{"id":56196,"date":"2018-04-12T18:12:30","date_gmt":"2018-04-12T18:12:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=56196"},"modified":"2018-04-12T18:12:30","modified_gmt":"2018-04-12T18:12:30","slug":"why-the-idea-that-the-english-have-a-common-anglo-saxon-origin-is-a-myth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=56196","title":{"rendered":"Why the idea that the English have a common Anglo-Saxon origin is a myth"},"content":{"rendered":"

Why the idea that the English have a common Anglo-Saxon origin is a myth<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

The Conversation<\/a>
\n2017-12-15<\/p>\n

Duncan Sayer<\/strong><\/a>, Reader in Archaeology
\nUniversity of Central Lancashire<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/a>
\nA diverse history. Witan hexateuch via Wikimedia Commons<\/em><\/small><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

The idea that there is a common Anglo-Saxon<\/a> ancestry based on biology is gaining currency among some right-wing and religious groups in the UK<\/a> and US<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In the UK, the new leader of the UK Independence Party<\/a>, Henry Bolton<\/a>, suggested in a radio interview<\/a> in October that \u201cin certain communities the indigenous Anglo-Saxon population is nowhere to be seen.\u201d<\/p>\n

In August, a religious group called the Odinist Fellowship<\/a> wrote to the Church of England<\/a> demanding two churches as reparations for a \u201cspiritual genocide\u201d which it claims began in the seventh century AD.<\/p>\n

The Odinists use old Icelandic texts to reconstruct the \u201cindigenous\u201d religion of the Anglo-Saxons which they claim was oppressed with the arrival of Christianity. The Anglo-Saxons are commonly believed to have migrated into Briton<\/a> in the fifth and sixth century AD. Iceland<\/a> by contrast was inhabited in the ninth century by Viking<\/a> settlers. In the US, this mixed up medievalism is associated with the white supremacist alt-right who use Anglo-Saxon and Viking motifs<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But archaeological research, which examines ancient DNA<\/a> and artefacts to explore who these \u201cindigenous\u201d Anglo-Saxons were, shows that the people of fifth and sixth century England<\/a> had a mixed heritage and did not base their identity on a biological legacy. The very idea of the Anglo-Saxon ancestor is a more recent invention linked closely with the English establishment…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Contrary to some popular beliefs, today\u2019s British population does not descend from one Anglo-Saxon heritage.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1649,12,2039,459,8,820,10],"tags":[28451,28450,81,5628],"class_list":["post-56196","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anthropology","category-articles","category-health-medicine","category-history","category-media-archive","category-religion","category-uk","tag-anglo-saxsons","tag-duncan-sayer","tag-england","tag-the-conversation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56196","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=56196"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56196\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56198,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56196\/revisions\/56198"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=56196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=56196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=56196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}