrifying chaotic wall of sound. Pure unfiltered 00:00:22.460 --> 00:00:25.940 intimidation. Exactly, but then... Imagine those 00:00:25.940 --> 00:00:28.339 same terrifying warriors going home, taking off 00:00:28.339 --> 00:00:31.500 their armor, and carefully burying themselves 00:00:31.500 --> 00:00:33.659 with sacred, untouchable chickens. It sounds 00:00:33.659 --> 00:00:36.039 like a joke, but it is a phenomenal image, and 00:00:36.039 --> 00:00:38.520 it's entirely based on historical and archaeological 00:00:38.520 --> 00:00:42.210 fact. Welcome to your custom deep dive. Today 00:00:42.210 --> 00:00:44.710 we are taking a massive stack of source material 00:00:44.710 --> 00:00:47.130 centered around a really comprehensive Wikipedia 00:00:47.130 --> 00:00:49.549 article on the Celtic Britons. And we're throwing 00:00:49.549 --> 00:00:51.630 out every stereotype you've ever heard about 00:00:51.630 --> 00:00:53.429 ancient history. Oh, absolutely. We're going 00:00:53.429 --> 00:00:56.710 far beyond the whole cavemen and animal skins 00:00:56.710 --> 00:00:59.450 trope. Our mission today is to uncover the true 00:00:59.450 --> 00:01:02.229 story of the ancient Celtic people who inhabited 00:01:02.229 --> 00:01:04.370 Great Britain from the Iron Age straight through 00:01:04.370 --> 00:01:06.769 to the Middle Ages. We're talking about complex 00:01:06.769 --> 00:01:11.969 art. bizarre dietary laws and a genetic legacy 00:01:11.969 --> 00:01:14.969 that completely defies what the history books 00:01:14.969 --> 00:01:17.370 have been pushing for centuries. Yeah, and the 00:01:17.370 --> 00:01:19.189 reason this should matter to you sitting there 00:01:19.189 --> 00:01:22.590 right now is that the echoes of these ancient 00:01:22.590 --> 00:01:25.840 Britons are quite literally all around us. They 00:01:25.840 --> 00:01:27.439 really are. I mean, if you've ever looked at 00:01:27.439 --> 00:01:29.659 a map of the U .K. and wondered why it's fractured 00:01:29.659 --> 00:01:32.799 the way it is. Right. Like why Wales and Scotland 00:01:32.799 --> 00:01:36.159 have completely distinct national identity. Exactly. 00:01:36.540 --> 00:01:39.480 Or why certain languages clung to the rocky edges 00:01:39.480 --> 00:01:41.980 of the island while others vanished entirely. 00:01:42.340 --> 00:01:45.420 Or, you know, how an ancient identity survives 00:01:45.420 --> 00:01:48.760 a thousand years of nonstop military invasion. 00:01:48.859 --> 00:01:51.579 This is the alternate origin story. It is. The 00:01:51.579 --> 00:01:54.540 Celtic Britons are basically the cipher for the 00:01:54.540 --> 00:01:56.900 modern map of the British Isles. Okay, let's 00:01:56.900 --> 00:01:58.739 unpack this, because before we can get into the 00:01:58.739 --> 00:02:00.379 war trumpets and the sacred poultry, we have 00:02:00.379 --> 00:02:02.519 to figure out who these people actually were 00:02:02.519 --> 00:02:04.739 and, well, how they got to the island in the 00:02:04.739 --> 00:02:06.659 first place. Which reading through the sources 00:02:06.659 --> 00:02:09.259 is not a simple answer. No, it seems to be a 00:02:09.259 --> 00:02:11.759 massive ongoing fight in the archaeological community. 00:02:11.979 --> 00:02:15.960 Yeah, fight is putting it mildly. For most of 00:02:15.960 --> 00:02:19.319 the 20th century, historians relied on this very 00:02:19.319 --> 00:02:22.080 tidy traditional view called the Hallstatt culture 00:02:22.080 --> 00:02:24.120 theory. And that was the idea of a big invasion, 00:02:24.319 --> 00:02:26.719 right? Right. The assumption was that Celtic 00:02:26.719 --> 00:02:29.379 culture and language originated in central Europe. 00:02:29.860 --> 00:02:32.400 And then sometime in the first millennium BC, 00:02:33.020 --> 00:02:35.860 an iron -wielding army of Celts simply marched 00:02:35.860 --> 00:02:38.479 and sailed their way over to Britain. conquered 00:02:38.479 --> 00:02:41.240 the locals and imposed their culture. Very neat 00:02:41.240 --> 00:02:43.879 and tidy. Very neat. But in recent decades, newer 00:02:43.879 --> 00:02:47.060 theories have completely dismantled that tidy 00:02:47.060 --> 00:02:49.280 narrative. Right. Because the sources mentioned 00:02:49.280 --> 00:02:52.099 a theory called Celtic from the West, which argues 00:02:52.099 --> 00:02:54.400 that the Celtic language didn't arrive via a 00:02:54.400 --> 00:02:56.740 conquering army from Central Europe at all. No, 00:02:56.740 --> 00:02:58.919 not at all. It says it started as a maritime 00:02:58.919 --> 00:03:01.840 trade language, which sounds interesting, but 00:03:01.840 --> 00:03:03.780 I need to stop you there. How does an entire 00:03:03.780 --> 00:03:06.280 country change its native language just because 00:03:06.280 --> 00:03:08.560 of trade? Like, that doesn't make sense to me. 00:03:08.819 --> 00:03:11.620 I get that. But think about the geography of 00:03:11.620 --> 00:03:14.879 the Atlantic coast during the Bronze Age. You 00:03:14.879 --> 00:03:17.860 have communities in modern -day Spain, France, 00:03:18.180 --> 00:03:20.960 Ireland, and Britain heavily engaged in trading 00:03:20.960 --> 00:03:22.819 tin and copper. Which you need to make bronze. 00:03:23.439 --> 00:03:26.199 Exactly. They are essential. So if you're a merchant 00:03:26.199 --> 00:03:29.219 sailing up and down that coast, you need a shared 00:03:29.219 --> 00:03:32.419 vocabulary, a lingua franca, to negotiate with 00:03:32.419 --> 00:03:35.080 people who don't speak your native tongue. Oh, 00:03:35.099 --> 00:03:38.159 okay. I see where this is going. Yeah, so over 00:03:38.159 --> 00:03:40.759 generations that useful trade language becomes 00:03:40.759 --> 00:03:43.719 more common, it seeps into daily life, and eventually 00:03:43.719 --> 00:03:46.240 it just replaces the isolated local languages. 00:03:46.419 --> 00:03:48.180 Okay, that makes so much more sense. It's less 00:03:48.180 --> 00:03:50.639 like an invading army coming in and forcing everyone 00:03:50.639 --> 00:03:53.000 at Swordpoint to change their language, and more 00:03:53.000 --> 00:03:56.150 like, um... a technological operating system. 00:03:56.289 --> 00:03:58.629 Oh, I like that. Yeah, like the Celtic OS. It 00:03:58.629 --> 00:04:00.610 wasn't that Apple sent an army to kill off all 00:04:00.610 --> 00:04:03.129 the flip phone users. Right. It's that the network, 00:04:03.349 --> 00:04:06.289 the tools and the language of this Celtic operating 00:04:06.289 --> 00:04:09.430 system were so incredibly useful for survival 00:04:09.430 --> 00:04:11.710 and trade that everyone on the island eventually 00:04:11.710 --> 00:04:14.169 just downloaded it. That is a brilliant way to 00:04:14.169 --> 00:04:16.810 frame it. And the hard science backs up that 00:04:16.810 --> 00:04:19.370 kind of gradual integration too. Like the genetics. 00:04:19.629 --> 00:04:24.459 Yes. A massive 2021 archaeogenetic study completely 00:04:24.459 --> 00:04:27.040 shifted our understanding. They didn't find evidence 00:04:27.040 --> 00:04:29.800 of a sudden violent invasion. Instead, they found 00:04:29.800 --> 00:04:32.379 evidence of a massive migration into southern 00:04:32.379 --> 00:04:35.060 Britain that occurred over like a few years, 00:04:35.160 --> 00:04:38.819 over a 500 -year period. between roughly 1300 00:04:38.819 --> 00:04:42.959 BC and 800 BC. A 500 -year migration. Again, 00:04:42.959 --> 00:04:45.120 that completely changes the picture in my head. 00:04:45.500 --> 00:04:47.920 That is a centuries -long process of families 00:04:47.920 --> 00:04:50.879 moving a few miles up the coast, intermarrying, 00:04:51.100 --> 00:04:53.660 and slowly blending into the neighborhood. Exactly, 00:04:53.680 --> 00:04:56.220 a centuries -long neighborhood integration. But 00:04:56.220 --> 00:04:58.019 how do scientists actually know that? When they 00:04:58.019 --> 00:04:59.959 say archaeogenetics, what are they looking for? 00:05:00.120 --> 00:05:02.839 Well, they are extracting ancient DNA, usually 00:05:02.839 --> 00:05:05.519 from the dense bone of the inner ear or the teeth 00:05:05.519 --> 00:05:08.300 of excavated skeletons. OK, well. Yeah, and when 00:05:08.300 --> 00:05:10.360 geneticists mapped the genomes of these Bronze 00:05:10.360 --> 00:05:12.920 Age individuals, they found a sudden influx of 00:05:12.920 --> 00:05:15.680 what we call early European farmer ancestry. 00:05:15.839 --> 00:05:17.920 Wait, who are the early European farmers? They 00:05:17.920 --> 00:05:20.480 were the populations who originally brought agriculture 00:05:20.480 --> 00:05:23.060 to Europe from the Near East thousands of years 00:05:23.060 --> 00:05:26.300 earlier. The local Britons already had some of 00:05:26.300 --> 00:05:29.319 this DNA, but the incoming migrants had much 00:05:29.319 --> 00:05:31.600 higher levels of it. And where were those migrants 00:05:31.600 --> 00:05:34.930 coming from? Genetically, they were most similar 00:05:34.930 --> 00:05:37.709 to ancient populations from modern -day France. 00:05:38.209 --> 00:05:42.129 And by 875 BC, those genetic markers made up 00:05:42.129 --> 00:05:44.649 about half the ancestry of the people in southern 00:05:44.649 --> 00:05:47.350 Britain. Half? That's a huge shift. It really 00:05:47.350 --> 00:05:49.670 is. What's fascinating here is that it shows 00:05:49.670 --> 00:05:53.129 ancient identities were incredibly fluid. Celtic 00:05:53.129 --> 00:05:55.209 might have arrived as a cultural or linguistic 00:05:55.209 --> 00:05:57.990 network rather than a single genetic sweep. It 00:05:57.990 --> 00:06:00.149 wasn't a bloodline you conquered with. It was 00:06:00.149 --> 00:06:02.649 a culture you blended into. The very name we 00:06:02.649 --> 00:06:05.230 use for them is a blend, too. Based on the sources, 00:06:05.310 --> 00:06:07.170 it wasn't even the Britons who wrote down their 00:06:07.170 --> 00:06:10.250 own name first, was it? No, not at all. The first 00:06:10.250 --> 00:06:12.709 written record actually comes from a Greek geographer 00:06:12.709 --> 00:06:15.269 named Pythias. OK. He sailed around the British 00:06:15.269 --> 00:06:18.569 Isles somewhere between 330 and 320 BC, and he 00:06:18.569 --> 00:06:20.970 recorded the local name for the people as the 00:06:20.970 --> 00:06:23.310 Pretanoi, or Bretanoi. Bretanoi, so that's where 00:06:23.310 --> 00:06:26.310 Britain comes from. Exactly. Though interestingly, 00:06:26.870 --> 00:06:28.990 earlier Roman writers like Plainy noted that 00:06:28.990 --> 00:06:31.730 the older name for the island itself was Albion. 00:06:32.089 --> 00:06:34.470 Oh, I've heard of Albion. But the word Pretanoi, 00:06:34.470 --> 00:06:36.170 what did it actually mean to the people living 00:06:36.170 --> 00:06:39.990 there? Well, it derives from a P Celtic ethnonym 00:06:39.990 --> 00:06:43.189 reconstructed as Pretani, which translates roughly 00:06:43.189 --> 00:06:46.069 to people of the forms or the shapely people. 00:06:46.410 --> 00:06:48.310 Hold on, you just dropped a major linguistics 00:06:48.310 --> 00:06:50.970 term. What on earth is P Celtic? Is there a whole 00:06:50.970 --> 00:06:53.990 other alphabet of Celts? No, no, it refers to 00:06:53.990 --> 00:06:57.050 a major split in the Celtic language family based 00:06:57.050 --> 00:06:59.410 on how they pronounced certain sounds. OK, late 00:06:59.410 --> 00:07:02.480 on me. So Goidelic languages, like Irish and 00:07:02.480 --> 00:07:05.220 Scottish Gaelic, are Q -Celtic. They retained 00:07:05.220 --> 00:07:08.319 a hard K or Q sound. Got it. But Bretonic languages, 00:07:08.560 --> 00:07:11.360 like Welsh, are P -Celtic, meaning they shifted 00:07:11.360 --> 00:07:14.620 that sound to a P. So for example, the word for 00:07:14.620 --> 00:07:18.160 sun in Q -Celtic Scottish is Mac. Oh, like McDonald? 00:07:18.540 --> 00:07:21.670 Right. But in P -Celtic Welsh, it's map. Oh wow, 00:07:21.850 --> 00:07:24.449 so McDonald versus MapDonald. Exactly. That's 00:07:24.449 --> 00:07:26.529 fascinating. Okay, so these p -teltic speaking 00:07:26.529 --> 00:07:28.850 people are calling themselves the shapely people. 00:07:29.069 --> 00:07:31.189 That is such an evocative name. It is, and it 00:07:31.189 --> 00:07:33.129 connects directly to what the Romans later called 00:07:33.129 --> 00:07:36.470 the tribes in the far north, the Picti, or the 00:07:36.470 --> 00:07:40.370 Picts, which translates from Latin as the painted 00:07:40.370 --> 00:07:43.459 people. Ah, so there's a theme there. Definitely. 00:07:44.160 --> 00:07:46.639 Both names suggest a culture deeply obsessed 00:07:46.639 --> 00:07:49.879 with physical and visual expression. Likely through 00:07:49.879 --> 00:07:53.019 elaborate tattoos, body paint, or incredibly 00:07:53.019 --> 00:07:55.899 intricate clothing, they define themselves by 00:07:55.899 --> 00:07:58.420 their visual forms. Which is the perfect transition 00:07:58.420 --> 00:08:00.300 into what their day -to -day culture actually 00:08:00.300 --> 00:08:02.500 looked like on the ground. Because if they were 00:08:02.500 --> 00:08:04.560 obsessed with visual expression, it definitely 00:08:04.560 --> 00:08:06.680 showed up in their physical artifact. Oh, absolutely. 00:08:06.939 --> 00:08:08.819 The source material mentions they followed a 00:08:08.819 --> 00:08:11.459 religion overseen by Druids, and they belong 00:08:11.459 --> 00:08:15.560 to dozens of distinct tribes, like the Catuvlone, 00:08:15.740 --> 00:08:18.579 the Bregantes, the Iceni. Right, Boutechius tribe. 00:08:18.759 --> 00:08:22.100 Yes. And their art was categorized as the Insular 00:08:22.100 --> 00:08:24.319 -Laten style. Yeah. But what does that actually 00:08:24.319 --> 00:08:25.959 look like if you're holding it in your hands? 00:08:26.279 --> 00:08:27.860 OK, if you look at something like the Battersea 00:08:27.860 --> 00:08:30.720 Shield, it's this stunning bronze ceremonial 00:08:30.720 --> 00:08:33.740 shield from the third to first century BC, you 00:08:33.740 --> 00:08:37.360 don't see crude primitive tool marks. No. Insular 00:08:37.360 --> 00:08:40.419 La Tène is characterized by sweeping asymmetrical 00:08:40.419 --> 00:08:44.519 curves. It's full of interlocking spirals, swelling 00:08:44.519 --> 00:08:47.500 teardrop shapes, and motifs that seem to constantly 00:08:47.500 --> 00:08:50.220 shift. Shift how? Like, depending on how the 00:08:50.220 --> 00:08:52.940 light hits them, the shapes shift between abstract 00:08:52.940 --> 00:08:56.139 geometry and the faces of animals or birds. It 00:08:56.139 --> 00:08:59.879 is highly sophisticated, almost psychedelic metalwork. 00:09:00.340 --> 00:09:03.019 And they applied that same metalworking genius 00:09:03.019 --> 00:09:05.879 to their warfare, which brings us back to those 00:09:06.390 --> 00:09:09.389 trumpets from the intro. The carnix? Yes, the 00:09:09.389 --> 00:09:11.389 carnix. I was reading descriptions of this thing. 00:09:11.669 --> 00:09:13.970 It's a bronze wind instrument, but it's held 00:09:13.970 --> 00:09:15.870 vertically so it towers over the heads of the 00:09:15.870 --> 00:09:18.129 soldiers. Yeah, it's massive. And the bell at 00:09:18.129 --> 00:09:20.529 the top is shaped like the head of a wild boar 00:09:20.529 --> 00:09:23.429 or a wolf with an articulated jaw and a wooden 00:09:23.429 --> 00:09:25.730 tongue that would vibrate when played. Exactly. 00:09:26.039 --> 00:09:28.659 The Romans actually wrote about how deeply unsettling 00:09:28.659 --> 00:09:31.080 it was, to face it. The Carnix wasn't just for 00:09:31.080 --> 00:09:33.700 musical accompaniment. No. No, it was designed 00:09:33.700 --> 00:09:36.559 to emit a harsh, piercing shriek that would cut 00:09:36.559 --> 00:09:38.539 right through the noise of battle. It's pure 00:09:38.539 --> 00:09:41.419 psychological warfare. Yeah. But OK, here is 00:09:41.419 --> 00:09:43.480 where my brain short circuits. What's that? We 00:09:43.480 --> 00:09:46.360 have these fierce painted warriors holding gorgeous 00:09:46.360 --> 00:09:49.519 bronze shields, blowing screaming wolf trumpets 00:09:49.519 --> 00:09:52.759 to terrify their enemies. Wait, so these fierce 00:09:52.759 --> 00:09:55.440 Celtic warriors were also burying themselves 00:09:55.440 --> 00:09:57.879 with sacred chickens to guide their souls to 00:09:57.879 --> 00:10:01.279 the afterlife? Yes. That completely flips the 00:10:01.279 --> 00:10:03.960 script on ancient history. Like the archaeological 00:10:03.960 --> 00:10:06.240 evidence shows that before the Romans arrived, 00:10:06.720 --> 00:10:09.299 these people refused to eat chickens or hares. 00:10:09.620 --> 00:10:12.440 Julius Caesar explicitly wrote about it. In his 00:10:12.440 --> 00:10:15.200 commentary to Bello Gallico, he noted that the 00:10:15.200 --> 00:10:18.279 Britons considered it contrary to divine law 00:10:18.279 --> 00:10:21.669 to consume chickens, hares, or geese. They actually 00:10:21.669 --> 00:10:23.730 bury their dead with whole chickens. I have to 00:10:23.730 --> 00:10:25.970 admit, that shatters the one -dimensional barbarian 00:10:25.970 --> 00:10:28.950 stereotype completely. It really does. But if 00:10:28.950 --> 00:10:31.309 you look at the mechanics of their belief system, 00:10:31.309 --> 00:10:34.120 you know, overseen by the druids... It begins 00:10:34.120 --> 00:10:37.120 to make sense. How so? Well, humans have always 00:10:37.120 --> 00:10:39.820 assigned profound spiritual weight to animals 00:10:39.820 --> 00:10:42.360 that behave strangely or inhabit unique spaces. 00:10:43.100 --> 00:10:45.820 To the Celtic Britons, hares and chickens weren't 00:10:45.820 --> 00:10:47.720 agricultural livestock. Right. They were brought 00:10:47.720 --> 00:10:49.940 over from somewhere else. Exactly. They were 00:10:49.940 --> 00:10:52.639 exotic. They believed these creatures existed 00:10:52.639 --> 00:10:55.360 in a liminal space, a threshold between the living 00:10:55.360 --> 00:10:57.860 world and the afterlife. So there were spiritual 00:10:57.860 --> 00:11:01.529 guides. Not dinner. Precisely. They were sacred 00:11:01.529 --> 00:11:04.679 psychopomps meant to guide the soul. You only 00:11:04.679 --> 00:11:07.159 start to see chickens consumed as a regular food 00:11:07.159 --> 00:11:09.440 source much later. When the Romans arrived. Yeah, 00:11:09.440 --> 00:11:11.659 when the Romans introduced widespread urbanization 00:11:11.659 --> 00:11:14.580 and shift the entire agricultural model of the 00:11:14.580 --> 00:11:16.360 island. Which means we have to talk about the 00:11:16.360 --> 00:11:19.639 Romans because this unique, eccentric, highly 00:11:19.639 --> 00:11:22.679 artistic culture couldn't stay isolated forever. 00:11:22.879 --> 00:11:25.820 No, they couldn't. In 43 AD, the Roman Empire, 00:11:25.960 --> 00:11:29.919 the ultimate unstoppable military machine, invades 00:11:29.919 --> 00:11:32.580 and they fundamentally change what it meant to 00:11:32.580 --> 00:11:35.190 be a Britain. forcing them into a desperate fight 00:11:35.190 --> 00:11:37.730 for survival, right? It was a cataclysmic shift. 00:11:38.009 --> 00:11:39.850 The Romans decisively conquered the southern 00:11:39.850 --> 00:11:41.970 half of the island, establishing the province 00:11:41.970 --> 00:11:43.950 of Britannia, but they couldn't conquer everyone. 00:11:44.070 --> 00:11:46.149 No, the north was a problem. A huge problem. 00:11:46.809 --> 00:11:49.090 The Britannic and Pictish tribes in the rugged 00:11:49.090 --> 00:11:51.490 north pushed back with such ferocity that in 00:11:51.490 --> 00:11:55.029 122 AD, Emperor Hadrian ordered the construction 00:11:55.029 --> 00:11:58.309 of a literal physical divide. Hadrian's Wall. 00:11:58.559 --> 00:12:01.159 which is insane when you think about it. The 00:12:01.159 --> 00:12:03.679 Rome has essentially said, we give up, just build 00:12:03.679 --> 00:12:05.740 a wall across the entire width of the country. 00:12:06.429 --> 00:12:09.429 They did try pushing further north 20 years later 00:12:09.429 --> 00:12:11.809 to build the Antonine Wall, but they eventually 00:12:11.809 --> 00:12:13.850 retreated back, so you end up with a physically 00:12:13.850 --> 00:12:16.110 divided island. Two different worlds. Exactly. 00:12:16.610 --> 00:12:19.110 South of the wall, you have a Romano -British 00:12:19.110 --> 00:12:22.629 culture blending Roman urbanism with native traditions. 00:12:23.250 --> 00:12:26.370 North of the wall, the Britons remain fiercely, 00:12:26.629 --> 00:12:28.870 stubbornly independent. But then the Roman Empire 00:12:28.870 --> 00:12:32.080 starts crumbling. Fast forward to about 400 AD 00:12:32.080 --> 00:12:35.519 and the Roman military just packs up and leaves 00:12:35.519 --> 00:12:38.379 Britannia to fend for itself and history hates 00:12:38.379 --> 00:12:40.879 a vacuum. Almost immediately, the island is hit 00:12:40.879 --> 00:12:43.919 by a devastating wave of migrations and invasions. 00:12:44.480 --> 00:12:47.080 Germanic -speaking Anglo -Saxons begin crossing 00:12:47.080 --> 00:12:50.279 the North Sea to settle the east and south coasts. 00:12:50.440 --> 00:12:53.100 Meanwhile, Gaelic -speaking Scots migrate from 00:12:53.100 --> 00:12:55.519 Ireland to the western coasts of Scotland. So 00:12:55.519 --> 00:12:57.419 the Britons were completely surrounded. The map 00:12:57.419 --> 00:12:59.299 of their territory just shattered. Completely 00:12:59.299 --> 00:13:01.960 fractured. They get pushed to the extreme western 00:13:01.960 --> 00:13:04.639 fringes of their own island. into the mountains 00:13:04.639 --> 00:13:07.279 of Wales and the peninsula of Cornwall. Some 00:13:07.279 --> 00:13:09.700 of them even flee the island entirely. It was 00:13:09.700 --> 00:13:12.159 a massive diaspora. Yeah, they sail across the 00:13:12.159 --> 00:13:14.460 English Channel and settle in Armarca, which 00:13:14.460 --> 00:13:16.559 is why that region of France is still known today 00:13:16.559 --> 00:13:19.940 as Brittany. I even read they established a colony 00:13:19.940 --> 00:13:22.779 down in Galicia in northwestern Spain called 00:13:22.779 --> 00:13:25.019 Bretonia. It was a desperate flight for a lot 00:13:25.019 --> 00:13:27.539 of them. But here's where it gets really interesting 00:13:27.539 --> 00:13:29.519 for me. We always hear about the ones who fled 00:13:29.519 --> 00:13:33.169 south or west. But the source material mentions 00:13:33.169 --> 00:13:38.129 a region called Urhen Ogold, the Old North. Ah, 00:13:38.509 --> 00:13:41.470 yes. Covering northern England and southern Scotland. 00:13:41.950 --> 00:13:44.169 Right. And the Britonic kingdoms there didn't 00:13:44.169 --> 00:13:47.149 run. The kingdom of Strathclyde successfully 00:13:47.149 --> 00:13:49.450 fought off the Anglo -Saxons, the Gaels, and 00:13:49.450 --> 00:13:51.990 eventually the Vikings. They remained an independent 00:13:51.990 --> 00:13:55.509 Britain kingdom until the 1090s. Which is... 00:13:55.100 --> 00:13:57.860 Centuries of survival against impossible odds. 00:13:58.139 --> 00:14:00.379 Their resilience is astounding. It's wild to 00:14:00.379 --> 00:14:02.620 think about. And if you connect this to your 00:14:02.620 --> 00:14:05.379 understanding of modern geography, the implications 00:14:05.379 --> 00:14:09.000 are huge. When you look at a map of the UK today, 00:14:09.149 --> 00:14:12.309 When you see the defined borders of Wales, the 00:14:12.309 --> 00:14:15.450 distinct cultural zone of Cornwall, the division 00:14:15.450 --> 00:14:18.389 between England and Scotland, you are literally 00:14:18.389 --> 00:14:21.289 looking at the direct geopolitical fallout of 00:14:21.289 --> 00:14:24.909 that exact fifth century fragmentation. Those 00:14:24.909 --> 00:14:27.850 modern borders are the scars of the Britons fight 00:14:27.850 --> 00:14:30.690 for survival. That is mind blowing. The map is 00:14:30.690 --> 00:14:32.929 basically a photograph of where the Britons managed 00:14:32.929 --> 00:14:35.230 to hold the line. Exactly. But what about the 00:14:35.230 --> 00:14:38.190 places where they supposedly didn't? If you read 00:14:38.190 --> 00:14:40.350 traditional history texts, they claim the Anglo 00:14:40.350 --> 00:14:42.909 -Saxons completely wiped out the Britons in eastern 00:14:42.909 --> 00:14:45.389 England. Just total eradication. Well, that was 00:14:45.389 --> 00:14:47.230 the accepted narrative for a very long time, 00:14:47.289 --> 00:14:49.470 heavily driven by texts like the Anglo -Saxon 00:14:49.470 --> 00:14:51.889 Chronicle. Right. It was compiled around 890 00:14:51.889 --> 00:14:54.870 AD, but it has an entry for the year 491 describing 00:14:54.870 --> 00:14:57.690 an Anglo -Saxon siege of a southern fort and 00:14:57.690 --> 00:15:00.590 a desaster. And what does it say? The text explicitly 00:15:00.590 --> 00:15:03.529 brags that they slew everyone inside, and nor 00:15:03.529 --> 00:15:05.490 was there for that reason one Briton left alive. 00:15:05.610 --> 00:15:07.480 OK, I have to push back. hard on this. Yeah. 00:15:07.580 --> 00:15:10.539 So did the Britons in the East actually get wiped 00:15:10.539 --> 00:15:13.500 out or did they just rebrand? Because not one 00:15:13.500 --> 00:15:16.399 Briton left alive sounds like pure political 00:15:16.399 --> 00:15:18.940 propaganda. It definitely does. If the Anglo 00:15:18.940 --> 00:15:21.639 -Saxons didn't wipe them out, why does everyone 00:15:21.639 --> 00:15:23.840 in eastern England speak a Germanic language 00:15:23.840 --> 00:15:26.980 today? It doesn't make sense that a surviving 00:15:26.980 --> 00:15:29.940 native majority would just voluntarily give up 00:15:29.940 --> 00:15:32.320 their Celtic language. This raises an important 00:15:32.320 --> 00:15:34.799 question right feeling. How do we define survival? 00:15:35.120 --> 00:15:38.000 And how does a language change without a genocide? 00:15:38.759 --> 00:15:41.379 The mechanism historians point to now is a concept 00:15:41.379 --> 00:15:44.500 called elite dominance. Elite dominance, okay. 00:15:44.720 --> 00:15:47.000 The Anglo -Saxons didn't need to kill every farmer. 00:15:47.080 --> 00:15:49.279 They just needed to take over the positions of 00:15:49.279 --> 00:15:51.899 power. If the new kings, the tax collectors, 00:15:51.960 --> 00:15:54.679 and the courts all speak Old English, then the 00:15:54.679 --> 00:15:56.779 native Britons have to learn Old English if they 00:15:56.779 --> 00:15:59.539 want to trade, seek justice, or achieve any social 00:15:59.539 --> 00:16:01.740 mobility. Ah, so it goes back to my corporate 00:16:01.740 --> 00:16:04.039 buyout analogy. Let's hear it. The Anglo -Saxons 00:16:04.039 --> 00:16:07.019 come in, execute a hostile takeover, and change 00:16:07.019 --> 00:16:10.139 the name of the company. The local workers, the 00:16:10.139 --> 00:16:11.980 Britons, aren't fired or killed. They're still 00:16:11.980 --> 00:16:14.399 working the same fields. They just have to learn 00:16:14.399 --> 00:16:17.080 the new boss's language and wear the new company 00:16:17.080 --> 00:16:19.710 uniform if they ever want a promotion. That is 00:16:19.710 --> 00:16:21.929 exactly how it functioned. And because they were 00:16:21.929 --> 00:16:25.009 still there, they left indelible ghosts in the 00:16:25.009 --> 00:16:27.169 landscape. Oh, I love that phrase, ghosts in 00:16:27.169 --> 00:16:29.049 the landscape, like what? Well, historically 00:16:29.049 --> 00:16:31.809 speaking, the biography of St. Gufflack, an eighth 00:16:31.809 --> 00:16:34.250 century hermit living in the swamplands of eastern 00:16:34.250 --> 00:16:37.129 England, records him being attacked by people 00:16:37.129 --> 00:16:39.809 speaking Bretonnic in the Fens. Wait, in the 00:16:39.809 --> 00:16:43.600 eighth century? 300 years after they were supposedly 00:16:43.600 --> 00:16:45.840 wiped out. Exactly. They are still living in 00:16:45.840 --> 00:16:48.039 the Fens, and the linguistic ghosts are still 00:16:48.039 --> 00:16:50.100 on the map, too. Right. River names and things 00:16:50.100 --> 00:16:52.639 like that. Everywhere. The River Cam in Cambridge 00:16:52.639 --> 00:16:55.299 derives from a proto -Celtic word meaning crooked. 00:16:55.980 --> 00:16:58.600 You find towns with the root wheel, which was 00:16:58.600 --> 00:17:01.899 the Anglo -Saxon word for foreigner or Britain, 00:17:02.440 --> 00:17:05.940 in places like Walpole and Walsokan. That's wild. 00:17:06.019 --> 00:17:08.180 They were calling the natives foreigners in their 00:17:08.180 --> 00:17:12.299 own land. Yeah. There are even 13th century records 00:17:12.299 --> 00:17:14.839 of the Wandelberry legend in Cambridge that preserve 00:17:14.839 --> 00:17:18.490 strong echoes of ancient Celtic paganism. But 00:17:18.490 --> 00:17:21.210 the real smoking gun is the DNA, isn't it? It 00:17:21.210 --> 00:17:24.089 always is. The sources highlight two major genetic 00:17:24.089 --> 00:17:26.829 studies by Schiffles and Martiniano that looked 00:17:26.829 --> 00:17:29.750 at the DNA of Iron Age and Roman era Britons. 00:17:29.750 --> 00:17:32.309 Yes. And when geneticists compared the ancient 00:17:32.309 --> 00:17:34.410 indigenous Britons to the later Anglo -Saxon 00:17:34.410 --> 00:17:36.730 arrivals, the populations were substantially 00:17:36.730 --> 00:17:39.250 different. OK, how different? The Anglo -Saxons 00:17:39.250 --> 00:17:42.269 matched modern Danes and Dutch populations. But 00:17:42.269 --> 00:17:44.210 when they looked at the modern inhabitants of 00:17:44.210 --> 00:17:47.109 places like Yorkshire in eastern England, they 00:17:47.109 --> 00:17:49.049 found those Those modern people don't differ 00:17:49.049 --> 00:17:51.250 significantly from the ancient native Britons 00:17:51.250 --> 00:17:54.029 found in those exact same regions. The political 00:17:54.029 --> 00:17:56.390 kingdoms fell, and the Britonic language in the 00:17:56.390 --> 00:17:58.670 East was replaced, but the bloodline survived. 00:17:59.150 --> 00:18:01.450 Iron Age Britons actually share close genetic 00:18:01.450 --> 00:18:03.990 links to modern Celts, particularly the Welsh. 00:18:04.789 --> 00:18:08.309 So what does this all mean? We started this deep 00:18:08.309 --> 00:18:11.309 dive by throwing out the stereotype of grunting 00:18:11.309 --> 00:18:14.890 cavemen in animal skins. Instead, we found a 00:18:14.890 --> 00:18:17.369 highly sophisticated culture. They were Bronze 00:18:17.369 --> 00:18:20.089 Age migrants who spent 500 years integrating 00:18:20.089 --> 00:18:23.109 into the landscape. They were the shapely painted 00:18:23.109 --> 00:18:26.369 people who created sweeping psychedelic bronze 00:18:26.369 --> 00:18:29.130 art. And terrified the Romans. Right. Terrified 00:18:29.130 --> 00:18:31.430 the Romans with animal headed war trumpets, yet 00:18:31.430 --> 00:18:33.529 venerate the natural world so deeply they were 00:18:33.529 --> 00:18:36.079 buried with sacred chickens. They survived the 00:18:36.079 --> 00:18:38.099 crushing weight of the Roman Empire, and when 00:18:38.099 --> 00:18:40.259 the world shattered around them, they fragmented 00:18:40.259 --> 00:18:43.140 to form the modern Celtic nations of Wales, Cornwall, 00:18:43.279 --> 00:18:45.339 and Brittany. And even in the East, where they 00:18:45.339 --> 00:18:47.779 supposedly vanished, they just adapted, weaving 00:18:47.779 --> 00:18:50.140 their DNA invisibly into the fabric of modern 00:18:50.140 --> 00:18:52.640 England. To you listening right now, thank you 00:18:52.640 --> 00:18:54.960 for coming on this custom deep dive with us. 00:18:55.079 --> 00:18:57.099 And as you reflect on this, I want to leave you 00:18:57.099 --> 00:18:59.500 with a final thought to mull over. Think about 00:18:59.500 --> 00:19:02.609 your own local geography or family history. We 00:19:02.609 --> 00:19:05.430 walk past rivers, towns, and hills every day 00:19:05.430 --> 00:19:08.990 with names we don't fully understand. What ancient, 00:19:09.009 --> 00:19:11.089 invisible boundaries are you crossing on your 00:19:11.089 --> 00:19:13.529 morning commute without even realizing it? Whose 00:19:13.529 --> 00:19:15.390 forgotten language are you speaking when you 00:19:15.390 --> 00:19:17.029 give directions to your own home?