The Saxons sure love their caste systems

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The first confirmed reports of the existence of the Saxons was in 354 AD. In the mid-5th century, the Saxons split into 2 groups, the Anglo-Saxons who migrated to Britain, and the Old or Continental Saxons who remained on the continent.

In England during the Anglo-Saxon period, only Anglo-Saxons could carry weapons and access other privileges. The native Britons, as a lower caste, could not.

In Saxony by the time of Charlemagne, the Old Saxons had conquered a vast swath of what is today Germany and then established a rigid, well-defined caste system: Composed of at the top the edelingui (cf. Anglo-Saxon Æþeling) who were the warrior elite, the frilingi who had been allies, auxiliaries, and freed slaves of the Saxons, and at the bottom the lazzy who were the peoples who were conquered. There was a wide gulf between groups in terms of privilege and prestige, and weregild (money paid to compensate for someone's murder), where the edelingui were worth a lot and the lazzy very little. This kind of system has been noted to have been unusual for Europe at the time, and Charlemagne had to issue special laws to take it into account after he subjugated the Saxons.

In the New World in the 17th Century, the Anglo-Saxons imposed a racial cast system on the settlers, dividing them into castes of white (which was initially restricted to Anglo-Saxons, but now covers people of a high quantum of European descent) and negro (people of Subsaharan African descent), with the former being able to buy property, carry weapons, etc., while the latter was for the most part relegated to chattel slavery. This system has changed a lot since the 17th century, and it has spread worldwide, but continues to exist today in quiet, polite terms.

What is up with Saxon culture?

A perfect example of the kind of racist hate speech that the Left has been spewing into every corner of society for more than a generation. I hear there's a movie version coming out soon called The Eternal Saxon.

I dont see the OP as being "hate speech". I just think its silly, and illogical.

Stone age hunter-gatherers were egalitarian. But when humans invented the plow and true agriculture , and then all ancient societies became stratified into rigid classes.

Singling out one Germanic tribe in the heart of Europe for being the same way as everyone else in Iron Age Eurasia is ridiculous.

Greco Roman society was a slave based society. Early China was slave based.

India was not big on slavery, but they did have the Caste system.

Then Medeaval Europe evolved Feudalism, as did Japan at about the same time in history completely independently of Europe.Most European peasants were serfs tied to the land in a system not much different than the caste system, and only slightly better than slavery.

The Saxons in England themselves would be conguered by the Norman French and be rigidly oppressed themselves by the Normans (the Normans still make up most of England's modern aristocracy, and not Saxons). The class hierachy of Norman ruled England is fossilized in the very language we speak (all of the words in English for high class occupation are French words, and all of the words for low class occupations are Anglo Saxon. And all profanity is Anglo Saxon).

The Spanish and Portugese reinvented slavery in early post medeaval times in their colonies in the New World before the idea spread to British ruled America.

Seventeenth century settlers could not be characterised as anglo-saxon, any more than they could be characterised as Norman/Norse.

The Portuguese were not anglo-saxon and they did the exact same thing at almost the same scale.

The the Ottomans did similar, the Arabs did similar. Within sub-saharan Africa there was was similar. In India was similar...

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-35344663

So let's see. They inherited the Anglo-Saxon language (Ænglisc -> English) and culture and 1/3 of their ancestors is Anglo-Saxon, and they continue to call their nation (England, the English people) the same thing the Anglo-Saxons called it (barring phonetic changes over time). I'd say the English are Anglo-Saxon. (And this category would probably include me.)

Why exactly has Darmok linked to historical Nazi propaganda?

Firstly this doesn't validate your original point as it is not a unique behavior among cultures.

Secondly you have no proof that this activity is somehow encoded in our DNA or inherent to us.

Lastly, why make that point in history where we can trace to Anglo-Saxon more relevant compare to other cultures we belonged to before or since?

Anlgo-Saxon has to be first defined to work out what DNA traits you are talking about. I think you will find the further you go back the harder it is to define in terms of ethnicity. Much like Celtic, the culture came first then you got various genetic offshoots due to selective breeding.

The Saxon caste system on the Continent was noted to be unusual (from Wikipedia):



I'm wondering where the idea for that caste system came from.

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Your next point, where you knock down a strawman:



You had said we weren't Anglo-Saxons, so I showed you evidence we were. The purpose of bringing up genes was to counter that point, nothing else. If you look at the OP, I ask what is up with the culture, not the genes:

To be sure, one of Charlemagne's biographers had made special mention of the sharp division between nobles, common free, semi-free, and unfree among the Saxons. Charlemagne's people, Franks (Ripuarian Franks, in this case), had started out as a confederation of Germanic tribes, as did the Saxons, and like them, they had had class distinctions dividing their tribesmen between nobles, free commoners, semi-free serfs, and out and out slaves. But with the Franks, at least earlier in their history, this class distinction was hardly as rigid. Conquered people in the the Rhineland and southern Germany, Belgium and northern Gaul (France) intermixed with the Frankish newcomers, and in time became Franks themselves. Gregory of Tours, writing about the Franks, made mention of a Gallo-Roman slave who had eventually attained the rank of a Frankish noble, and described how it was not uncommon for Frankish kings to marry low born women. Compare that to the Saxon class system where a man marrying above his social station faced execution under law. And originally under Salian and Ripuarian law of the Franks, there was not originally any distinction between freemen, be they commoners or nobles, though that later changed in the Middle Ages. I personally think that the reason why class division among the Franks and Saxons was so different was due to centralization of power vs decentralization. The Frankish nobles didn't attain such local power and independence as the tribal kings, and later Frankish kings, had centralized power to themselves, and so said nobles through lack of near authority in their home regions weren't able to elevate themselves so high above the people. While Anglo-Saxon nobles and chieftains had begun calling themselves kings in Britain, those on the continent were content to rule their own home regions, only uniting against a common foe like the Franks under a war leader the Saxon nobles had elected from their own number. Though it should be pointed out, all was not so one sided good or miserable, as Frankish nobles consolidated great wealth among themselves after expanding into richer Roman territory, thus creating a widening gap between the rich and poor, while Saxon lords carried on lives not too far removed from those of the people. That, and the Saxons had extended greater rights to women, as they allowed women to inherit property, something the Franks did not allow, probably adopted from the Romans they had had such close contacts with.

pretty sure, Saxony is not a current country, plenty of historical cultures had similar systems...it does no use to b***h about a society that doesn't even exist anymore.

Okay, lets say that the Saxons were a little more rigid in their class system than the neighoboring tribes of barbarians.

What is that supposed to prove?

Last edited by naturalplastic on 13 Aug 2016, 9:26 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Probably nothing, but discussing Germanic antiquities is one of my Aspie obsessions.

I relate to that as an interest.

But the OP seems to be hinting at stuff without coming and stating it.

The OP seems to be hinting that he/she thinks that the Saxons migrated to Saxony from India, and that they brought the caste system with them from their homeland in India. Just trying to force the OP's hand to get him/her to lay his cards on the table.

naturalplastic,

I'm just exploring the matter, to see where it leads.

I appreciate Kraichgauer's response. It was illuminating.

Danke.

All Indo-European peoples - Germanic, Slavic, Celtic, Latin, Persian, Indian, etc - had originated from the Maykop/Yamana cultures of the region between the Caspian and Black seas, as well as the Eurasian steppe, from where they had exploded out of during the Neolithic, spreading their genes, languages, religion, and caste system everywhere they went.