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Way Out West (Pre-History)
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DPCrisp


In: Bedfordshire
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What a beautiful faery story.

We like different things in fiction, Ish. It's too much laced with contradictions and loose ends for my taste.
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DPCrisp


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Whatever Ish, but you must be prepared to replace it with a better one.

Anglo-Saxons take control of Britain. Full stop. {Even whether they attacked out of the blue or were already here and quietly assumed the reigns is merely a matter of detail in the big picture.}

It's all about the detail

In Applied Epistemology, it's all about the big picture. Detail is for the professionals to quibble over, but are they even on the right canvas...? Falling back on maxims and mantras, however persuasive they may be, will only serve to protect them against the reality of evidence.
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Duncan


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It seems to me that minds have been made up but there are inaccuracies in what you say. Before I offer my current best guess on what happened in the post-Roman period, which is in line with the current state of play in the genetics, I will address the inaccuracies.

Offa's Dyke runs through glorious lowland meadow throughout. One might even say it's the only large area in Wales that isn't mountainous.

There is a long distance footpath that runs along the entire length of Offa's Dyke. Having walked this I can categorically say the above statement is wrong. The view here is that the Welsh were protected by their mountains.

try for a minimum of consistency. OK, Danes are like Anglo-Saxons (so why don't we speak Danish); OK the Anglo-Saxons are like all the other post-Roman wandering tribes, so why don't they speak Gothic in Spain or Lombardic in Italy?

Yes, classic THOBR and quite persuasive. The accepted view is that it's a question of numbers. The Anglo-Saxons immigrated en masse pushing the Britons westwards and enslaving those who chose to stay. There are definite Norse influences in the English language. The sk sound replaced the older sch sound, for example. We have the by place name endings as well.

Apart from the fact that the Angles never reached Strathclyde, this kind of population movement absolutely dominates ancient history and therefore modern history. But I ask you, who in their right minds is going to invite a foreign population to replace one's own?

Not true again. The Angles were in Lothian which is right next door to Strathclyde. The Welsh in north Wales weren't inviting a foreign people in. They were making space for fellow Welshmen, countrymen from Strathclyde. This is probably similar to the situation in western Germany after WW2 when East Germans were relocated from the former East Prussia.

The volcanic eruption is evidenced from ice core samples taken from Greenland. It does explain how a much larger population could be decimated as crop yields fell. We also have evidence for the plague in the 540's.

So England had to be both worse affected by the plague than the Anglo-Saxons, to make us easy pickings and them still able to mount an invasion; and less affected so that our economy was in better shape than theirs, making the trip worthwhile.

It's all about where you start from. The economic base of the former Roman province of Britannia would be much more developed than that of the Anglo-Saxons. Just like in Viking times when the economic base of England was much more developed than Denmark. A 30% fall in British GDP would not be the same as a 30% fall in Anglian or Saxon GDP because we were much richer to start with. Britannia was a land of easy pickings because our military was weak and the immigrant warbands were professional soldiers in the first instance. Only later did the farmers come.

Now we could talk about this all day but I fully accept that the above scenario is only a theory. It is still the dominant theory but a theory nonetheless.

I entertain the possibility of it being correct for one reason only and that is because it makes sense of the genetics far more convincingly than the idea that Germanic Englishmen were here before in large numbers. Until they are shown to be wrong I accept Oppenheimer and Sykes as the best working models of the genetic story.

They clearly demonstrate that the bulk of the genes are non-Germanic and that the Germanic genes are concentrated in the east of Britain. This strongly suggests a large scale Germanic immigration that involved the enslaving and expulsion of large numbers of the native population. Notice that I do not discount the possibility that English was already spoken in Britain before the Romans arrived but it would be as the language of a conquering elite arriving from the east. The only question is who were they? We know that Anglo-Saxons and Danes are the prime candidates but we don't speak Danish. Our language is closest to Anglo-Saxon but may not be derived from it. We do share many of the root words though.

Peter Forster's speculations on this are that English split from the other Germanic languages much earlier than is currently accepted by linguists. English could be the language of the Beaker folk.

The process of 'anglicisation' would then be akin to the spread of Spanish and the Portuguese in South America.

No matter how tentative this theory is, it fits the genetics much better than English being the language of the vast majority of the British population and the eastern Irish.
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Mick Harper
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There is a long distance footpath that runs along the entire length of Offa's Dyke. Having walked this I can categorically say the above statement is wrong. The view here is that the Welsh were protected by their mountains.

Come off it, Dunc. If you think this terrain is "mountainous" in the sense you originally conveyed -- the Welsh being protected by the Cambrian mountains -- then you must suffer from vertigo.

There are definite Norse influences in the English language. The sk sound replaced the older sch sound, for example.

How can you possibly assert this? We don't have any record of English consonants at the time the Norse were in Britain. The Norse might just as well have got their sk from the Brits.

We have the by place name endings as well.

The -by names rather prove the opposite case. We know that the Danes were in the Danelaw for a coupla centuries so we can be sure that there will be a few -by places in the Danelaw. There are a few -by places in the Danelaw.

Not true again. The Angles were in Lothian which is right next door to Strathclyde.

Blimey, Dunc, I just said the Angles never reached Strathclyde and you reprove me by saying that the Angles never reached Strathclyde!

The Welsh in north Wales weren't inviting a foreign people in. They were making space for fellow Welshmen, countrymen from Strathclyde. This is probably similar to the situation in western Germany after WW2 when East Germans were relocated from the former East Prussia.

Fine, fine. The Welsh can go whither they wish in the Welshlands.

The volcanic eruption is evidenced from ice core samples taken from Greenland. It does explain how a much larger population could be decimated as crop yields fell. We also have evidence for the plague in the 540's.

Look, Dunc, you've gotta get used to actually weighing up orthodoxy instead of parroting it. One of the themes of THOBR is that orthodoxy uses Dark Ages to hide its anomalies (because of the lack of general evidence). AE resists this by saying "What is is what was". Here we have a volcanic eruption in the Dark Ages with unknown results but big enough to show up in the record (in this case the ice-cores). So what we do is to list all the volcanic eruptions in historic times big enough to show up in the record (ice-cores, dendro, documentation, whatever you like). We then ask: did any of them lead to a population collapse? Answer: no. Case closed. Move on.

It's all about where you start from. The economic base of the former Roman province of Britannia would be much more developed than that of the Anglo-Saxons. Just like in Viking times when the economic base of England was much more developed than Denmark. A 30% fall in British GDP would not be the same as a 30% fall in Anglian or Saxon GDP because we were much richer to start with. Britannia was a land of easy pickings because our military was weak and the immigrant warbands were professional soldiers in the first instance. Only later did the farmers come.


So now, let's see. These Anglo-Saxon dudes come over for the rich pickings and succeed with great ease. (That's common ground.)Then...er...they let in farmers...what for? Did these Anglo-Saxon farmers have some advanced horticultural techniques or something? Do rulers habitually like to share their ill-gotten gains with others voluntarily? You'll have to help me with this bit.

Our language is closest to Anglo-Saxon but may not be derived from it. We do share many of the root words though.

This is incorrect. Frisian is reckoned even by orthodoxy to be the closest. However, we do not accept any linguists' verdict about what is closest to what because they refuse to use any kind of appropriate statistical model. However, it would be useful if you could actually run down a statement from a reputable linguist that Anglo-Saxon is the closest (or even the second-closest)...I rather think they would not be caught by such an obvious fly.

Peter Forster's speculations on this are that English split from the other Germanic languages much earlier than is currently accepted by linguists. English could be the language of the Beaker folk.

We put forward this theory about five years ago. The introduction of farming (which is reasonably coterminous with Beakerdom) is quite unlike any other incursion in that it supports a vastly larger population and therefore may, I repeat may, have led to English-speaking domination over the aboriginals.

The process of 'anglicisation' would then be akin to the spread of Spanish and the Portuguese in South America.

This would then be acceptable as a model.
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Duncan


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Mick, we can bat this stuff backwards and forwards. We just won't agree on the details.

Just to nit pick over this one though: if a psychotic killer moves in next door you might just move away...

Blimey, Dunc, I just said the Angles never reached Strathclyde and you reprove me by saying that the Angles never reached Strathclyde!

Regarding this one:

Here we have a volcanic eruption in the Dark Ages with unknown results but big enough to show up in the record (in this case the ice-cores). So what we do is to list all the volcanic eruptions in historic times big enough to show up in the record (ice-cores, dendro, documentation, whatever you like). We then ask: did any of them lead to a population collapse? Answer: no. Case closed. Move on.

This is altogether different. We have the similar eruption of Thera in 1600 BC that brought on the collapse on Minoan Crete. Case NOT closed. Too early to move on.

So now, let's see. These Anglo-Saxon dudes come over for the rich pickings and succeed with great ease. (That's common ground.)Then...er...they let in farmers...what for? Did these Anglo-Saxon farmers have some advanced horticultural techniques or something? Do rulers habitually like to share their ill-gotten gains with others voluntarily? You'll have to help me with this bit.

This no different to what the Vikings did in England. The warriors clear out the natives then settle down to farm the land they've taken. Further waves of immigration then come in: friends, relatives, the owner of the corner shop... It isn't that strange a concept.

This is incorrect. Frisian is reckoned even by orthodoxy to be the closest. However, we do not accept any linguists' verdict about what is closest to what because they refuse to use any kind of appropriate statistical model. However, it would be useful if you could actually run down a statement from a reputable linguist that Anglo-Saxon is the closest (or even the second-closest)...I rather think they would not be caught by such an obvious fly.

Now you've got me. Every linguist argues that English derives from Anglo-Saxon. Frisian is just the closest living language to written Old English. You saw Neil Oliver's trip to Frisia on Face of Britain? Far more entertaining was Eddie Izzard's trip to Frisia on Mongrel Nation. He bought a brown cow from a Frisian farmer using only Old English.

We put forward this theory about five years ago. The introduction of farming (which is reasonably coterminous with Beakerdom) is quite unlike any other incursion in that it supports a vastly larger population and therefore may, I repeat may, have led to English-speaking domination over the aboriginals.

Quite remarkably we may have found some common ground. Forster's idea is simply that English split from the west Germanic family further back in time than post-Roman Britain. The Beaker idea was all mine. The link with farming is rather insecure, however. The first Beaker pottery is dated to 2400 BC whereas the first signs of farming are from 4300 BC. It is probable that they brought Bronze weaponry however, a major technological advantage at the time. The Neolithic farmers were probably 'Celtic' speakers but I say this simply because there is no trace of Basque having been spoken here.

This, finally, would make sense of the genetics.
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Ishmael


In: Toronto
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Duncan wrote:
We have the similar eruption of Thera in 1600 BC that brought on the collapse on Minoan Crete. Case NOT closed. Too early to move on.

You are just not at all accustomed to applying epistemological principles to academic claims -- and neither is the whole of academia (and neither was I, just a few short years ago). Nevertheless, it's fascinating watching how you think. It's like visiting another country.

Consider that eruption of Thera -- said to have occurred in (set your watches) 1600BC. What is the evidence that it brought on the collapse of Minoan Crete? Do we really know this? Or is it another "just so" story? Minoan civilization appears to collapse and a volcanic explosion, thought to be contemporaneous, is adopted as cause.

Now, maybe video really did kill the radio star, but you can't support one theoretical construct using another. You must have an observable, measurable factor as your starting point.

If you stick around long enough, you will learn that this site isn't really about any one of the theories it will eventually showcase (just as THOBR is not really about the origins of the English language, as the book states on page one). This site is about a more rigorous application of the scientific method: an approach that Mick terms "Applied Epistemology". That approach has taught many of us a whole new way to think about a host of problems -- with surprisingly satisfying results!

He bought a brown cow from a Frisian farmer using only Old English.

Has it occurred to anyone then that, what we call Anglo Saxon is just a dialect (perhaps an archaic, formal form) of Frisian?
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Duncan


In: Yorkshire
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Ishmael, my entire problem with sanctimoniousness is that it really is just a way of thinking. I mean, come on:

You are just not at all accustomed to applying epistemological principles to academic claims -- and neither is the whole of academia (and neither was I, just a few short years ago). Nevertheless, it's fascinating watching how you think. It's like visiting another country.

Real life isn't just a matter of finding theories to showcase and then trying to destroy them. I stopped throwing my toys out of my cot many years ago. You are trying to apply a theoretical model to many things and perhaps forgetting to apply it to your own constructs. As they say, in the country of the blind the one-eyed man is King.

Ishmael, there is no academia, just different academics with different theories. They ain't all the same mate.
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Ishmael


In: Toronto
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And the answer to the question I posed? Your response to the criteria I set?
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Mick Harper
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This is altogether different. We have the similar eruption of Thera in 1600 BC that brought on the collapse on Minoan Crete. Case NOT closed. Too early to move on.

Ishmael is correct (alas) in that you are not engaging at the correct level. Here you are just repeating the error you were first accused of since Thera is used to account for the collapse of the Minoan Civilisation in exactly the same way as your Anglo-Saxon example. And of course it is also in a Dark Age (indeed it is often used to usher in the Greek Dark Age). This kind of thing is acceptable in orthodox circles because they just 'chat' ie put up more or less reasonable hypotheses with only peer review to hold themselves in check. We apply rules. In this case the rule is:
in order to use volcanic explosions to explain population collapses in Dark Ages it is necessary to produce one (yes, that's right, just one -- AE tries always to use the lowest available threshold-of-proof) example of it happening outside a Dark Age.

By the way, most of us here believe the Minoan collapse happened c 800 BC. But don't let that put you off the volcano-search. I think under the circumstances that you should admit that you can't produce one (unless you can of course). You will find reversing a previously held public position immensely liberating.

This no different to what the Vikings did in England. The warriors clear out the natives then settle down to farm the land they've taken. Further waves of immigration then come in: friends, relatives, the owner of the corner shop... It isn't that strange a concept.

You are doing the same thing. There is no more evidence of Vikings living here en masse than there is evidence for the Anglo-Saxons living here en masse. So you may not buttress the one with the other. If we take parallel cases eg the Romans and the Normans in Britain, the British in India then we see very clearly that yes, it is true the original military caste soons settles down to farming the land (they own it all so why shouldn't they, it's often the only respectable occupation open to ex-military, isn't it?). And yes, they invite "further waves of immigration" in the form of military drafts, economic specialists, memsahibs etc. But no, none of this has any permanent long-term effect on the local gene pool or the local language, except at the margins. And all because it is absolute madness to "clear out the natives".

On this point, it was revealed in tonight's Face of Britain that there is a Viking gene (M79?) but that this is pretty much absent on the British mainland. Though orthodoxy has carefully covered themselves by claiming that the Danish Vikings lack this gene and are (quel surprise) indistinguishable from Anglo-Saxons.

Now you've got me. Every linguist argues that English derives from Anglo-Saxon. Frisian is just the closest living language to written Old English. You saw Neil Oliver's trip to Frisia on Face of Britain? Far more entertaining was Eddie Izzard's trip to Frisia on Mongrel Nation. He bought a brown cow from a Frisian farmer using only Old English.

You're being quite quite mad, dear boy. You, me, Eddie Izzard and the man in the moon agree that Frisian and Anglo-Saxon are so similar that you can practically converse in the two languages. In other words in the (at least) thousand years that they have been growing apart they haven't moved a spit. However you can't converse between English and Frisian (or for that matter between English and Anglo-Saxon). So in the thousand years English has been separated (according to orthodoxy) English has moved away from both languages by a great many spits. This is an impossible situation on the orthodox timeline. Come on, Dunc, even you must see that.
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Duncan


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Ishmael is correct (alas) in that you are not engaging at the correct level. Here you are just repeating the error you were first accused of since Thera is used to account for the collapse of the Minoan Civilisation in exactly the same way as your Anglo-Saxon example. And of course it is also in a Dark Age (indeed it is often used to usher in the Greek Dark Age).

Okay, let's have a look at what Ishmael said:

Consider that eruption of Thera -- said to have occurred in (set your watches) 1600BC. What is the evidence that it brought on the collapse of Minoan Crete? Do we really know this? Or is it another "just so" story? Minoan civilization appears to collapse and a volcanic explosion, thought to be contemporaneous, is adopted as cause.


The eruption at Thera (now Santorini) was one of the biggest in history. Perhaps two-thirds of the island was blown away by the eruption. Evidence suggests that the intensity was more than five times that of Krakatoa.

So, what evidence do we have that it led to the collapse of Minoan Crete? I think contemporary sources should be sufficient on this. The Thera eruption happened in 1627/8 BC.

A huge cloud of dust and gas enveloped the earth, and there are accounts of unnusual darkness in Egyptian and Chinese literature.
"In the twenty-ninth year of King Chieh [the last ruler of Hsia, the earliest recorded Chinese dynasty], the Sun was dimmed...King Chieh lacked virtue...the Sun was distressed...during the last years of Chieh ice formed in [summer] mornings and frosts in the sixth month [July]. Heavy rainfall toppled temples and buildings...Heaven gave severe orders. The Sun and Moon were untimely. Hot and cold weather arrived in disorder. The five cereal crops withered and died."
- written during the reign of Emperor Qin c.1600 B.C.

A few thoughts by experts in the field on the impact of the eruption:

"The death cloud deposited a dense ash layer hundreds of miles east of Thera, but penetrated west only sixty miles, stopping at the island of Melos."
- Charles Pellegrino, Unearthing Atlantis (1991) p. 23

Crete is close to Santorini, very close. The Tsunami that would have followed the eruption would have destroyed much of the Minoan naval power:

"One could also envisage the destruction of the ships on which Minoan power depended, and the longer term disruption of agriculture by a heavy overlay of ash."
- Dr. Floyd McCoy, in Ground Truth, Earthwatch Research Report

So, I fully expect you to challenge all of this but this is the evidence that I have found. I do take on board the views of academics because I don't believe that they are systematically setting out to lie to me.

The problem that I am having with all of this is that you simply refuse to accept evidence. It allows you to call into question absolutely everything because it is stated by 'orthodoxy'. This really does get us nowhere.

In this case the rule is:
in order to use volcanic explosions to explain population collapses in Dark Ages it is necessary to produce one (yes, that's right, just one -- AE tries always to use the lowest available threshold-of-proof) example of it happening outside a Dark Age
.

I think the evidence from China surely carries some clout here.

Can we move on now?

You are doing the same thing. There is no more evidence of Vikings living here en masse than there is evidence for the Anglo-Saxons living here en masse. So you may not buttress the one with the other.

What about the genetics sahib? I know that Oppenheimer thinks they could be there from earlier (i.e. pre-Roman) Germanic immigration but you have told me already that you think the Atlantic Modal Haplotype carriers are the English. By your own logic, this minority Germanic overlay must either be Anglo-Saxon or Viking; and it is en masse.

Beyond this I think the evidence of large scale Danish Viking settlement is pretty good. The by and thorpe place names, the massacre of Danes on the order of English royalty (I think it was St Swithin's day in 1013) etc. . But you are right in one sense, until we disentangle the later Danish from the earlier Anglo-Saxon genetic markers then we can't say for sure. The Viking gene you mentioned reflects the differences between Norse and Danish Vikings. Sykes has found evidence for it on the mainland but it is mainly found along the slave routes between Norway and Dublin.
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Ishmael


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Duncan wrote:
Crete is close to Santorini, very close. The Tsunami that would have followed the eruption would have destroyed much of the Minoan naval power:

And absent the Tsunami, what evidence is there that the eruption alone would suffice to destroy a civilization? I assume there's no tsunami to threaten the Anglo Saxons in the scenario which prompted this discussion.

Originally you claimed

1) Dendochronology can confidently identify a "climatic event" as a "major volcanic eruption" and confidently date this eruption to within a ten year span in the 540s -- a date that coincidentally comes right at the beginning of those mysteriously empty dark-age years when no one knows much of anything about what was supposedly going on in Europe.
2) This volcanic eruption definitely led to failing crop yields throughout Europe.
3) The failing crop yields were ultimately responsible for creating a devastating plague in the same region.
4) These same factors must have decimated the British population as well.

Forgive me but it apears to me that there's an awful lot of conjecture here. Too much, I submit, to provide any reliable basis for a historical model.

But you can judge for yourself of course. Look at each point and ask the question, "Do we know this to be true?" How confident are you that each claim is completely reliable and must be the case.

The best theories are those which rely on data points as sure as night follows day. That's the kind of certainty we're looking for.

One could also envisage the destruction of the ships on which Minoan power depended, and the longer term disruption of agriculture by a heavy overlay of ash."
- Dr. Floyd McCoy, in Ground Truth, Earthwatch Research Report

Yes. One could envision that. Or not.

This is exactly what we are talking about. We aren't here to question Orthodoxy because we like feeling superior to academics. We just happen to be using a superior methodology than the one they use, which heaps hypothetical upon hypothetical (see above). We demand real evidence. Observable measurable data. If you don't have it, you can't speculate. Saying something is possible is never good enough. Yes. It's possible that Minoan civilization was wiped out by a volcano/tsunami (take your pick please) but do you know that it was? If you don't know then you can't appeal to it to prove some other case.

For example, you stated earlier...

The volcanic eruption is evidenced from ice core samples taken from Greenland.

Ok. So we know from real-time observation that volcanoes do leave traces in glaciers. Therefore, it is reasonable to surmise from traces found in glaciers that these correspond to earlier volcanic eruptions. That's good. However, our ability to correlate ice core "events" with historical counterparts is dependent on the accuracy of our interpretive science and the accuracy of the received chronology -- neither of which is a sure thing and both of which are difficult to test. So we had better be very cautious and even reluctant to found any hypothesis on so flimsy an evidentiary basis.

It does explain how a much larger population could be decimated as crop yields fell.

Yes. It could. But does it? If you can't write the equation "Volcano = decimated civilization", then it does not explain it.

I do take on board the views of academics because I don't believe that they are systematically setting out to lie to me.

No one here alleges that academics are lying (at least, no more regularly than the rest of us). But we do know that their application of the scientific method lacks any rigour and this is self-evident.

The problem that I am having with all of this is that you simply refuse to accept evidence.

What you call "evidence" we call conjecture. We insist on observation and measurement. Without them, there is no evidence.

And many things which you might today think derive from observation and measurement (like ice cores and Dendrochronology) are not -- because they are dependent upon other disciplines which lack the same rigour. Thus, we get the illusion of objectivity where it doesn't really exist.

It allows you to call into question absolutely everything because it is stated by 'orthodoxy'.

Well...yes and no. It's true we call into question "absolutely everything" -- but not because it is stated by orthodoxy. Because much of the evidence fails epistemological critique: The question, "Do we really know this to be true?"

This really does get us nowhere.

It is true that we lose a lot of things that we once thought were true. But we gain some amazing stuff that is so much more reliable.

Once we throw out the conjecture that gets in the way, and insist that every theory be founded on measurable and observable factors alone -- the data that academics have been so good to provide us starts to form astounding patterns. New models of history and the universe take shape that, though lacking in detail, have greater explanatory scope.
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Mick Harper
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I think the evidence from China surely carries some clout here.

It surely does. It absolutely proves that a monumental volcanic explosion (several times Krakatoa even!) had no effect on a civilisation bar a few years of terrible harvests and some gripes in the annals.

You say we ignore evidence, Dunc, but actually it's what we study. We study evidence. And, yes, oftentimes, we come to the conclusion that the evidence should be ignored. Orthodoxy has lecture time and books to fill so it is loath to discard any evidence in evidence-poor subjects like ancient history. It then takes perfectly reasonable known events and it spins them into at-first-sight perfectly reasonable theories. These then become fashionable and, sometimes, Holy Writ. Other times they just disappear when an alternative theory comes along. You know the history of Thera well enough. (I mean the historiography of Thera of course, not the Natural History of Thera.)

But because nobody much within the academic subject is inclined to dispute these things systematically, it is left to Applied Epistemologists to ask the single crunch question, "OK, show us just one example of what you are claiming that actually happened. We have had 67,948 volcanic eruptions, how many are known to have led to a fall of a civilisation?" Nobody -- least of all you, I note -- has yet to name one.
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Duncan


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It surely does. It absolutely proves that a monumental volcanic explosion (several times Krakatoa even!) had no effect on a civilisation bar a few years of terrible harvests and some gripes in the annals.

Mick, you asked for evidence that a volcanic eruption caused population decline and I give it to you. Surely it must have occurred even to you that if things were that bad in China how much worse things must have been in the Aegean. Falling crops = declining population, sooner or later. But there's more. My initial point was to do with a climatic event that caused falling crop yields and plague in Europe around the 540s. They may have been Dark Ages in western Europe but the Byzantines wrote about the climatic event just like the Chinese and Egyptians wrote about the aftermath of Thera.

Here are the sources for 540:

John of Ephesus, a cleric and a historian, wrote, "The sun was dark and its darkness lasted for eighteen months; each day it shone for about four hours; and still this light was only a feeble shadow ... the fruits did not ripen and the wine tasted like sour grapes."

In the wake of this inexplicable darkness, crops failed and famine struck. Out of Africa, a new disease swept across the entire continent of Eurasia: bubonic plague. It ravaged Europe over the course of the next century, reducing the population of the Roman empire by a third, killing four-fifths of the citizens of Constantinople, reaching as far East as China and as far Northwest as Great Britain. John of Ephesus documented the plague's progress in AD 541-542 in Constantinople, where city officials gave up trying to count the dead after two hundred thirty thousand: "The city stank with corpses as there were neither litters nor diggers, and corpses were heaped up in the streets ... It might happen that [a person] went out to market to buy necessities and while he was standing and talking or counting his change, suddenly the end would overcome the buyer here and the seller there, the merchandise remaining in the middle with the payment for it, without there being either buyer or seller to pick it up."

Now I admire Ishmael's Cartesian thirst for unquestionable facts but this is painful.

It does explain how a much larger population could be decimated as crop yields fell.

Yes. It could. But does it? If you can't write the equation, "Volcano = decimated civilization" then it does not explain it.

Perhaps it now does.
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Mick Harper
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We have to give a medium-sized palm to Duncan since he has provided a proper historical source in John of Ephesus for his claim that a volcanic explosion (with the Greenland cores, this is the only reasonable explanation for the eighteen months darkness) led to a plague which led to a population collapse. In AE terms he has moved the whole thing out of the Dark Ages.

So let us engage with this new reality. A few points that we might pick up on:
1. As far as we know, ie what happens in fully documented events, natural widespread calamities always turn out to be demographic 'blips' ie natural increase makes up the numbers in a single generation (cf Black Death, 1918 Flu Epidemic)
2. There is no known connection between a natural calamity and an outbreak of plague.
3. John of Ephesus is a good source for what happened in Constantinople but what are our sources for

In the wake of this inexplicable darkness, crops failed and famine struck. Out of Africa, a new disease swept across the entire continent of Eurasia: bubonic plague. It ravaged Europe over the course of the next century, reducing the population of the Roman empire by a third, killing four-fifths of the citizens of Constantinople, reaching as far East as China and as far Northwest as Great Britain
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DPCrisp


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The accepted view is that it's a question of numbers. The Anglo-Saxons immigrated en masse...

That's easy to say, but what does it mean? Until we can make sense of the economic case, how can we accept this accepted view?

Besides, the way Orthodoxy tells it, all tribes migrate en masse: they can't tell the difference between a mobile warrior élite and a sedentary (at best, pedestrian) peasantry.

There are definite Norse influences in the English language.

Or is that definite English influences in the Norse languages? Once you dispense with the idea of English having formative years in the age of barbarians, you have to admit it's not so certain as they say.

-By means "dwelling place", but what is that other than "(to) be"? How d'ya know this doesn't come from English?

[quote]The sk sound replaced the older sch sound, for example.[/quote]
Do you mean to say the SK spelling (largely) replaced the SCH spelling? There is a lot of common ground in Germanic languages between SK, SCH, SH... even G.

Nice example, though, Duncs: the SK sound in ski is an Englishism that replaced the Norwegian pronunciation, "she", only in the early 20th century.

A medieval musical duo, in all earnestness, treated us to some songs "in the original Middle English". I almost laughed out loud when they explained that sheep used to be called "skeepy". No one told them scheepe is a perfectly good spelling of "sheep".

Ditch and dyke are the same word spelled differently and pronounced accordingly. Which pronunciation is older?

The Angles were in Lothian which is right next door to Strathclyde.

But England is right next door to Wales: why didn't they run away at the mere whiff of a threat? Are Scottish mountains not as mountainous as Welsh ones?

The economic base of the former Roman province of Britannia would be much more developed...

So what about the economy collapsing and plunging into the Dark Ages then?

Just like in Viking times when the economic base of England was much more developed than Denmark.

No, not just like in Viking times at all. Disparities in the economic health to which everyone has recovered is one thing, but you were talking about Anglo-Saxons coming to England in the wake of a devastating plague.

Only later did the farmers come.

Why would any significant numbers of farmer come later to an already thriving agricultural economy? Where would they go? Were the Anglo-Saxons congenitally predisposed to overpopulating everywhere they went?
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