((((Who were the Picts))))?

They were a tribe of people that lived in Northern England and Wales. They were the most successful native English tribe. They were not Celtic. They destroyed the Woads. They were pushed out of England by the Romans, followed by the Angles and then the Saxons and moved North. The pushed the original Scots out into Northern Ireland, but not totally and the Scots of today are a mixture of the original Scots and the invading Picts. They obviously lost to other tribes in the end, but their cultural influence could be seen in Wales into the 1900s.

The Picts were a confederation of tribes in what was later to become eastern and northern Scotland from Roman times until the 10th century. They lived to the north of the Forth and Clyde rivers. They are assumed to have been the descendants of the Caledonii and other tribes named by Roman historians or found on the world map of Ptolemy. Pictland, also known as Pictavia, was gradually absorbed by the Gaelic kingdom of Dál Riata to form the the Kingdom of Alba. By the 11th century the Picts lost their independent identity.

Archaeology gives some impression of the society of the Picts. Although very little in the way of Pictish writing has survived, Pictish history since late 6th century is known from a variety of sources, including Bede's Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, saints' lives, such as that of Columba by Adomnán, and various Irish annals. Although the popular impression of the Picts may be one of an obscure, mysterious people, this is far from being the case. When compared with the generality of Northern, Central and Eastern Europe in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, Pictish history and society are well attested.[1]