What is the orgin of the anglo-saxons? who were they?

Question

What is the orgin of the anglo-saxons? who were they?

Answer 1

A Germanic people who settled in England (they were not Germans please note-just as English is not German just a 'cousin' to it.)

  At one time it was thought they killed or drove off all the native ingabitants but it now seems more likely they were a relatively small ruling aristocracy  who imposed their ways on the locals. Certainly in a village near to me pagan saxons and native Christian Britons have been found together in the same burial ground-so no slaughtering going on there obviously!

Answer 2

DNA research has blown the old stories sky-high.  The Anglo-Saxon invaders were not much more numerous than the Normans, it seems.

Answer 3

Anglo-Saxons were two different peoples in their origins, though both came from the Germanic tribes.

The Angles were Germanic people, from Angeln in Schleswig, who settled in East Anglia, Mercia and Northumbria in the 5th century. Southern and eastern Britain was later called Engla-lond, later England.

Saxons were a large Germanic people located in what is now northwestern Germany and a small section of the eastern Netherlands.

Anglo-Saxons came to be thought of as one people in the period of English history, language and literature which preceded the Norman Conquest. It goes back to the time of King Alfred, who seems to have frequently used the title rex Anglorum Saxonum or rex Angul-Saxonum.