They aren’t exactly the same politically as they were in the “olden days,” but they are the same “people,” whose culture has evolved.
For instance, modern Italians are the descendants of Romans. They are the same people, even if their governmental system.has changed (and it has changed often in Italy).
But countries like America or Australia aren’t populated by the same people from long ago. The original indigenous inhabitants didn’t become the primary population like they did in Italy, or England, or France, or Ukraine. We grew because boatloads of people came here from all over the world, and settled here.
Modern Italians, British, French, etc. have always been there, modern Americans haven’t. We didn’t come from here, we came from everywhere else.
They’re not at all the same people. We don’t really have strong evidence of writing from the Nuragic civilisation, but the Etruscans left plenty of written evidence and their language was probably not even Indo European.
Then there were invasions by the Gauls and the Latins, who built the Roman Empire, but they were taken over by Germanic peoples, who partially integrated. Waves and waves of people speaking different languages, with different religions and customs.
You say that modern English have always been there, but again, after the Celts got taken over by the Romans, there was a long period of Roman rule, with a lot of cultural and ethnic mixing. Then came the Saxons, again a people with completely different language and customs. This was a large mixing of populations and a huge shift in culture. Then there was an invasion of Vikings that was so significant that a huge part of east England was called the Danelaw, because it was under Danish control. You still see that in place names and surnames. Then in 1066 the Norman French came, again massively changing the culture, the language and the political structures.
It’s the same story all over Europe. Wave after wave of invasion, displacement and cultural shift and mixing.
They aren’t exactly the same politically as they were in the “olden days,” but they are the same “people,” whose culture has evolved.
For instance, modern Italians are the descendants of Romans. They are the same people, even if their governmental system.has changed (and it has changed often in Italy).
But countries like America or Australia aren’t populated by the same people from long ago. The original indigenous inhabitants didn’t become the primary population like they did in Italy, or England, or France, or Ukraine. We grew because boatloads of people came here from all over the world, and settled here.
Modern Italians, British, French, etc. have always been there, modern Americans haven’t. We didn’t come from here, we came from everywhere else.
They’re not at all the same people. We don’t really have strong evidence of writing from the Nuragic civilisation, but the Etruscans left plenty of written evidence and their language was probably not even Indo European. Then there were invasions by the Gauls and the Latins, who built the Roman Empire, but they were taken over by Germanic peoples, who partially integrated. Waves and waves of people speaking different languages, with different religions and customs.
You say that modern English have always been there, but again, after the Celts got taken over by the Romans, there was a long period of Roman rule, with a lot of cultural and ethnic mixing. Then came the Saxons, again a people with completely different language and customs. This was a large mixing of populations and a huge shift in culture. Then there was an invasion of Vikings that was so significant that a huge part of east England was called the Danelaw, because it was under Danish control. You still see that in place names and surnames. Then in 1066 the Norman French came, again massively changing the culture, the language and the political structures.
It’s the same story all over Europe. Wave after wave of invasion, displacement and cultural shift and mixing.