 The Anglo-Saxons had a massive impact on the language and genetics of what we call England today, but when and why did these Germanic peoples settle in ancient England? Shortly after the Roman withdrawal in 410 AD, groups of Angles and Saxons from places such as ancient Denmark and ancient Germany started migrating into modern England. England at that point was made up by a variety of peoples and cultures, including the Celtic Britons and the influence from the Roman period. The first thing to note is that the Anglo-Saxons were initially invited by the Britons to defend them against groups such as the Picts and the Scoti. Bede, an ancient English monk, wrote in the 8th century AD on the ecclesiastical history of the English people that Anglo-Saxons were initially invited by Vortigueran, a king of the Britons, to fight his enemies and they were given land in the east of modern England. Bede writes that after initially coming over in three warships, word quickly spread of the fertile lands in Britain and more Angles and Saxons sailed over. They came from three powerful Germanic tribes, the Angles, the Saxons and the Jutty, according to Bede, and they were led by two brothers, Hengist and Hossa. After initially being invited to fight on behalf of the Britons, the Anglo-Saxons turned on their hosts as the number of foreigners began to increase to such an extent that they became a source of terror to the natives that had invited them in, in the words of Bede. Then, suddenly, they made a temporary treaty with the Picts that they had already driven far away and began to turn their weapons against their allies. Bede adds, large numbers of Germanic peoples took places in southern and eastern England, such as Kent, Sussex, Essex and East Anglia. The conflict between the Anglo-Saxons and the Britons forced many native Britons to flee west, to places such as Wales and Cornwall. Others fled across the water to a region that was known as Armorica, or Brittany today, and they took their common brothonic Celtic language with them. That is why large parts of Brittany still speak one of the six remaining Celtic languages, called Breton. The Anglo-Saxon period in England is often referred to as the Heptarchy, a Greek word meaning rule by seven. This is because there were seven Anglo-Saxon kingdoms in ancient England. These seven Anglo-Saxon kingdoms were eventually merged into four larger kingdoms, Mercia, Northumbria, Wessex and East Anglia. The various dialects that these Germanic peoples spoke eventually evolved into Old English. In fact, another word for Old English is Anglo-Saxon, and English itself is a West Germanic language, closest related to low-Saxon and Frisian languages. However, English takes a large amount of vocabulary from French, Latin and Old Norse. Although Fris, I am consistently referring to these people as Anglo-Saxon, this identity itself was formed in Britain in the decades and centuries after the first Germanic peoples settled in ancient England. We know that the Anglo-Saxons made a lasting impression on the genetics of England. The people of the British Isles study, found at large parts of eastern and central and southern England, form a single genetic group with between 10 and 40% Anglo-Saxon ancestry. However, these people also retained DNA from earlier settlers of Britain. Another study published in Nature, estimated at an average, the contemporary East English population derives 38% of its ancestry from Anglo-Saxon migrations. The Anglo-Saxon period is often considered to have stretched from the end of the Roman occupation to the normal invasion of 1066, with England itself unified during this period under King Ethelstan in 927 AD, whose previous title was King of the Anglo-Saxons and whom himself was the grandson of Alfred the Great. Thanks for watching, if you would like to support this work through Patreon, buy me a coffee dot com or make a donation through PayPal, please do so via the links in the description below. Please remember to subscribe and hit the bell and I'll speak to you soon.