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WHO DO WE THINK WE ARE?
On Easter Day 1278, Edward I, King of England, accompanied by Queen Eleanor and a glittering
retinue of knights and ministers, arrived at the Benedictine monastery of Glastonbury in Somerset.
The reason for his visit was very specific – and very deliberate. He and his court were there to
open the tomb of the legendary King Arthur. In a lavishly elaborate ceremony, two caskets
containing the bones of Arthur and his queen, Guinevere, were taken from the tomb, the bones
removed and carefully laid out on the altar of the monastery chapel. The following day Edward
wrapped Arthur’s bones in sheets of silk and solemnly placed them in a painted casket decorated
with Arthur’s portrait and his coat of arms. Queen Eleanor then mounted the platform and
performed the same rites with the bones of Guinevere. After this the caskets were placed in front of
the high altar and the royal party departed.
What was Edward up to? Why did he go to so much trouble to travel all the way to
Glastonbury? He was there for one very simple reason. He was aligning himself with the legend of
King Arthur and through him laying claim to the ancient kingdom of the Britons. He was able to
capitalize on the predominant myth about the origins of the British people, a myth that utterly
dominated the Middle Ages. We may believe that nowadays we are beyond the grasp of hazy origin
myths and treat them as the sole preserve of ignorant and primitive people clinging to absurd
notions of their past. But in my research around the world I have more than once found that oral
myths are closer to the genetic conclusions than the often ambiguous scientific evidence of
archaeology. Hawaiki, the legendary homeland of the Polynesians, was said to be located among
the islands of Indonesia, and genetics proved it. The Hazara tribe of north-west Pakistan had a
strong oral myth of descent from the first Mongol emperor, Genghis Khan, and his genes are still
there to this day. These are just two examples.
Only when I began my research in the Isles did I come to appreciate that we are just as
entangled in our own origin myths as everybody else. They are still very powerful and, as in other
parts of the world, they may contain grains of truth that we can test by genetics. I believe we are
just as vulnerable to the power of myth about our own origins as the Polynesians or the Hazara or,
indeed, the witnesses to the elaborate ceremony at Glastonbury over 700 years ago. The modern
historian Norman Davies castigates archaeologists for their over-materialist approach to the past
and their disdain for myth. I am on his side. While no one would be foolish enough to suggest that
they are entirely accurate in every detail, myths have a very long memory. They are also extremely
influential. To see how our own origin myths have developed, let us return to the Middle Ages.
The legend of King Arthur was brilliantly exploited by Edward I and many other of the