I think what's surprising to me is all the people who seem to think that the chief method of conquest is replacement, when it's long been established that it's indoctrination. The Romans didn't kill off native peoples - they subjugated them, taxed them, and forced them to comply with some Roman norms. Their greater success though, was getting the people to want to be Roman.
And who wouldn't want to be Roman when the simple words "Civis romanus sum" were an effective passport through an empire that stretched months of travel? When it opened commercial opportunities with a large and relatively effective bureaucracy? A nation that built roads and exported consumer goods, spices and wines and finery, like none had ever before it? Most of Europe is still interconnected by the roads the Romans paved. They've been repaved with macadam, but the lines are the same.
People imitated the Romans because they were powerful. They formed alliances and married their daughters off to Romans who would keep them in relative luxury. The conquest was equally about minds as of arms.
This has been true in all conquests. Some have been more brutal about instilling their culture than the Romans, and to that end, they were more effective at suppressing or destroying the previous culture. But ultimately, it is the conquered people taking on the aspects of their conqueror more than genocide and recolonization that has succeeded in spreading cultures throughout history.
> The Romans didn't kill off native peoples - they subjugated them, taxed them, and forced them to comply with some Roman norms.
That's painting with a bit of a broad brush. The Romans had no problems killing off large swaths of the population.
Depopulation was a tactic that was absolutely on the table. For example, during the conquest of Gaul, ~1/3 of the population was killed and another ~1/3 were sold off as slaves. The tactics you're talking about were used on the remaining 1/3.
Those tactics, admittedly, work quite well when you only have to deal with the friendliest 1/3 of a population.
> For example, during the conquest of Gaul, ~1/3 of the population was killed and another ~1/3 were sold off as slaves. The tactics you're talking about were used on the remaining 1/3.
And that one small, pesky village of Gauls the Romans just could NOT conquer, try as they might.
There are (and will be) no clear proof of that. In my opinion, these conquests concerns the elite of society. These get replaced. The commoners (ie: farmers?) they just show up to market again with a new ruler.
Even if it it is brief, a siege usually had very detrimental effects on the surrounding areas as the invading army "forages" for supplies. Also, the Romans were not beyond indiscriminately slaughtering (not only plundering) or deporting populations that put up formidable resistance. E.g. Siege of Avaricum. Such depopulated areas were often awarded to other tribes or to retiring soldiers for resettlement.
Caesar recorded it himself in his annals. They are not entirely reliable, but the essential points are probably true.
> For example, during the conquest of Gaul, ~1/3 of the population was killed and another ~1/3 were sold off as slaves.
This is probably a misremembered quote from Plutarch:
> For although it was not full ten years that he waged war in Gaul, he took by storm more than eight hundred cities, subdued three hundred nations, and fought pitched battles at different times with three million men, of whom he slew one million in hand to hand fighting and took as many more prisoners.
The total population of Gaul was certainly higher - contemporary estimates range from 5 (assuming very high mobilization and highly exaggerated Roman numbers) to 20 (taking the highest ancient numbers at face value) million.
My source was an episode of Hardcore History. I believe the population estimate he gives is 6 million (which would make sense if there were 3 million men) with 2 million deaths and two million slaves.
I'll give it a re-listen to see if I can find the source he was quoting from, but if anyone's heard the episode, it's the part where he's explaining why it's sometimes called the "Celtic Holocaust".
> I think what's surprising to me is all the people who seem to think that the chief method of conquest is replacement, when it's long been established that it's indoctrination. The Romans…
…are a singular example. I can name a singular counterexample: the R1 Y-chromosome haplotype completely replaced the preexisting indigenous Y-chromosome haplotypes across Europe, indicating that the male population was replaced wholesale. In more recent history, North American and Australian populations were also predominantly replaced with settlers, as were parts of South America.
Yes but the disease and resulting depopulation was probably a necessary precondition to European settlement nonetheless. Even as it was, European settlers themselves often assimilated into indigenous communities; this is the most likely explanation for the lost colony of Roanoke, and smaller scale instances of this sort of thing were well-known late enough that Benjamin Franklin wrote about the phenomenon. Without disease and depopulation, there would have likely been no good uncontested sites to colonize in the first place, and the American Indians would have likely been able to resist colonization far more effectively.
At any rate, there’s no generalization to be made either way. In some cases, conquest involves an existing population accepting foreign rule; in other cases, it involves population replacement. Even counting which cases count which way is difficult and controversial.
> I think what's surprising to me is all the people who seem to think that the chief method of conquest is replacement, when it's long been established that it's indoctrination.
> This has been true in all conquests.
You lost it at the end there. Compare the United States.
Some conquests are a small group installing themselves at the top of society. Others are a large group installing themselves at all levels.
And later, the Antonine wall a bit further north. Though, it's probably more accurate to say the walls were built to reduce the costs of Pictish raids. I doubt the governor in Londinium woke in a cold sweat fearing Pictish invasion, even prior to Hadrian's wall being built.
I realize that there's real research being done here. But as a layman, I read this and only understand that Scottish, Welsh and Irish people are descended from the people who lived in those regions before.
This seems obvious. So what am I missing, as a layman?
First, this conflicts with stories ascribing more exotic origins to the Picts. Second, that it demonstrates that there is some continuity between the pre-Indo-European population of the British Isles and today; i.e., they weren't totally replaced. Third, that the particular sub-populations having this ancestry, and similar to the Picts, are in Wales, Northumbria, Northern Ireland, and Western Scotland, not in Sussex, say. None of this is obvious. There are people in the British Isles today who resemble the Picts. There are people in the British Isles who don't resemble the Picts.
It was known that there were people in the British Isles before the arrival of the Indo-Europeans. It was not known that these were the Picts. It was known that the Picts were regarded as culturally distinct, when they were around, from other populations which are regarded as having a continuous history to the present times. It was not obvious that there were any genetically Pictish people left, or, if so, where they lived. It was not obvious that the Picts were just the pre-Indo-European people of the British Isles. These things were among hypotheses offered, but genetic analysis has established that it is so.
> It was known that there were people in the British Isles before the arrival of the Indo-Europeans. It was not known that these were the Picts
I don't think that the article supports the theory that the Picts were descended from the pre Indo European population. It's actually somewhat unclear on this
> The analysis revealed that Picts descended from local Iron Age populations, who lived across Britain before the arrival of mainland Europeans.
Iron age populations on the British Isles and Ireland are generally associated with Celtic, Indo European, cultures. The Iron Age in Scotland is generally considered to have lasted from around 700BC to the start of the Medieval Era.
The pre-Indo-European populations would date from the Bronze age and the Mesolithic - which the article makes no mention of, so it's not clear what relationship the Picts had with the populations before the arrival of the Indo-Europeans.
In any case it's not widely believed that there was an "Indo-European" invasion, or arrival. Instead the genetic and archiological evidence points to a diffusion of small groups across Europe which seem to have spread their culture and language by "elite capture" rather than by wholesale population replacement.
The general consensus until now is that the Picts spoke a variety of, or something closely related to Brittonic, the Celtic, Into-European language spoken across the rest of Britain at the time, ancestral to modern Welsh.
Modern North Americans largely are not descended from those that lived in North America two thousand years ago - the original locals were swamped by immigrants from elsewhere.
Modern England is largely made up from those descended from earlier immigrantion waves of mostly European origin that displaced original iron age occupants.
The "fringes" (for want of a better word) of the modern UK and Republic of Ireland (Scotland, Wales, the island of Ireland) still retain populations that are largely descended from OG occupants.
For one, England means "land of the Angles" (or in French, "Angleterre": "Angle land"). The Anglo-Saxon majority people group of England descend from the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes, from the coastal German regions of Anglia, Old Saxony, and Jutland. There's also significant admixture from Norse invasion/settlement (and also the Normans, who were Norse who took over a region of France and adopted a dialect of the French language, before conquering England in the year 1066).
Going further back in time, I'm guessing you're aware that modern Scotland corresponds roughly to the area of Britain that the Romans weren't able to conquer. The Roman settlement of Londinium became London. We also get our English word "pound" and its abbreviation "lb." from the two halves of the Latin phrase "libra pondo", dating back to Roman Britain.
IIRC it was likely more than 80% that were wiped out by disease, giving later European settlers the ability to promote the idea of the Americas as a largely unsettled wilderness scattered with savages, though just a couple decades before Native American civilizations had rivaled Europe.
I think people (researchers? Historians?) overestimated the effects of human migration. Genetics might be showing that most people really moved nowhere for the last 3000 year or so.
I hope that after I die I go into spectator mode, but with the added ability to move myself through time so I can see all kinds of stuff like this play out.
There are so many historical questions that I want better answers to.
The Picts are one of those historical questions, for me.
Genetics are weird. I have received next to nothing from certain ancestors, and quite a bit from others as far as DNA testing is concerned. Likewise, in a lithograph of one I can see an ancestor who looks nearly identical to a half brother of mine. Shit is so weird.
It's not so weird. My understanding is that genes migrating across chromosomes (translocation) isn't that common. So, to a first approximation, genes are inherited as 46 indivisible units. Every generation, a given chromosome has a 50/50 chance of getting dropped. You have exactly 23 chromosomes from your mother, an expected value of 11.5 chromosomes from your maternal grandmother, expected 5.75 chromosomes from her mother... another 3 generations back and you've got less than a 50% probability of getting any chromosomes from that particular relative.
The opening of the article explicitly lists “Scotland, Wales, North Ireland and Northumbria” despite leaving Northumbria (which resides mostly in northern England) out of the title.
This is due to the politics of the UK. in the UK, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland are first class citizens, along with England.
It is the United Kingdom of Great Britain (England, Scotland, Wales) and Northern Ireland.
Northumbria, however, does not exist anymore, its now a bunch of English counties, and the southern half of Scotland (south of the Firth of Forth).
Without more details on which part of Northumbria is meant it's impossible to know if Enlgand should be included, it may also be wrong to include England if its only a small part and its most / all of Scotland, Wales, and Northen Ireland
The author may be getting confused with the similarly named modern county of Northumberland. You'd be surprised how often the border region between England and Scotland is confused, misplaced, or forgotten about.
[Source: I'm from Northumberland, technically Tyne and Wear, but thats splitting an already split hair]
That’s a good explanation. I’m from Blairgowrie originally.
I thought it odd to include Northumbria in one list, but leave it (or England) off the other. But then including a historic county along with countries is odd anyway. I assumed they meant northern England because the parts within Scotland wouldn’t need to be called out again within a list.
And who wouldn't want to be Roman when the simple words "Civis romanus sum" were an effective passport through an empire that stretched months of travel? When it opened commercial opportunities with a large and relatively effective bureaucracy? A nation that built roads and exported consumer goods, spices and wines and finery, like none had ever before it? Most of Europe is still interconnected by the roads the Romans paved. They've been repaved with macadam, but the lines are the same.
People imitated the Romans because they were powerful. They formed alliances and married their daughters off to Romans who would keep them in relative luxury. The conquest was equally about minds as of arms.
This has been true in all conquests. Some have been more brutal about instilling their culture than the Romans, and to that end, they were more effective at suppressing or destroying the previous culture. But ultimately, it is the conquered people taking on the aspects of their conqueror more than genocide and recolonization that has succeeded in spreading cultures throughout history.