Who were the English descended from?

Answer 1

The answer is everywhere, the English greatest strength is they are one of the world's great mongrel peoples.

After the ice age, settlers began arriving in Britain sporadically for centuries. At first this wasn't a problemm, but towards the end of the Bronze age the country was becoming quite populated. Proof of this is the fact before the Roman invasion the farmland in Britain was being worked so heavily that not again until the 20th century would the earth be tilled so heavily. Also the emergence of hillforts and substantial archaeologic evidence of fighting in that era show land was at a premium.

Then came the Romans bringing settlers from all over the empire. The Romans had a policy of stationing troops as far from their homelands as possible. African and Arab legions were stationed in Britain during the occupation. Several Roman emperors were also British including Rome's only black emperor Septimus Severus.

The following dark ages saw more migration to Britain from Scandenavia. The Anglo-Saxons and Vikings, these groups could possibly have added upto 20% to the English population at their height making them the single largest migrant in history.

The Normans numbering only 20,000 were largely insignificant, but they opened Britain up to cosmopolitan Europe. By the middle ages Britain had Jews, Turks, French, Libyans all in sizable numbers.

In the Rennaissance the Huegonots made a major migration from France and many of Europe's protestant sought sanctuary.

As the British Empire grew an influx of people from all over the world followed. The by the 1800 there were more Irish in England than Ireland. By by 1850 London had gettos ranging from Malay to Polish, there were even American Indian refugees given asylum.

A survey of Whitechapel in Jack the Ripper times showed 50% of the population were immigrants and of the 50% who weren't virtually all their parents were. The survey estimated less than 20% of the whole population of London could trace their English ancestry back more than 200 years.

In the 20th century the imperial immigrants didn't abate and England to this day still both has and annually accepts more immigrants than every other country in Europe combined.

Today, England has descended from many peoples from all over the world, pre-empire though England was descended from people from northern Germany, Denmark and holland,as well as Celts and french.

Answer 2

English History

England is named after the Angles (Old English genitive case, "Engla" - hence, Old English "Engla Land"), one of a number of Germanic tribes believed to have originated in Angeln in northern Germany, who settled in England in the 5th and 6th centuries. This is also the origin of its Latin name, Anglia. It has not had a distinct political identity since 1707, when the Kingdom of Great Britain was established as a unified political entity; however, it has a legal identity separate from those of Scotland and Northern Ireland, as part of the entity England/Wales. England's (and Europe's) largest city, London, is also the capital of the United Kingdom.

The earliest record of human activity in England dates back to over 500,000 years ago [3], although the repeated ice ages made much of Britain uninhabitable for extended periods until as recently as 20,000 years ago. Stone Age hunter-gatherers eventually gave way to farmers and permanent settlements, with advanced megalithic cultures arising in western England some 4,000 years ago. It was replaced around 1,500 years later by Celtic tribes migrating from continental Western Europe, mainly from France. These tribes were known collectively as "Britons"-a name bestowed by Phoenician traders and an indication of how, even at this early date, the island was part of a Europe-wide trading network.

The Britons were significant players in continental affairs and supported their allies in Gaul militarily during the Gallic Wars with the Roman Republic. This prompted the Romans to invade and subdue the island, first with Julius Caesar's raid in 55 BC, and then the Emperor Claudius's conquest in the following century. The whole southern part of the island -roughly corresponding to modern day England and Wales-became a prosperous part of the Roman Empire. It was finally abandoned early in the 5th century when a weakening Empire pulled back its legions to defend borders on the Continent.

Unaided by the Roman army, Roman Britannia could not long resist the Germanic tribes who arrived in the 5th and 6th centuries, enveloping the majority of modern-day England in a new culture and language and pushing Romano-British rule back into modern-day Wales and western extremities of England, including Cornwall and Cumbria. Others emigrated across the channel to modern-day Brittany, thus giving it its name and the Breton language. But many of the Romano-British remained in and were assimilated into the newly English areas.

The invaders fell into three main groups: the Angles, the Saxons, and the Jutes. Gradually, recognisable states formed and began to merge with one another, the most well-known state of affairs being the Anglo-Saxon Heptarchy. From time to time throughout this period, one Anglo-Saxon king, recognised as the "Bretwalda" by other rulers, had effective control of all or most of the English; so it is impossible to identify the precise moment when the Kingdom of England was unified. In some sense, real unity came as a response to the Danish Viking incursions which occupied the eastern half of England in the 8th century. Egbert, King of Wessex (d. 839) is often regarded as the first king of all the English, although the title "King of England" was first adopted two generations later by Alfred the Great (ruled 871-899).

The principal legacy left behind in those territories from which the languages of the Britons were displaced is that of toponyms. Many of the place names in England and, to a lesser extent, Scotland are derived from Celtic British names, including London, Dumbarton, York, Dorchester, Dover, and Colchester. Several place name elements are thought to be wholly or partly Brythonic in origin, particularly bre-, bal-, and -dun for hills, carr for a high rocky place, and coomb for a small deep valley. The Welsh name for England itself is Lloegr, of unknown origin, although it has been speculated to mean "Lost Lands". [citation needed]

Until recently it has been believed that those areas settled by the Anglo-Saxons were uninhabited at the time or that the Britons had fled before them. However, genetic studies show that the British may not have been pushed out to the Celtic fringes - many tribes remained in what was to become England.[4] Capelli's findings strengthen the research of Steven Bassett of the University of Birmingham; his work during the 1990s suggests that much of the West Midlands was only lightly colonised with Anglian and Saxon settlements.

The Norman conquest of England, as depicted in the Bayeux Tapestry

Queen Elizabeth IIn 1066, William the Conqueror and the Normans defeated the Anglo-Saxons at The Battle of Hastings and conquered the existing Kingdom of England. They instituted an Anglo-Norman administration and nobility who, retaining proto-French as their language for the next three hundred years, ruled as custodians over English commoners. Although the language and racial distinctions faded rapidly during the Middle Ages, the class system born in the Norman/Saxon divide persisted longer - arguably with traces lasting to the modern day.

While Old English continued to be spoken by common folk, Norman feudal lords significantly influenced the language with French words and customs being adopted over the succeeding centuries evolving to a Germano-Romance creole now known as Middle English widely spoken in Chaucer's time.

Answer 3

The Angles and Saxons, two Germanic tribes that invaded the British Isles in the 5th century defeating the Celtic peoples previously living on the main island. Their language Anglo saxon became Old English.

Viking invaders in the 8th century gradually began to settle and become farmers, trading with the Angles and Saxons. Their languages merged (dropping conflicting gender rules and many prefixes and suffixes) eventually becoming Middle English by the time of Chauser.

The invasion of the Norman French (previously Vikings that had settled in France) incorporated many French words into the language, eventually leading to Modern English by the time of Shakespeare.

So the modern English people are mostly descendants of the Angles, Saxons, and Vikings.

Answer 4

They came from France

Answer 5

The ancestors of all humans came from Africa.