Geneticist Stephen Oppenheimer maintains that the population of the British Isles are overwhelmingly a single ethnic group: the Basques. This group migrated from the Iberian Peninsular to the British Isles prior to recorded history and were conquered and linguistically colonised by Celtic and Germanic groups in the first millennium BC. These conquests by establishing the main Anglo-Celtic linguistic distinction between the inhabitants of the British Isles and obliterating the linguistic unity of this people have concealed theĀ original ethnic unity of the Britons. Not an insignificant claim in the present context.
November 8, 2012 at 1:46 pm
Belloc vindicated!
November 8, 2012 at 1:51 pm
Yes! I was thinking that but I can’t find the passage where he says it. Is it in the Shorter History of England?
November 8, 2012 at 4:02 pm
He said it in various places, but the place I had in mind was near the beginning of his multi-volume History of England