Julian Cope presents Head Heritage

[Cunliffe suggests an immigrant Anglo -Saxon ratio in the south and east of England of between 1:3 to 1:5 and describes it as “significant” .

The genocide of the Picts was a medieval myth . Most contemporary historians of the period point out the gradual gaelicisation of Pictland long before the accession of Kenneth who may well have been pictish himself and was described at his death as King of Picts . The Dupplin Cross close to the important royal centre of Forteviot has gaelic references to Pictish kings prior to Kenneth . Kenneth's son Causantín , complete with pictish name , was described as King of the Picts which is odd if his father had just destroyed them . Alex Woolf describes Kenneth as “the fifth last of the Pictish kings rather than the first Scottish king."

So why falsify the king lists? Or did that not occur? And why construct foundation myths going back to Brutus etc to convince the pope to support resistance to English claims of suzererainty if the original inhabitants had willingly joined the party. Sounds very much to me of a case of 'the lady doth protest too much, methinks'.

And again, why would a warlike (and apparently rather good at it) people like the Picts willingly adopt another language and renounce their group identity. What was in it for them? These are questions I'd need answered..........

Very helpful answer, thanks Tiompan (and LS). One thing leads to another so have just been reading about Boxgrove and 'Heidelberg' man (homo heidelbergenis). More reading needed.

The source of the Brutus foundation myth was Nennius , a Welshman , then Geoffrey of Monmouth ,another Welshman built on that . I think you may be thinking of Scota ,the Scots equivalent . Foundation myths like over imaginative (hi)stories are everywhere .Another one is the Scots genocide of the Picts , resulting in a unified nation .
The King list , like the above was written centuries after the most of the kings had died . Considering that the Picts had no written records they were unlikely to be accurate , they are false up to just before the the time of writing , that is different from being falsified which suggests some tampering of the “facts “ . The use of gaelic was part of the assimilation of that language and culture into that of the Picts ,it can be seen in material culture where the earliest Pictish stones had no christian iconography by the mid period around the time when Kenneth was crowned , Christianity the religion in the Gaeltachd , informed and was mixed with Pictish symbols , by the end of the tradition the Pictish stones had a only christian symbols ,a clear transition rather than abrupt revolutionary change .

Kenneth MacAlpin must have been some man to achieve the C9th amalgamation without significant bloodshed - to get a people to willingly give up their language and culture. There are not many examples of that to my knowledge... not without there having been some overwhelmingly beneficial 'carrot' offered. I guess my problem is I can not determine what that carrot was. What was in it for the Picts? Why did they resist Roman incursions so forcibly only to throw in their lot with a group of Irish origin? Another explanation could be that history was written by the victors to suit the victor's political agenda. That wouldn't be the first time. I shudder to think how the history of Britain would read if Hitler had have triumphed.

It is also not clear to me why medieval Scottish scholars such as Boece felt the need to cite a pre-Christian foundation... which, so I understand, involved literally inventing 40 kings to fill in the resultant gap in the King list.... if there was no suggestion of discord, no dark folk memory to overcome. I would describe this as falsifying, to be honest. Not a big deal if notables such as Buchanan had not later cited Boece's work when the decision was taken to remove Mary Queen of Scots.

It is stated as a certainty that the genocide of the Picts is a medieval myth. I obviously need to do a lot more reading since this is a very interesting subject. However there was clearly also much construction of 'pro-Scots' myth by medieval (and later) Scottish scholars suggesting - to me, anyway - that there was some skeleton lurking in the cupboard. Perhaps archaeology will one day unearth the physical evidence to throw more light on the Pict question; perhaps the discipline might also uncover the physical remains of the suggested mass Anglo Saxon invasion to conclusively debunk DNA analysis by the likes of Oppenheimer? The archived records, such as they are, would not seem enough to come to any firm conclusion at the current time.

In what way is it ‘irrelevant’? In what way does this thread not ‘have legs’?

Restarting a thread that has diversed (substantially) from the original theme of a thread seems completely (and preferably) legitimate to me.