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Wales in the early Middle Ages covers the time between the Roman departure from Wales c. 383 and the rise of Merfyn Frych to the throne of Gwynedd c. 825. In that time there was a gradual consolidation of power into increasingly hierarchical kingdoms. The end of the early Middle Ages was the time that the Welsh language transitioned from the Primitive Welsh spoken throughout the era into Old Welsh, and the time when the modern Anglo-Welsh border would take its near-final form, a line broadly followed by Offa's Dyke, a late eighth-century earthwork. Successful unification into something recognisable as a Welsh state would come in the next era under the descendants of Merfyn Vrych. Wales was rural throughout the era, characterised by small settlements called ''trefi''. The local landscape was controlled by a local aristocracy and ruled by a warrior aristocrat. Control was exerted over a piece of land and, by extension, over the people who lived on that land. Many of the people were tenant peasants or slaves, answerable to the aristocrat who controlled the land on which they lived. There was no sense of a coherent tribe of people and everyone, from ruler down to slave, was defined in terms of his or her kindred family (the ''tud'') and individual status (''braint''). Christianity had been introduced in the Roman era, and the Britons living in and near Wales were Christian throughout the era. The semi-legendary founding of Gwynedd in the fifth century was followed by internecine warfare in Wales and with the kindred Brythonic kingdoms of northern England and southern Scotland and structural and linguistic divergence from the southwestern peninsula British kingdom of Dumnonia known to the Welsh as ''Cernyw'' prior to its eventual absorption into Wessex. The seventh and eighth centuries were characterised by ongoing warfare by the northern and eastern Welsh kingdoms against the intruding Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of Northumbria and Mercia. That era of struggle saw the Welsh adopt their modern name for themselves, ''Cymry'', meaning "fellow countrymen", and it also saw the demise of all but one of the kindred kingdoms of northern England and southern Scotland at the hands of then-ascendant Northumbria. ==Geography== The total area of Wales is ,〔(【引用サイトリンク】publisher=European Land Information Service )〕 or 9% of the area of Great Britain. Much of the landscape is mountainous with treeless moors and heath, and having large areas with peat deposits. There is approximately of coastline and some 50 offshore islands, the largest of which is Anglesey. The present climate is wet and maritime, with warm summers and mild winters, much like the later medieval climate, though there was a significant change to cooler and much wetter conditions in the early part of the era.〔, ''Wales in the Early Middle Ages", "Land, Landscape and Environment".〕〔The same change in climate was occurring around the entire North Sea perphery at this time. See Higham's ''Rome, Britain and the Anglo-Saxons'' (ISBN 1-85264-022-7, 1992): cooler, wetter climate and abandonment of British uplands and marginal lands; Berglund's ''Human impact and climate changes—synchronous events and a causal link?'' in "Quaternary International", Vol. 105 (2003): Scandinavia, 500AD wetter and rapidly cooling climate and the retreat of agriculture; Ejstrud's ''The Migration Period, Southern Denmark and the North Sea'' (ISBN 978-87-992214-1-7, 2008): p28, from the 6th century onwards farmlands in Denmark and Norway were abandoned; Issar's ''Climate changes during the holocene and their impact on Hydrological systems'' (ISBN 978-0-511-06118-9, 2003): water level rise along NW coast of Europe, wetter conditions in Scandinavia and retreat of farming in Norway after 400, cooler climate in Scotland; Louwe Kooijmans' ''Archaeology and Coastal Change in the Netherlands'' (in Archaeology and Coastal Change, 1980): rising water levels along the NW coast of Europe; Louwe Kooijmans' ''The Rhine/Meuse Delta'' (PhD thesis, 1974): rising water levels along the NW coast of Europe, and in the Fens and Humber Estuary. Abundant material from other sources portrays the same information.〕 The southeastern coast was originally a wetland, but reclamation has been ongoing since the Roman era. There are deposits of gold, copper, lead, silver and zinc, and these have been exploited since the Iron Age, especially so in the Roman era.〔, ''Atlas of Roman Britain'', "The Economy".〕 In the Roman era some granite was quarried, as was slate in the north and sandstone in the east and south.〔, ''Atlas of Roman Britain''〕 Native fauna included large and small mammals, such as the brown bear, wolf, wildcat, rodents, several species of weasel, and shrews, voles and many species of bat. There were many species of birds, fish and shellfish. The early medieval human population has always been considered relatively low in comparison to England, but efforts to reliably quantify it have yet to provide widely acceptable results.〔, ''Looking backwards to the early medieval past: Wales and England, a contrast in approaches'' (2004).〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Wales in the Early Middle Ages」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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