The ancestry of the English people are not quite as clear cut as most people , with the exceptions of a few relatively contemporary archaeologists , anthropologists , geneticists , historians , and linguists , assume it to be . Most people seem to think that the English are mostly of Germanic Anglian , Saxon , Jutish , Frisian , and Scandinavian ancestry . From 1940 , when the Nazi Germans bombed Britain in the Battle of Britain and the Blitzkrieg , this has understandably caused a great deal of embarrassment to the descendants of English - speaking people living in Britain , Ireland , and the former British colonies , including Canada , the U.S.A , Australia , and New Zealand . Even after the American colonies , with the exception of the Canadian ones , declared their independence in 1783 , English , Welsh , Scottish , and Irish immigrants continued to arrive in large numbers in the U.S.A. in the years after 1783 , as they still do in current times . The genetic , linguistic , and archaeological fact of the matter is that the English are of mixed Germanic , Celtic , Roman , and Iberian stock since ancient times . In 1997 in the West Midlands of England a male adult skeleton dating from around 3000 B.C. was found , and subsequent D.N.A. tests found a direct adult male descendant of the dead man living either 30 kilometers or 30 miles away in a town where he was either a teacher or the head master at a local high school . This means that he has Iberian , Celtic , Roman , and Germanic ancestry , as the Celts did not arrive in the two post - Ice Age continental European islands of Britain and Ireland until 2000 B.C. onwards . The pre - Norman Conquest Old English language shows in its surviving manuscripts and inscriptions many Germanic words influenced by the Celtic Briton and Latin languages in terms of prefixes , suffixes , inflections , pronunciation , accent , syntax , spelling , and loan words , when compared with the various dialects of the continental Germans .

The people living within the borders of the modern day nation state of Germany are not ethnically homogenous by ethnic ancestry , since the German colonists who followed in the wake of the crusading order of knights called the Teutonic Knights , accompanied by Christian missionaries of the Cistercian order from 1150 A.D. onwards , ethnically mixed , intermarried , concubined , sexually intercoursed , and raped with the Slavic ethnic groups known as the Wends , Pomeranians , Abodrites , and Sorbs [ Serbs ] , and the Baltic Indo - European people called the Prussians , Lithuanians , and Latvians who lived east of the Elbe and Saale Rivers . These people were mostly pagans or polytheists , with the exception of the Roman Catholic Slavic Poles , but were gradually converted to Christianity by force , and soon became culturally assimilated with the German invaders , often adopting the German language and customs over many generations , and losing or heavily diluting their own in the process . South of the Main River and west of the Rhine River lived many Celtic tribes who subsequently became first Latinized by Roman invaders , and then by Germanic invaders . The Celts by 500 B.C. had extended their territory by conquest as far east as the Weser River and as far north as the Thuringian Mountains , after which they were gradually conquered by the Germanic tribes , losing their ethnic identity by cultural assimilation in favour of their new Germanic masters , who also spoke an Indo - European language as the Celts also did . Both the Slavs , Celts , and Germans were homestead , hamlet , village and small town farmers and herders of domesticated animals , and both of them had a three - tiered society with slaves , freemen , and warrior - nobles . The warrior chieftains or warlords had their private armies of light cavalry and hall bodyguards who lived with them in fortified homesteads , often located on a hill or artificially created mound , protected by stake fences , ditches , moats , bogs , marshes , and swamps . This way of life was once common to all Indo - European speaking peoples , even with the Greeks and Romans before they became large town and city dwellers , in other words , before they became civilised .

The reason why the former Roman colonies in Wales , Cornwall , and southern Lowland Scotland remained largely Celtic rather than Latin speaking , unlike the formerly Celtic Roman province of Transalpine Gaul now known as France and Belgium , was because Wales and Cornwall were part of the far flung frontier provinces of the Roman Empire which attracted relatively few permanent Latin - speaking colonists , and Britain after all has been a continental European island since the gradual melting of the last Ice Age raised world sea levels . Cisalpine Gaul was located where what is now the northern Italian plain of the Po River Valley , the region of Italy called Lombardy . Cisalpine Gaul was invaded and settled in the 300's B.C. by the Celts , followed by the Germanic Visigoths , Ostrogoths , Heruls , Sciri , and Gepidae in the 400's A.D. , and then by the Germanic Lombards in the late 500's and early 600's A.D. The isolated nature of Ireland from Britain , and even more from continental Europe , explains why remnants of Celtic paganism in the form of superstitious beliefs in banshees , leprechauns , halloween , mistletoe , kelpies , and four - leaf clovers persisted among the ordinary Irish peasantry side by side with Roman Catholic Christianity for such a long time . Even by 407 A.D. , when the last Roman field troops left Wales , Cornwall , southern Lowland Scotland and England , there were still many poor peasant farmers and first - generation urban slum immigrants of peasant background who believed in both Celtic and Greco - Roman paganism , and who spoke Celtic dialects as their first language , for example the semi - legendary Druid priest called Merlin , although Christians by this time formed a sizeable proportion of the Romano - British middle and upper classes , most of whom were fluent in both Celtic dialects and Latin . Armorica or Brittany in northwest France turned out to be a Celtic enclave because that part of Gaul has thin , rocky soils , and because many Celtic refugees from Britain sought refuge there after the Germanic seaborne invasions of Britain after 407 A.D. With the Roman field armies of Britain gone , central authority soon collapsed as there was no more means to enforce it , and the Romano - British Celtic tribes soon reverted to the tribal civil warfare that had existed before the Roman conquest of Britain , making them thereby an easier prey for the Anglian , Saxon , Jutish , and Frisian invaders . However , the Germanic conquest of post - Roman Britain was held up for a while by certain Romano - Celtic British warlord chieftains called Ambrosius Aurelianus , who may have been the real King Arthur , and by Riothamus or Riothamnus , who may have been the real Lancelot , in around 500 A.D. , although after their deaths the Celtic tribes once more reverted to civil clan warfare , and the common resistance offered to the Anglo - Saxon Germanic invaders subsequently collapsed . The Germanic Frankish , Burgundian , Visigothic , and Ostrogothic peoples who invaded France or Gaul after the Romans had exhausted themselves in imperial dynastic civil wars that lasted from 383 - 388 , 392 - 394 , 406 - 432 A.D. , and after the Gaulish Baugadae or vagabond peasant revolt of 435 - 437 A.D. , found it more valuable to learn Latin then Celtic , unlike their fellow Germanic brethren who invaded Britain by sea . The Germanic invaders of Gaul could invade in larger numbers by horseback on land , than the Germanic invaders of Britain could do by sea , as they had no sea barrier like the Strait of Dover , the English Channel , and the North Sea to cross .

The reason why Romania in the Balkans , once part of the former Roman province of Dacia [ 106 - 271 A.D. ] turned out to be a Latin enclave surrounded by Slavic - speaking and Hungarian or Magyar - speaking peoples , was because the Roman province yielded valuable gold and silver mines for the Roman colonists , although towards the end of the Roman rule of Dacia , the gold and silver mines were mainly exhausted , since the ancient deep - shaft mining techniques were not as advanced as today . During the times of various foreign invasions from other quarters that were to follow after 271 A.D. , when the Roman imperial authorities withdrew their last field troops and civil servants from the province of Dacia , the Romanized and Latinized Dacians were often able to retreat for safety into the many forested mountains and hills of Romania , and with the less advanced farming and transport techniques of the ancient world as compared with that of today , the forests of ancient Roman Europe covered a far larger area . Before the Roman conquest , the Dacians spoke an Indo - European language related to the Ilyrian-Thracian-Phrygian branch , of which only the Albanian dialect remains today as a living language . The rest of the Balkan Albanians sexually intermingled , ethnically mixed , or miscegenated , and culturally and linguistically assimilated with the Slavic tribes that invaded the Balkan peninsula in around 570 - 650 A.D. , followed by the Hungarians or Magyar invaders in around 890 - 955 A.D. The Croats , Serbs , and the ethnically Serbian akin Montenegrins , Slovenes , and Northern Slavic Bulgarian - speaking Macedonians , as opposed to the Southern Greek - speaking Macedonians , of whom Alexander the Great was a member , arrived in the Balkans as ethnically and politically distinct but distantly related Slavic - speaking tribespeople . The Slavs of Bulgaria , who arrived in the region during the late 500's A.D. , were conquered in the early 600's A.D. by the less numerous Turkic - speaking people called the Bulgars , a fierce and well organised group of semi - nomadic warrior horsemen and herders .

However , although the Scandinavians basically speak the same Germanic language and are nearly all Lutherans , they still form the separate nation - states of Sweden , Norway , and Denmark right to this day . The so - called "Yugoslavs" or Southern Slavs are not all members of the same Christian denomination , and the differences in dialect are greater among them then among that of the Scandinavians . The reason why the Slavic - speaking Bosnians and Illyrian - speaking Albanians are mostly Muslim today is because their ancestors were members of the Eastern Orthodox heretical sect called the Bogomils , whose beliefs had many things in common with those of the heretical Roman Catholic sects called the Patarenes and Cathars or Albigensians of northern Italy , Switzerland , and southern France , and who often found it politically and economically expedient to convert to Islam during the Ottoman Turkish Conquest of the Balkans after the Greek - speaking Byzantine capital of Constantinople fell in 1453 . The western three - fifths of Bosnia - Hercegovina was part of The Kingdom of Croatia that lasted from 925 - 1102 A.D. , while the eastern two - fifths of Bosnia - Hercegovina was part of Serbia . During the Second World War the ultra - nationalist and pro - Royalist Serbs known as the Chetniks and Zborists [ after Zbor , a Serbian fascist political party of the early 1940's ] , often collaborated with the Germans and Italians against the Communist - led pan - Yugoslav or Southern Slav Partisan resistance group , as did also the Croatian ultra - nationalist group known as the Ustasha . Many Bosnian and Albanian Muslims also collaborated with the Germans and Italians , and all the nations that were occupied by the Germans and Italians had their pro - Axis collaborators . Before the rise of the 1800's and 1900's nation - state , ethnic divisions were less rigid , providing a greater deal of two - way mutual intermarriage , concubinage , and cultural borrowing then today , although as many semi - nomadic , tribal hunter - gatherer societies that remain today and of the relatively recent past show , tribal and ethnic loyalty can command strong allegiances and feelings of group and territorial solidarity .

The Romans in the early years of the Empire made several attempts to conquer the Germanic lands as far as the Elbe River , but by the time that the Romans were ready to conquer what is today part of the modern day nation - state of Germany , the Roman armies were already overstretched in maintaining their geographically vast and ethnically diverse empire . Moreover , the Romans suffered a severe setback when the legions under the command of the Roman general Quinctilius Varus were ambushed in several guerrilla - style attrition attacks in the heavily forested and mountainous Teutoburger Wald in A.D. 9 by the warriors of the Germanic chieftain called Arminius , a former pro - Roman mercenary soldier . This defeat for the Romans was soon enough avenged by the Roman armies led by the Roman general called Germanicus Caesar who led a campaign into the lands of the Germanic tribes living east of the Rhine River from 14 - 17 A.D. , inflicting several defeats on the Germans , including wounding Arminius and recapturing the stolen legionary colours of Varus in 16 A.D. However , Germanicus Caesar was hampered by the loss of two Roman reinforcement transport fleets in North Sea storms , and the then undrained and uncleared swamps , marshes , bogs , lakes , and forests of the North German Plain . Moreover , the Roman Emperor Tiberius [ r. 14 - 37 A.D. ] was jealous and fearful of the success of Germanicus Caesar , and ordered the abandonment of efforts to conquer the Germanic lands as far east as the Elbe River , or maybe even further east to the Oder - Western Niesse Rivers , to be distinguished from the Eastern Neisse River . The Oder - Western Neisse River is the internationally recognised border that exists between Poland and Germany today .

The reason why the Swedish Vikings were able to conquer the large Slavic - speaking lands of the Russians , Belorussians , and Ukrainians was because these Slavic peoples were disunited , forming mutually antagonistic tribes who more or less constantly fought each other , and the Swedish Vikings took advantage of this , recruiting into both their army rank and file , and their officer or warlord - corps , Slavs in large numbers in order to fight rival Slavic tribes , thereby subduing the individual Slavic tribes one by one .The majority of the ordinary rank and file soldiers , as well as the commanders , of Swedish - led Viking armies of Russia , were of Slavic origin , and there were many offspring as the result of intermarriage , concubinage , polygamy , casual sexual relations , and rape between Swedish males and Russian women . The many long rivers and lakes of Russia formed a network of inland water routes that connected the Baltic Sea with the Black Sea and the landlocked Caspian Sea , the latter really being a large salt lake once connected in prehistoric times to the Seven Seas , and this formed a natural " highway " for the Swedish Viking long ships , with many relatively safe ports of call at fortified trading towns located at various points on the watery network , and these forts provided some sort of unified system of defense for both the Swedes and the Slavs against the marauding tribes of Bashkir or Hungarian/Magyar and Turkic Bulgar , Petcheneg , and Cuman semi - nomadic warrior horsemen and herders .

The Romans as they conquered their provinces recruited from among the conquered people soldiers , and eventually officers , for both the Roman legions and their usually trustworthy allied auxiliary forces , so that by 100 A.D. only about 20 % of the Roman soldiers came from the Italian peninsula , and this rate fell to about 10 % by 200 A.D. Under the reign of the Emperor Septimius Severus [ r. 193 - 211 A.D. ] , the Emperor's private bodyguard called the Praetorians were opened up for the first time to provincials , as previously only Italian - born Roman citizens were allowed to join the Praetorian Guard . In 212 A.D. , the Roman Emperor Caracalla [ r. 211 - 217 A.D. ] , granted citizenship to all the free born subjects of the Roman Empire , although many of the free subjects were actually tenant or serf farmers and guild apprentices , thereby making these citizens liable to pay taxes to the Imperial treasury , a case of " no representation without taxation ." The non - free inhabitants of the Roman Empire were slaves , as opposed to bonded tenant farmers or serfs and guild apprentices , as opposed to journeymen and guild masters or workshop - owners . The main reasons why the Western or Latin half of the Roman Empire fell can be summed up as one of abandonment for the Eastern or Greek - speaking Byzantine half of the Roman Empire , tax evasion , and draft dodging , and imperial dynastic civil warfare at the same time as large scale and multiple Barbarian invasions were occurring . From 383 - 388 A.D. , 392 - 394 A.D. , and 406 - 432 A.D. the Roman field armies wasted themselves in recurrent imperial dynastic civil wars , made worse by the invasions of the Roman provinces by such Germanic ethnic groups as the Visigoths , Ostrogoths , Burgundians , Franks , Vandals , Lombards , Sueves , Heruls , Sciri , Gepidae , Frisians , Jutes , Angles , and Saxons , the Celtic Scots of northern Ireland and the Picts of Scotland , the Persian Iranians and their cousins the Sarmatians ,the Turkic Alans , and the Berber Moors and Blemmyes . Many of the Germanic ethnic groups were themselves fleeing the semi - nomadic warrior horsemen and herders called the Huns , a Mongolian ethnic group .

During the years after 250 A.D. , the Roman senatorial aristocracy of the Western half of the Roman Empire acquired large landed estates and fortified rural mansions and castles called villas , protected by armed retainers or private bodyguards . With these fortified homes and private bodyguards , the Roman senators could afford to chase off imperial tax collectors sent to collect money for soldier's wages , and also imperial army recruitment officers who wished to draw away some of their tenant farmers for a period of military service that was supposed to last for 25 years . This tax and draft evasion meant that the Roman Army recruiting officers were forced increasingly to hire the services of the least Romanised ethnic groups living within the Roman Empire , and the various ethnic groups living outside the imperial frontiers . By the late 300's and early 400's A.D. , many people of Germanic ancestry not only formed the membership of the rank and file of the Roman army , but even numbered among the officers of the army , for example Merobaudes , Arbogast , Gainas , and Stilicho . The poor pay of the Roman soldiers in the latter years of the Empire meant that they were often attracted into supporting rival contenders for the throne in imperial dynastic civil wars who promised them wage increases and war plunder , and the survivors of the losing side in a battle often mutinied and formed bands of deserters who terrorized and plundered the countryside , robbing rich , poor , and those somewhere in between alike as the opportunity arose . During the great peasant revolt of the Bagaudae or Vagabonds that broke out in Gaul from 435 - 437 A.D. , largely in protest against the heavy rents exacted from them by their senatorial landlords and their private armies , many deserting Roman legionaries joined the peasants . The peasant revolt in Gaul was crushed by a mercenary army of Huns , called in by the West Roman imperial authorities . The bankruptcy of the imperial treasury became more apparent when during the reign of the West Roman Emperor Gratian from 367 - 383 A.D. , heavy body armour in the form of overlapping metal plates or scales sewn into leather tunics , chain - link mail armour , metal helmets , and oblong shields ceased to be issued to the ordinary rank and file Roman legionary . They were still issued with pikes , lances , long - swords , round shields , and archery equipment though . Many Roman army recruiting masters kept false muster rolls of non - existent , deserted , and killed soldiers , thereby pocketing their wages for themselves .

The reason why the Roman Emperor Constantine decided to move the capital of the Roman Empire from Rome to Byzantium , renamed Constantinople [ Greek for " Constantine's City ," ] in 330 A.D. , were partly economic and strategic in motivation . The Roman Emperor Constantine [ r. 306 -337 A.D. ] , was the first Roman Emperor to grant religious toleration to the Christians , after having suffered periodically for centuries persecution at the hands of the pagans or polytheists . The eastern or officially Greek - speaking half of the Roman Empire , which came to be known as the Byzantine Empire , had larger , more prosperous , and more numerous cities and towns then the officially Latin - speaking Western half of the Roman Empire , and therefore a more easily extracted source for taxation revenue , from which soldiers and mercenaries could be paid at a decent level . Also , the strategic and economically valuable site of Byzantium , now renamed Constantinople , was more easily defended with its strong fortifications which controlled trade routes on both a North to South and East to West Axis . The Roman Empire was officially divided into a Western and Eastern half in 395 A.D. , with the last West Roman Emperor overthrown in 476 A.D. , and the last East Roman or Byzantine Roman Emperor overthrown in 1453 A.D. The conquering Muslim Ottoman Turks called Constantinople Istanbul , which is the Turkish pronunciation and spelling for the name Constantinople .

The various branches of the Indo - European speaking family came originally as semi - nomadic warrior horsemen and herders from the steppes and prairies of the lands north of the Black and Caspian seas , from where they conquered the other lands of Europe , the Middle East , and India from around 2500 B.C. onwards , gradually mixing with the previous inhabitants of those lands , with the conquered people usually reduced to the status of slaves and serfs . The remnants of the non - Indo - European speaking peoples include such ethnic and linguistic groups as the Guanches of the Canary Islands archipelago , the Basques of the Pyrenees , the Berbers or Hamites of the Atlas Mountain ranges of North - West Africa and the oases of the Sahara desert , and the Berbers are distant cousins of the Arabs , the Picts of the Scottish Higlands , the Iberians of pre - 900 B.C. Spain and Portugal , the Arabs , the Sumerians , the Georgians of the Caucasus Mountain range that separates Turkey from Georgia , Armenia , and Azerbaijan , the Lapps , Finns , Estonians , Hungarians , and Turks , the Burushaski of the Hunza Valley of Pakistan , the Dravidians of the Punjab and of central and southern India , the Elamites of Iran before the coming of the Iranians in around 1500 B.C. onwards , the Ligurians and Elymians of pre - 1000 B.C. Italy and Sicily , the Pelasgoi and Eteo - Cretans of pre - 2000 B.C. Greece and Crete , the Lydians , of whom the Etruscans traced their ancestry from , Mysians , Carians , Pamphylians and Cappadocians of what is now the Turkish or Anatolian peninsula before the conquests of Alexander the Great , and the Ainu of Hokkaido , Sakhalin , the Pacific provinces of Russian Siberia , the Kurile Islands , and the Kamchatka Peninsula .

The members of the Indo - European linguistic family include the Germans , Slavs , Celts , Latins , Greeks , Albanians , Armenians , and the Indo - Iranians or Sanskrit Aryans , the latter branch including the Baltic Old Prussians , Lithuanians , and Latvians as well as the Iranians or Sankrit people of Iran , Afghanistan , Pakistan , and northern India . The word Aryan comes from the Sanskrit word " Arya , " which means " nobles , " or " owners of land . " When the Indo - European speaking Iranians invaded and conquered from 1500 B.C. onwards the lands of what today make the nation - states of Iran , Pakistan , Afghanistan , and India , they usually intermarried with the natives or earlier invaders , usually in the form of a master - slave relationship , where the conquered native women usually became the concubines of their harem - keeping slave master . The offspring of such relationships usually themselves became slaves , as the Colored or mixed - race/miscegenated people of Apartheid South Africa . In India , such so - called " half castes " formed the " Sudra " or " Labourer " caste , as opposed to the " Dasa ," or " black " caste , that is , the racially unmixed but enslaved dark - brown skinned Dravidian peoples of India . The words " Sudra " and " Dasa " belong to the Sanskrit branch of the Indo - European speaking people , as opposed to the non - Indo - European speaking Dravidian people . It is interesting to note that as a percentage of the total number of dark - brown skinned , Bantu - speaking African slaves transported to North , Central , and South America , the U.S.A. in British colonial and post - colonial times received about 5 % of the total number , explaining why there is greater intermarriage between whites and blacks in Latin America , where the advanced and highly populated slave and serf - owning agricultural and urban civilizations of the Aztec , Maya , and Inca were also located . Many of the Black Africans sold into slavery to the willing European buyers were prisoners - of - war from the more or less continuous intertribal warfare that raged on the African continent since time immemorial . Most of the Black African ethnic or tribal groups were farmers and herders who lived in villages and small towns . The Aztecs , Mayans , and Incas had many conquered American Indian tribes under their rule , and many of their prisoners - of - war were sacraficed to their imperial master's gods and goddesses , in part as a means of cowing the conquered tribes into submission . The Dorian Spartans practiced similar tactics on the Ionian helots , a society that resembled Apartheid South Africa in many ways .

The Sahara , Arabian , and Central Asian deserts during the early and middle stages of Inter - Glacial periods between major Ice Ages has been a tropical savanna grassland and light scrub land and light woodland , with lakes , swamps , and rivers and large animal herds . This far more fertile then present Sahara existed from 128,000 - 113,000 B.C. , 26,000 - 20,000 B.C. , and 8000 - 4000 B.C. During the dry desert intervals , the Berbers of North Africa and the Arabs of the Middle East , both of whom are distant cousins to each other , retreated to the desert oases and the Mediterranean forests of the Atlas Mountains of what is now part of northern Morocco , Algeria , and Tunisia , and the Mediterranean forests of the coastal mountains , hills , and plains of what is now part of Syria , Lebanon , Israel , and Palestine . These forests have been mostly removed by centuries of overgrazing , overcultivation , and deforestation which has resulted in serious erosion . At the height of the last Ice Age , in around 17,000 B.C. , when temperatures were at their coldest , the Atlas Mountains and the Lebanon Mountains had increased rainfall and higher levels of snowfall then today , with the highest peaks even having minor glaciers . Even today , the highest peaks of the Atlas and Lebanon mountains have light to moderate winter snow fall . During the height of the last Ice Age , when sea levels were 130 meters lower than today , before the gradual melting of the ice sheets and glaciers gradually raised sea levels again to their current position , a near land bridge existed in what is now the Strait of Gibraltar that separates Morocco from Spain , as well as the sea between Sicily and Tunisia , and there were complete land bridges where the Strait of Dover separates France from England , where the Irish Sea separates Ireland from Britain , the Strait of Messina separates Sicily from Italy , the now shallow waters of the northern Adriatic Sea , formerly an Ice Age plain , and the Straits of Bosphorus [ Byzantium , Constantinople , or Istanbul ] and the Hellespont [ the Dardanelles or Gallipoli and the Troad ] , separate Thracian or European Turkey from Anatolian or Asian Turkey . Using these land bridges and ancient wooden and reed rafts and the wooden frame , animal hide covered boats , human populations travelled both to and from Europe , Asia , and Africa , as did also the Melanesians and Negritos of South East Asia who arrived by means of island hopping in New Guinea , Australia , and Tasmania , which then formed one single continent during the Ice Age , and thereby became the ancestors of the Australian Aborigines , and as the Mongoloid Asians and Ainu crossed the prehistoric Ice Age land bridge called Beringia that used to connect Siberia and North America , thereby becoming the ancestors of the American Indians or Amerindians and their cousins the Eskimos or Inuit . The reason why the Australian Aboriginal people of King and Flinders Island , located in what is today Bass Strait , a stretch of water that separates the Australian mainland from the island and Australian state called Tasmania , became extinct when the sea levels gradually rose after the gradual melting away of the Ice Age , and thereby cutting off the Bassian Plain land bridge that used to connect Australia and Tasmania , was because the islands were too small in area to sustain a semi - nomadic tribal population of hunter - gatherers , not having enough animal and plant life to sustain for the long - term a hunter - gatherer population . Also , there was a severe period of drought on King and Flinders island from 4000 - 2000 B.C. , and even to this day fresh water is hard to find on these islands during summer . When the Europeans visited these islands for the first time for themselves in the late 1700's and early 1800's , they found them to be uninhabited of humans .

Heinrich Himmler , the leader of the Nazi Gestapo , once ridiculously tried to prove that the Japanese are undercover Aryans , because they racially mixed with the Ainu , who had some Caucasian physical features before they extensively mixed with the Japanese , even though the Ainu language does not belong to the Indo - European linguistic family , and because the Japanese made the martial art of Judo a required subject in their schools in 1909 , a subject that was banned in Japanese schools from 1945 - 1950 , being reintroduced as a compulsory subject in Japanese schools from 1950 onwards . Judo traces its origins from the samurai martial art of Jujitsu . Judo and Jujitsu is still a required part of the training of the members of the Japanese armed forces and the police , although 3 years of compulsory military service in the Japanese armed forces was abolished after 1945 , service now being on an entirely voluntary basis . The three techniques of judo are nagewaza [ throwing ] , katamewaza [ wrestling ] , and atemiwaza [ striking with both the arms and legs ] . The atemiwaza techniques may only be taught to judokas above the rank of white belt , and may only be used by them in training and self - defence , but never in judo sporting contests . The Katamewaza techniques may only be taught to judokas from early adolescence upwards . During the Second World War , when low on bullets and food , the Japanese soldiers often launched a banzai bayonet charge and judo - atemiwaza attack . The ancient Spartans had a martial art called Pankration or Pancratium , which was a combination of wrestling , boxing , kicking , and throwing , and Pankration was made a required subject for the soldiers of the Greek - speaking southern Macedonian armies of King Phillip and his son Alexander the Great . The Japanese language is actually part of the Altaic linguistic family that also includes Korean , Manchurian , Tungus , Inner Mongolian [ now a province of China ] , and Outer Mongolian [ militarily occupied by Russia from 1916 - 1991 ] . There is also a Malaysian linguistic substratum to the Japanese language , as there is also in other parts of southern China and South - East Asia , the Malaysian people living there having been assimilated by conquering tribes that came from southern China , from where the Malaysian people themselves once came from .