The other day another poster said we have no idea who the people populating Ireland and Scotland were as we have no records and the 'picts' are a fanciful myth. Isn't that odd? No records beyond circa AD900, and for most people, the Vikings represent something ancient an exotic, yet, hello? they only go back to AD900 for pete's sake.
I believe that what I said was that we have no records other than the oral histories past a certain point and that most of the kings of Ireland and Scotland always traced their ancestry back to a hero of myth or a god.
translation for those who don't wish argue against a strawman - we can't be certain of the ancestry of anyone when there are no records.
Second there are historical records that exist prior to 900 in the British Isles - what we do not have are complete records.
Literacy outside of the clergy was not common and not every petty king was the patron of a monastic settlement who would record all the births and deaths.
So what was happening on earth 1,500 years ago? Was it all destroyed? Or did it never exist, anyway?
The decay of the Western Roman Empire was happening 1,500 years ago. Large scale migrations were happening. Record keeping ending up being prioritized lower than before as the social system became less stable.
Your lack of basic historical knowledge is quire troubling.
We are taught that Columbus and Cook discovered various parts of the world, and Scott the Antarctic, and Hilary was first to achieve Mt Everest, and we swallow all this obvious ********.
Yes, we were taught that - and do you know why?
AFAIK the Native Americans lived as nomadic tribes. From Ancient DNA studies, we know they crossed from Asia over the Bering Strait and into North America. They share the same DNA as Asian people today.
Actually, its more a sharing with the Siberians than with other Asian ethnic groups.
And there were actually quite a few First Nations that lived in permanent settlements with agriculture. We can start with the Iroquois and Hurons, then there were the Ohio River cultures, Anazai, Haida, Tlingit, Nootka, Inca, and the Central American cultures. In fact, the majority of First Nation (population wise) were living in permanent settlements at the time of first contact with Europeans.
By depicting the First Nations as nomadic savages Europeans were able to justify dispossessing them of their lands.
Much like you've done with the Germans bring civilization to the Balts....
When the early settlers arrived in the USA circa 1600's (and the Spanish in the south in the 1400's) they were either religious dissidents who were forced to leave Britain or they were political dissidents, such as the Levellers or supporters of Catholic King Charles II after he was deposed and beheaded. Others were convicts transported to the New World as punishment.
You really are historically ignorant, aren't you?
We'll start with the Spanish settlers. They were neither political or religious dissidents - they were considered to be loyal Spaniards, given that they were part of the new aristocracy supplanting the ruling classes of the first nations that were conquered. This was how the Spanish got people to come over - be a landowner and experience social mobility.
Now the American settlers - given that the first colonies in North America were set up in hopes of finding gold like the Spanish did in Central America the British certainly weren't going to send political dissidents. While colonies such as Virginia and Maryland were notoriously Royalist after the Civil War, they did not get a large influx of Royalist immigrants - simply because it was a long trip by boat - Royalist refugees had a much shorter trip to France if they needed to get out of England.
The Puritans who had come to N. America to practice that unique form of religious freedom known as "We want the freedom to practice our own faith in the way we see fit and to make sure that everyone else can practice their faith in the way that we see fit." About 1/6th of the male population went back to England during the Civil War and a significant portion of them stayed to take advantage of England under Puritan rule.
Those sent to the Americas as punishment didn't get sent to North America - they got sent to the Barbados, Jamaica and Bermuda to work the sugar plantations. Which was quite often a death sentence.
