The Picts are not a mysterious alien race from another planet, their history and culture have not vanished. Languages, oral traditions, crafts, religious influences, ruins, archaeological relics and their DNA have all survived down through the years to this day. What has been lost is our knowledge to interpret what they passed down to us over the generations. What began as a series of feuding clans and tribes at the time the Romans invaded Prydein slowly morphed into a series of nations forged in a shared history of survival. War and cultural interactions with Romans forced the tribes to adapt and unite behind strong leaders and stronger families. From the unification of tribes and clans emerged perhaps a dozen families that vied for the right to rule the eight main provinces of the Pictish Britons. For this is what they were, Britons, like those from Cornwall to the Shetlands, from Kent to the west coast of Ireland. Britons with shared culture, languages, technologies, religious beliefs, trade, kinship links and a shared history of the islands. What forged them into kingdoms, then nations were the transformational arrivals of outsiders like the Beaker Folk, Celts, Romans, Germanic tribes, Vikings, Normans and the rest. Included in this volume is a comprehensive Historia Pictorum, a Pictish symbols dictionary, a brief social and cultural history of the Picts, and an introduction to the Pictish Royal families of the eight Pictish kingdoms.
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