Our True Origins
My first essay on the question of French origins.
Who are we, we French, and where do we really come from? The question seems simple. The answer is much less so. Between the national myth inherited from the Third Republic, the rediscoveries of modern archaeology and the sometimes competing narratives that clash today in public debate, the history of the peoples who made France deserves an honest, sourced and open investigation.
This is the work I wanted to undertake in this essay, as a self-taught enthusiast of protohistory and experimental archaeology, while relying rigorously on accessible sources: recent university research, available genetic data, archives and ancient chronicles.
The goal is not to decide definitively, because the history of peoples cannot be locked into certainties. Rather, it is to propose a documented reading that distinguishes what we know from what we think we know, what belongs to national myth from what belongs to archaeological trace, and what belongs to contemporary ideology from what belongs to fact.
What you will find in this book
An investigation drawing on the power of artificial intelligence to gather sources, sort them, evaluate them, in several stages, from the prehistoric origins of our territory to the great waves of settlement that shaped present-day France. Celts, Gauls, Romans, Franks, and all the components that contributed over the centuries to forming what we now call the French people.
The essay also addresses the essential distinction between national myth — a founding, unifying and sometimes simplifying narrative inherited from republican schooling — and national narrative — a critical and plural reading integrating the contributions of contemporary research. Two approaches that are not necessarily opposed, but that must be clearly distinguished in order to think serenely about the question of French identity today.