Ancestry from an Ancestral View
In contemporary society, most view heritage on the grounds of both sides of their family. In history, however, ancestry and familial relation was viewed a bit differently. We examine views on ancestry and heritage through the lense of some of the greatest authors of ancient Greece and prolific writers and figures of medieval Europe to better understand archaic racial attitudes.
In the 5th Century BC, Herodotus defined the innate characteristics of an ethnic group:
•ὁμόαιμον, homόaimon, "of the same blood"
•ὁμόγλωσσον, homoglōsson, "speaking the same language"
•ὁμότροπον, homόtropon, "of the same habits"
In the 4th century BC, Aristotle categorised the attributes of countless species in an extensive collection of work. In Historia Animalium ("History of Animals"), Aristotle wrote that organisms can be recognised as "groups" when all members possess the same set of distinguishing features. Aristotle's methods of classification were used throughout the Medieval, Renaissance, and Early Modern periods in Europe (which we will discuss soon). Many of his distinctions, such as vertebrate and invertebrate, are still in use to this day.
In ancient Europe, there was no concept of a unified European race, but, those like Aristotle recognised the inhabitants of Europe as possessing certain qualities made manifest by environmental factors and refers to the Greeks as a distinct race:
"Now, let’s discuss the innate characters of that population. One could potentially learn this from observing the most famous cities among the Greeks and how the rest of the inhabited world is divided up among the various races. The races living in cold climates and Europe are full of courage but lack intelligence and skill. The result is a state of continual freedom but a lack of political organisation and ability to rule over others. The races of Asia, however, are intelligent and skilled, but cowardly. Thus, they are in a perpetual state of subjection and enslavement. The races of the Greeks are geographically in between Asia and Europe. They also are "in between" character-wise sharing attributes of both--they are intelligent and courageous. The result is a continually free people, the best political system, and the ability to rule over others (if they happen to unify under a single constitution)." -Politics, Aristotle (4th Century BC)
Roman philosopher Marcus Tullius Cicero identifies various differing phenotypes amongst other races, and likewise attributes this to environmental factors:
"What about the different environments? Don’t they produce dissimilar men? Such differences are indeed easy to list--the differences, for example, of body and character among the Indians, Persians, Ethiopians and Syrians. There is unbelievable variety and differentiation. These differences prove the environmental situation has more influence on birth than the moon’s state." -On Divination, Cicero (1st Century BC)
Roman historian Livy distinguishes Greeks and Celts from Anatolia, rather than referring to them both as having a shared European heritage, refers to their mixed heritage, saying that:
"These Celtic units are now degenerate, of mixed stock and really Gallogrecians, as they are called; just as in the case of crops and animals, the seeds are not as good in preserving their natural quality as the character of the soil and the climate in which they grow have the power to change it."
With this, we observe that the Greeks of antiquity did not view other European ethnic groups as belonging to the same race, nor being of the same shared heritage. This, almost "tribalistic", view of ancestry and heritage is something we observe continue into medieval Europe.
During the Early Medieval Period, Olaf Tryggvasson, a Dane, once referred to the Swedes as the "bowl-licking race", a mockery playing on the Swede's maintenance of their cultural customs as Pagans. Bowls were and are often employed by Pagans for libations.
Moving on to the High Middle Ages we observe no change in attitudes towards other perceived races in Europe. In 11th century Normandy, the Normans were a unique ethnocultural people with their own identity as mentioned by various contemporary writers of the time. The Normans, and other European peoples such as the Angles, Franks, Bretons and Danes, did not view eachother as being of a shared racial background. Rather, each unique people were referred to as their own race. One Medieval record mentions Anglo-Saxon attitudes towards the Normans after the conquest of England:
"Those who are left of the Anglo-Saxon subjects secretly laid ambushes for the suspected and hated race of the Normans. And, here and there when opportunity offered, killed them secretly in the woods and in remote places as vengeance."
John of Fécamp wrote in a letter to the Pope about the treatment of Normans in southern Italy:
"Hatred by the Italians for the Normans has now developed so much and become so inflamed throughout the towns of Italy that scarcely anyone of the Norman race may travel safely on his way, even if he be on a devout pilgrimage, for he will be attacked, dragged off, stripped, beaten up, clapped into chains, and often indeed will give up the ghost, tormented in a squalid prison."
The Normans thenselves had a unique view of their racial origins too. In a supposed speech by William the Conqueror before the Battle of Hastings in 1066, he is said to have referred to the predecesors of the Normans as "Danes and Normans." And, William is said to have referred to the Normans as the "race of Rollo." Rollo, of course, being the Viking leader granted the Duchy of Normandy by Charles the Simple.
Ultimately, we should consider this archaic form of seeing one's ancestry from an ancient European perspective. What we term "ethnic groups" today were to the ancients, very distinct races. In medieval Europe, we typically find that a racial category is understood as originating with a paternal progenitor and one's own ancestry was viewed as being inherited solely from the paternal side of the family. This, in of itself, continues with us today in spirit, usually with paternal surnames and paternal Y-DNA haplogroups which reveal troves of knowledge about our personal ancestry.