Iwannaplato wrote: ↑Sat Mar 14, 2026 5:43 am
accelafine wrote: ↑Fri Mar 13, 2026 10:37 pm
Human habitation goes back hundreds of thousands of years in England. I'm pretty sure that's enough time to forge a distinct identity and character. Doesn't take very long to destroy it though.
The people who were there 100,000 years ago were Neanderthals, so whatever identity they forged is long gone. They live on in scattered low % genes from interbreeding with the next group, in England and elsewhere. European Early Modern Humans came in about 40,000 years ago. They were forced out of England by an Ice Age 25,000 years ago. Then the Mesolithic people settled in England after the Ice Age 10,000 years ago. These were then nearly entirely replaced by the Beaker People. So, the Stonehenge builders were 90% replaced in the gene pool, and individuals who were still fully from those people would have been rare and slowly disappearing then.
This unequal combination, there in England and elsewhere, became the Celts. The Romans came in the early AD and stayed for a few hundred years, changing the culture and religion. Then the Anglo Saxons came, a significantly different culture from the Romanized Celts. In fact, the Welsh - with more of the genes and culture of the Britons before the Anglo Saxons came - don't consider themselves English, often.
You've also got Vikings coming in and out, adding customs, genes and vocabulary -- 8th-11th centuries. Then we've got a huge cultural shift in 1066 when the Normans came. They only affected about 5% of the gene pool, but radically changed the language, making it a mix of Latin and Germanic Languages - the Celtic languages...more or less gone. The Normans changed government, architecture, law and introduced feudalism.
11th to 17th Century, large influx due to religious persecution elsewhere: Jews and Huguenots. They radically affected industry and finance.
The next big shift was Irish immigration, over a million came due to the famine - which was radically worsened (the famine) by English policies. This shift reintroduced Catholicism to England and affected the culture in many other ways.
More Jewish influx from the late 1800s to 1914.
1948: the government decides it needs help from the colonies for labor and gives those living in the colonies the right to come to England. This wasn't quite an intentional invitation to come and stay, despite some noble sounding ways of framing new laws, but then there was another large influx, changing the culture again.
So, the idea that humans have been there for 100s of thousands of years so they have had time to forge an identity is confused. Those there back then are truly gone. And other cultures have been coming in for a long time and significantly changing the culture, to the point where those genetically and culturally connected to earlier waves of immigrants don't even call themselves English, who they see as latecomers and usurpers.
