Having taken a few anthropology courses when I was in school, I am a bit confused as to just what "English culture" is.

What is generally regarded as the first piece of English literature is an epic poem, Beowulf, author unknown. Written in Old English, but the hero is a Dane and most of the action takes place in what is now Denmark and Sweden. I've heard the speculation that it may have been written originally in Danish (or Old Norse) and someone translated it into Old English. So the first work of English literature may not be English at all.

Considering that we--even WAV--can all be traced back (via mitochondrial DNA) to an African woman some 200,000 years ago, no matter how you slice it, Britain is a land of immigrants. Very little is known about the first peoples to populate the British Isles. Were these the builders of stone circles, or did they come later? Then came the Celts from the European continent. Then came the Angles. And the Saxons. The raids of the Norsemen on the coasts of England, and even the occasional community of Vikings quite probably led to a lot of Nordic genes seeding the English population of the time. Then, they came again, but this time the spoke French, having established themselves in the north of France:   the Normans.

Was it, perhaps, a bucolic scene of a shepherd and a milkmaid romping in verdant fields, complete with a string orchestra playing "Greensleeves" in the background, that constituted a local version of Garden of Eden, and pure English culture can be traced back to this event?

So—as a mere bumpkin who lives over here in the Colonies, I'm curious to know what constitutes pure, unadulterated English culture?

Don Firth