Round Houses or Oblong Houses?

[macausland]

I'd be interested in anybody's views on building design in pre-Roman Britain.

We are told in all the official histories on 'Celtic' Britain that the Celts built round houses.

The Anglo Saxons on the other hand built rectangular buildings, a style they brought with them from the Continent.

This has been used to support the argument for Anglo Saxon conquest of Celtic Britain.

Recent finds in south Wales have unearthed the remains of the foundations for a rectangular building dating back to the Bronze Age.

http://www.southwalesargus.co.uk/news/g ... _minister/

I came across an article on I think the BBC site recently about a similar discovery further into England but I've lost the link to it.

Any thoughts on this?

[Boreades]

Hello macausland

It's a good question. As the Saxons were never more than 10% of the UK population (at most), this is an excellent example of the "official histories" missing the bleeding obvious. i.e. what were the non-Celt, non-Saxon British people living in?

Coincidentally, over at The Megalithic Portal, there is a new article on four rectangular houses at Kingsmead Quarry, Horton in Berkshire. dated to 3700 BC

http://www.megalithic.co.uk/article.php?sid=33625

[Mick Harper]

[macausland]

Thanks for the reply.

I'll have a look at the link you provide.

When I mentioned 'Anglo Saxons' I should have put it in quotes.

It was the assurance by all the 'experts' that 'Celts' lived in round houses and 'Anglo Saxons' lived in rectangular houses. And this is used to demonstrate the truth of the 'anglo saxon invasion and slaughter of the 'Celts' in Britain'.

Another 'proof' given is that the 'English' language pushed out the 'native Celtic' languages. We are told that this must be true as there are so few 'Celtic' words in English. Therefore there must have been total 'ethnic cleansing' or mass slaughter of the 'Celts'.

What this misses is that there is a lot of 'Celtic' influence in the English language, well, arguably.

From my slight knowledge of Scot's Gaelic I know that there are similarities even if the languages are quite different. If Gaelic is much further removed along the linguistic tree than say Dutch or German I would have thought there would be few similarities.

For example: Neither language has a true infinitive. Something English should have as a Germanic 'import'.

A feature of both languages is the use of continuous tenses. Something that all English learners of German or French find confusing as the temptation to say Ich bin or Je suis before every verb is very strong.

Gaelic has two verbs 'to be'. Bi (pronounced 'be') and Tha (pronounced 'haa'). Tha is used to form the continuous.

Bi is used in definite statements. When used with pronouns etc it becomes 'is'. e.g. is mi, I am, is tu, you are.

I realise that the early Welsh is said to be the language of early Britons and not Gaelic so I'm probably just wittering here but I'm sure there was an early influence.

By the same token I wouldn't mind betting that English was always the language of eastern Scotland. Perhaps 'stranded' after the Doggerland inundation. Scot's dialect in the north east is very strong and very similar to northern English, except that English in England was presumably diluted with the growth of a standard from London.

[Boreades]

[TisILeclerc]

Aye, Borrie ma lad, but ask a wee lassie from Dundee which part of Newcastle she's from and I suspect you'll get a much different response.

[Boreades]

Why aye!

Oh, my nose is bleeding.

[TisILeclerc]

[Boreades]

[hvered]