Ancient Britons
A Briton is a member of the indigenous race of Great Britain. Little is known of the first ancestors of the British but human habitation in Britain goes back more than 10,000 years. These first Britons were hunter/gatherers and crossed to Britain by the land bridge from mainland Europe during the end of the last Ice age. There are conflicting accounts as to the physical appearance of these first Britons and their influence in modern British culture is questionable, although river names such as Thames, Tamar, Severn, Tyne, etc., are attributed to the culture of these earliest ancestors of the British. One modern view is that the Britons of today accurately reflect the physical appearances of the Britons of the past in the areas in which they reside, such as tall and blonde in the south of England, tall and dark in Northumbria and southern Scotland, and short and dark in north Wales.
3000 years ago, Britain was invaded by Celts who brought with them superior fighting skills and whose culture dominated the indigenous people, although their influence in the blood lines is negligable. Britons became Celtic in culture, and it is at this time that the Picts became noted as a separate culture and ethnic entity in the north and east of what is now Scotland. Britain was later dominated by other stronger cultures, such as the Romans, the Irish Scots, the Teuton tribes of Angles, Saxons and Jutes and finally the Normans, each of which, aside from the Normans, brought a definate cultural change in Great Britain that was markedly different from before. Ethnically however, their numbers were too few to completely dominate, and instead have only added small genetic differences to the British. The commonly held view of the earlier 20th century that the Anglo-Saxons wiped out the Britons of England and forced the remainder out to Wales and Cornwall has been dismissed as both implausable and impossible. The modern indigenous British present a fairly homogenous link to their earliest ancestors.
Indigenous Britons form about 90% of the population of the United Kingdom today, or about 54 million people. However, this percentage is in decline as the population is increasingly dominated by non-indigenous groups such as Africans, South Asians and eastern European peoples. It is estimated that by the year 2050, Britons will be a minority group in Britain, the first time in history that an indigenous race has voluntarily become a minority in its own land, and not by forced colonisation, invasion or genocide. The number of Britons world wide is negligable, yet some 150 million people world-wide refer to their ethnic heritage as British or as having a strong British influence. The largest concentration of ethnic Britons living outside of the United Kingdom is in the United States where approximately 40 million people claim British heritage. There are also large concentrations in Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
A Briton is also a commonly accepted word to represent a citizen of the United Kingdom, which includes both the indigenous majority and non-indigenous groups, for example, Africans, who are often referred to as Black Britons - see British, Alternate words for British.
The use of the word Briton is historically quite a recent development. Although the British have always formed a fairly homogenous ethnic identity, cultural differences, especially from the time of the Roman occupation, have meant that they viewed themselves as very distinct people. Since the Act of Union in 1707 when England and Scotland became united by one parliament, the use of the word Briton has emerged as an accurate name for a citizen of the United Kingdom, and only in the 20th century with changes in social attitudes and new studies in British history and the British people has Briton come to reflect an ethnic identity of the indigenous majority of Great Britain.
Referenced By
Brentwood, England | Brentwood, Essex
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