Northern Neil

Happy Birthday my little Yorkshire friend. Sorry its a day late, but sometimes the Pennines are a formidable barrier even in this modern age!

Finger bones are quite popular at the moment. I believe they come in boxes of ten...

Here's a couple more: Hadrian's Empire by Danziger and Purcell The Later Roman Empire by Averil Cameron

Valentinian I. Whilst applauding him for his re - fortificaion of the frontiers, and the temporary halt in the barbarisation of the army, I would also ask him to bestow upon his son his own ideals of religious tolerance, and to keep the titles of Emperor and Pontifex Maximus as a single package. I would ask him lots of questions which to him would be mundane - such as, what was the internal structure of a late - period fort? Do units still named cohorts retain their principate - period structure, or have they evolved like the legions? Do the vast swathe of people from Lusitania, Hibernia to Galatia speak a related series of dialects, or have we moderns been making gross assumptions? I would also ask him to keep his head in any negotiations with barbarians...

Certainly - the book which introduced me to this research is 'The Origins of the British' by Stephen Oppenheimer ISBN 978-1-84529-482-3. The bibliography cites other authors whose works support the theories under discussion, such as Barry Cunliffe and Colin Renfrew. I find the theories under discussion compelling for a number of reasons. I have always found the 'British wipe-out theory' unrealistic even since childhood - enduring pre-saxon names such as Kent (Cantiacii) and Lincoln (Lindum Colonia) are direct evidence against it. Furthermore, I have always recognised that Belgae and other lowland Brits/northern Gauls are described as looking like Germans by primary sources, whereas modern Celtic speakers do not. These, and many other things, have never satisfactorily been explained by the traditional theory, whereas (to me at least) these theories actually explain ALL this.

Indeed. Also, the 'what if' factor in this discussion is a moot point - the empire indeed did survive the fall of the west, and retained the wealthiest provinces with the longest history of learning and science. The Empire had, in effect, 1000 more years than suggested at the start of this thread to do all these amazing things, but it didn't.

How? The genetic evidence actually points to the 'Pre Roman Germanic England' fairly firmly, and is starting to become a mainstream view. I admit there are holes and flaws in the theory, but not nearly as many as in the traditional one, which is based almost entirely not on scientific process, but assumptions. It is supported not just by oppenheimer, who simply collated the evidence, but also by Colin Renfrew and Barry cunliffe. Lesser experts in this field have said that they always thought the traditional view inaccurate, but were afraid to go against the established academia, who up until now have been VERY conservative in this field. The 'wipeout' theory has largely been dispensed with as Sonic suggests, whilst the view that Britain was entirely occupied by people we now call celts until the Anglian invasions is several hundred years old, and rests very largely on the supposition that lowland Brits spoke Celtic. As can be seen, there is, at best, slight linguistic evidense that some of them spoke Celtic, for some of the time, just as there is an islated Ogham inscription in Silchester, even though this script was used primarily by the Irish. I can add another - there is a reference - I think in Bede - about 'Welsh' speakers residing in the Fens as late as 750. But these data are very slight and sporadic indeed, compared to the significant evidence from many disciplines of the scientific community which suggest otherwise. I can only propose that people read Oppenheimer and weigh the evidence themselves. His is the best and briefest summary of the evidence to date, although even this becomes quite heavy with scientific detail in the middle chapters.

Indeed yes, but the genetic evidence suggests that the input to the English gene pool of these people was something in the order of 5%. The mass immigration of Angles, Saxons and Jutes with a wipeout of the indigenous population is simply not borne out by the evidence. The evidence suggests that what we now call England was ALREADY germanic even prior to the Claudian invasion. This also applies to the Belgae and other Northern Gaulish tribes, who have been assumed to be celtic but may actually not have been.

Oppenheimer actually states that the people of England come from North West Europe (including Frisia) and that the insular celts appear to have come via a western route from Aquitaine/Basque region. That is in fact one of the main theses of his book - that England is Germanic speaking is without doubt. The question is, when did these germanics arrive, with their language? Some evidence (see my previous post - blonde Belgae, linguistic similarities with north east Gaul etc ) suggests it was already in place when the Romans got here.

I have been having a re-think about this. perhaps we should regard it as beginning in 395 with Theodosius' death, but stop calling it ' The Byzantine Empire' at varying arbitrary dates in the 6th/7th centuries. Call it the 'Eastern Roman Empire' throughout, like its people did, and regard 610 - 1204 as the 'Byzantine' phase. To actually call it something its people didnt has always seemed to me to be strange. The period after the 1260's would perhaps require a different name for the cultural phase up to 1453, but the Empire itself still retains its name.

Maybe globalisation had its first flowering in the ancient world - and maybe the case for a 'mediterranean' rather than a Greek, Roman, Phoenician or whatever culture does hold some water. In mucn the same way as it is slowly becoming apparent that not all peoples who shared the LaTene culture belonged to the same linguistic or ethnic group.

Yes, maybe we take all this inauthenticity and cornyness too much to heart. I know WWII addicts who cringe at the plethora of war films which depict things wrongly - including the more modern ones ( High level fighters such as mustangs conducting ground attack missions in Saving Private Ryan when in actual fact rocket - bearing RAF typhoons and USAAF P-47's did all that stuff - for instance!) As a motorcyclist, I see discrepancies in 'The Worlds Fastest Indian' even though I love the film. Nelson's Navy fanatics rip the recent Hornblower series to shreds, whilst fans of the American West constantly shake their heads and tut at all movies from 1920 to date. The fact is, going to see Ben Hur when I was 8 years old fostered an interest in this subject which has never left me. Richard Egan's 300 Spartans, Spartacus and even the awful Quo Vadis reinforced it. I am sure many others on this forum can say the same thing.

...but, the Empire DID continue, albeit shorn of its western provinces, for a further thousand years. Not only that, but it retained the wealthiest provinces, and those which had a tradition of scientific enquiry. No industrial revolution happened before its time, and no space flight prior to the first millenium. The Eastern Roman Empire was just as medieval as any other state at the time, albeit politically better organised. Retention of the Western provinces, or the integrity of the Augustan frontiers throughout the medieval period, would not have made the slightest difference to the advancement of science and technology. We must remember that the Roman Empire itself ushered in a lengthy period in which monotheism and religious intolerence virtually extinguished all scientific enquiry. A century before the Western Empire ceased forever as a political entity, science had been extinguished in the Western world. It continued in a limited form in the East - not because of Islam, but despite Islam. The near East had a tradition of science and mathematics which Islam inherited by conquest, and any science which threatened the religious status quo was supressed, much the same as in the West. Science and technology only started to advance again once Northern Italy had regained the population and commerce it had enjoyed almost a millennium before.

What a final that was in 2003!

Heres to the next 37!

In its present form yes, but this name was also given to crude oil. Another name the ancients gave to crude oil was 'Rock oil' to differentiate it from the other commercially available oils which were from plants. Rock oil was not considered to have any commercial value until the 1890's.

Here is an extractfrom something I wrote on a similar thread, 'Ancient Celts Did Not Exist': ...examination of DNA evidence throws more fuel into this debate... 'The Origins of the British' by Stephen Oppenheimer, published in 2006 [states that] our current theories about [anglo saxon settlement] are derived from Victorian assumptions. For example: Assuming that all people who belonged to a given culture by definition all spoke the same language, and were of the same ethnic group. ...he states that the Angles, Saxons and Jutes contribution to the British gene pool is only 5%. Further, the degree of separation of English from mainland Germanic languages is more in the order of Several thousand years, rather than the 1500 years assumed in current (and again Victorian) theories. He concludes that the area we now call 'England' has been Germanic - not Celtic speaking from a very early time, and that insular Celts always HAVE been confined to the West. Historical evidence in support of this is Caesar and Tacitus' description of Belgae, Northern Gauls and lowland Britons, who are described as tall and blonde, which would make them resemble Germans in appearance. According to genetic studies,[since the end of the ice age] Britain was subject to a slow but constant colonisation from two directions - from the Iberian peninsula, Western Gaul and Brittany, settling in Ireland and Western Britain. The other migration came from north east Gaul and the Low Countries/Jutland, which of course settled the south east of the island. The only things the primary sources say about the language of the lowland ancient Britons is that it was similar to that of Eastern and Northern Gaul, but different from that of western and Southern Gaul. Currently, the evidence suggests that 'England' spoke a germanic language almost from the start, which would explain the complete takeover of the country by such a small group, the continuity of Roman and pre-Roman place names, and Vortigern's invitation for the Saxons to enter Britain as foederatii. These current theories cast considerable doubt on the 'Celtic wipe - out theory' which has been around, in one form or another, for many centuries. Mainly because, the people we now call the Celts were actually never in England in large numbers in the first place. Oppenheimer's book is not yet another revisionist publication stating a plausible yet singly derived hypothesis. It is a summary of recent evidence derived from many sections of the scientific community - in particular linguists, genetecist, historians, archaeologists and even geologists.

Is not 90% of Christian mythology and ritual pagan in origin?

My copy is on order!

When did public buildings such as greek - style temples, theatres and amphitheatres stop being built? Diocletian's palace at Split had a greek temple style building in its midst, but that is the latest one I can find, and it seems that this style of building ceased to be built thereafter. What about entertainments? Were the Hippodrome at Constantinople or the amphitheatre at El Djem the last ones, or were some built after then? My general impression is that such things were no longer built after the end of the 3rd century.

I certainly have. I am looking through them right now! Are some of these models traditional cardboard and glue, or does it just appear so? Does the site tell me itself if I explore it properly and stop jumping from page to page like an excited child?

In 1453 the Byzantines did indeed still have Greek Fire, and according to Roger Crowley's Consantinople - The Last Great Seige 1453 - they used it extrensively in its defense. They also had several small artillery pieces, but unfortunately nothing to match the great guns used by the ottomans. As Kosmo says, by then it was quite obsolete, and I fear no longer a secret either. Regarding Roger Crowley's book, it really is a fascinating read, and uses the narrative style and thus reads like a story. It is also a very sad story, full of desparate yet futile heroism, of rising and falling hopes. I recommend it.

What awonderful website. The model of the capitoleum I find particularly interesting; it seems that the full - on classical building style was still with us as late as the reign of Constantine, whereas I previously though it had died out, along with many other things, sometime during the crisis. Are some of these models constructed in the traditional fashion before being transformed into a digital, 3-D model? Some of them look like it. Makes me feel like chucking away my my model making equipment and going to live in a monestery somewhere.

Well, I have just bought Simon Scarrow's latest two, 'The Eagle in the Sand' and 'Centurion'. Pulp fiction to some, but what the heck - I like them! And anyway, my last read was 'The Roman Empire at Bay' by David Potter. So a little 'Cathryn Cookson for Boys' is a welcome break just now.