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Rey Arturo: la historia real detrás del rey que nunca existió | Rose Bennet | YouTubeToText
YouTube Transcript: Rey Arturo: la historia real detrás del rey que nunca existió
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Summary
Core Theme
The legend of King Arthur, a cornerstone of European mythology, likely originated not from a single historical figure but from a confluence of post-Roman British resistance, evolving folklore, and deliberate medieval fabrications aimed at bolstering national identity and religious influence.
At the end of the 11th century, England was experiencing
a period of uncertainty. In 1184, a
fire had destroyed
Glastonbury Abbey, which was one of the
most important monasteries in the country. Their
building was in ruins and
donations had dropped
dramatically. In the midst of that crisis,
in 1191, the monks announced something
that seemed like a miracle. They had
found the tomb of King Arthur and
Queen Guinevere. The monks claimed
to have discovered a large
stone slab and underneath an oak coffin with a
lead cross. On it could be read a
Latin inscription that read: "Here
buried the illustrious King Arthur on the
island of Abalone." Inside they claimed to have
found the bones of a large man
and the remains of a woman with
light hair. The news spread
quickly throughout England.
Pilgrims came from all over,
nobles sent donations, and Glastonbury
regained some of its former splendor.
The monastery was revived and with it the
legend. Still, something didn't quite
add up. No previous source
mentioned an Arthurian tomb at that
location, and the find had coincidentally
come just when the abbey most
needed to shine again. Over
the centuries,
historical and archaeological research has examined that
episode with a magnifying glass. There is no evidence
linking these remains to any
real figure named Arthur. Today, in
fact, most experts
believe that the alleged discovery was
a deliberate fabrication intended to
attract pilgrims and donations after
the fire. Still, the maneuver was
a success. That empty tomb brought back to
life a king who probably never
existed. Or maybe yes, but we'll
see that later. And from a
fictitious coffin was born one of the most
powerful legends in Europe. If his tomb was a
fake, did
King Arthur ever exist? What if England's greatest hero
was actually born from a
lie? To find the answer,
we must travel back centuries, to a
time when the British Isles were
torn between ruin and hope,
a time when history and
myth still walked hand in hand.
When Roman power crumbled in
Britannia at the beginning of the 5th century, not
only were ruins and overgrown roads left behind
, but also a
vast emptiness and a directionless country.
For almost four centuries, the empire
had ruled the island with its
administration, its army and
its laws. But in 411, the
Emperor Honorius sent a letter to the
British cities telling them to
defend themselves. The legions were
called back to Italy to
protect Rome from
Germanic invasions, and with them all
central authority disappeared. From that
point on, the historical sources
become quite obscure. There are no
contemporary chronicles, only texts
written decades later when the
collapse was already part of memory. One
of the few authors who spoke of it
was Gildas, a 6th century monk who
wrote De exilio britaniae about the
ruin of Britain, a work that
offered no precise dates or names,
but which described a divided country,
ruled by petty local tyrants and
besieged by the Germanic peoples, by
Saxons, Angles and Jutes who had come from
northern Germany and Denmark, who
were first hired as
mercenaries and then stayed on as
invaders. Archaeology supports
much of this image. After the
Roman withdrawal, many cities
shrank drastically and lost their
administrative role. Londinium,
present-day London, was almost abandoned.
Large rural towns such as Cedworth and
Fishburn were converted into
farming villages or abandoned.
Still, for a time people
continued to cling to
Roman customs, speaking Latin,
using mosaics, and maintaining some
public baths. But little by little all
that was disappearing. The use of
currency fell into disuse, trade with
the mainland collapsed, and the
territory gradually fragmented into
small local domains. Britannia
had become an
unstable mosaic where violence was
commonplace and the lines between history
and myth began to blur. Amidst
this chaos, stories emerged about leaders
who tried to resist. Hildas mentions
a victory of the Britons over
the Saxons, led by one
Ambrosius Aurelianus, whom he describes
as a moderate and brave man whose
parents had died during the
wars. He does not provide further details, but his
name reappears in
later traditions. Some historians believe
that Ambrosius was a royal leader from the
mid-5th century and that over time
his figure may have been combined with that of what
would later become King Arthur. The only thing that is
certain is that there was
organized resistance, albeit brief, before
the Saxon waves
finally prevailed.
A series of 12 battles fought by
the Britons are also mentioned, although no one knows for
sure where or when they occurred, or
even if they actually existed.
But meanwhile, the remnants of the
past continued to speak. At Gel Ink,
a fortress built on the
Cornish cliffs,
archaeologists have found
pottery fragments and amphorae from the
Mediterranean and North Africa,
as well as remnants of luxury glass.
These finds, dating from the
5th and 6th centuries, show that some
British enclaves maintained contact with
foreign trade even after the
Roman collapse. The site appears to have
been used by a local elite who
had resources and connections and were
powerful and cultured enough to
inspire future legends. There is no trace
of any historical Arthur at that location,
but there is evidence that there were
leaders with enough influence
to feed the collective memory.
War, misery and
political fragmentation created more than just ruins.
They left a symbolic void, and in the midst
of the chaos, people needed to believe in
someone to protect them, in a
just leader who embodied the lost values
of the old Roman order in the face of the
advance. In that silence, without
specific names, the idea of
a leader who would lead the
Britons' last stand began to take shape. For
centuries, Arthur's name does not appear
in any contemporary source or in
the centuries immediately following
his supposed era. No
Roman chronicler mentions him and not even Hildas
said a single word about him. Hilda does
mention the Battle of Badon, which
was a great victory for the Britons
against the invaders, as I mentioned
before, but she doesn't name any
leaders or heroes. This silence
is so profound that many historians
say that the first Arthur was not born from
history, but from memory. And that
memory took almost four centuries to
take shape. The first time the
name appears is in the Historia Britum,
written around 830 and
traditionally attributed to a Welsh monk
named Nenius. The text is a mixture
of chronicles, geological accounts, myths and
local legends. In one of his passages he
mentions a warrior called Arturus,
presented not as a king, but as Dux
Belorum, that is, as a
battle leader. According to the story, this leader
would have achieved 12 victories against
the enemies of the Britons, the
last being at Mount Bidon. That brief
fragment changed history, as for the
first time someone called a
hero of the past Arthur. The interesting thing is that
in that text there is no throne, there is no
Camelot, and there is no Excalibur. Arthur
appears as a military commander and not
as a monarch. In the list of
British kings that accompanies the work, his name does
not even appear. Some
historians suggest that Arthur may have
been more of a symbol, a figure
representing the leaders who resisted
than a real person. But the fact is
that a century later his name reappears
in the Cambrian Annals, which are the Annals
of Wales, which was a compilation of
brief historical notes written in the
middle of the 10th century, although based on
earlier sources. Two episodes are mentioned there
. One that took place in the year 516
at the Battle of Beidon, in
which Arthur, it is said, carried the cross
of Christ on his shoulders and was
victorious. And another that in the year 537
the battle of Camlan was fought, in which
Arthur and Medraut Mordrez fell. These
dates should be taken with caution, as
the annals do not follow a
reliable chronology. But still, the text is
important because it introduces two
key ideas that would survive throughout
subsequent tradition.
Arthur's final victory and heroic death. There is still
no trace of legendary sword magic
or knights of the
round table, but the myth already had its
seed. These two mentions are the
only direct references to Arthur in
Latin texts that predate the
10th century. Everything else we know about
this first Arthur comes from
Welsh folklore and poetry. In the
oldest preserved poems dating from between
the 9th and 10th centuries, Arthur is not a king,
but rather a hero of the Celtic world. In
these texts he faces giants,
monsters and creatures from the other world.
In some stories he even descends to
Lanon, which is the underworld of
Welsh mythology. There are no thrones or
castles there, but magic,
impossible battles and supernatural companions.
Christianity barely appears because
gods, beasts, and portals to the
afterlife continued to dominate the story.
In several poems, Arthur appears alongside
mythical figures such as the hounds
of the otherworld or helping the hero Kuluk
in his search for Lolwen in one of the
oldest tales in
Welsh literature. In these versions, Arthur does not
rule an idealized kingdom, but
leads a band of almost
supernatural warriors, an echo of the
tribal heroes of Celtic folklore. All this
shows something essential. Long before he
became a Christian king, Arthur
was a pagan hero. It belonged to the
Celtic imagination, to a universe populated
by magic, sacred animals and
journeys to the other world. Over the
centuries, as Christianity became
established in Wales and old
traditions began to change,
poets adapted that story to
new values. Between the 10th and 11th centuries,
Arthur began to be represented as a
defender of the faith and as a symbol of
resistance against evil. The monsters
became barbaric and the
mythological feat was reinterpreted as
Christian deeds. If you're already a regular
on the channel, I'm pretty sure
this isn't something that will surprise you. I'd
like to take this opportunity to ask you to like
the video and send it to anyone you think might
like it.
If you're not already subscribed, subscribe to it, because it's incredibly
important for the channel to continue
growing. The fact is that this fusion
between the pagan and the Christian was what
allowed the myth to survive.
In a world where the Britons
had lost their power to the
Saxons, Arthur no longer offered just
adventure, but an
identity. It represented a
heroic past that reminded people of who they
had been. Thus, what began as a
note in a Latin chronicle became,
over time, the heart of
an entire mythology. The myth of Arthur
began to spread like the mist over
Abalone, slowly but unstoppably. When
we think of this character,
we all have the same image in our heads. The
sword in the stone, the round table, the
wizard Merlin and a castle called
Camelot. But you have already seen that none
of this existed in the ancient sources. It
all appeared suddenly in the
11th century in a book written by a
Welsh-trained cleric who
was probably of Welsh-
Norman origin called Joffrey de Monmau. With
a single work, Joffrey not only changed the
history of British literature,
but also definitively shaped King
Arthur as we know him today. His
book Historia regun britaniae, History
of the Kings of Britannia, was presented
as a chronicle of the country's past
from the myths descended from Brutus
of Troy to the 6th century. In
practice it was a mixture of geology,
Celtic legends, political ambitions and
a lot of imagination. But at that time
no one talked about critical history and the
public took it as if it were
completely real. Joffrey claimed that
his work was a translation of a
mysterious ancient book in the
British language that, of course, no
one had ever seen. This was a
common resource in the Middle Ages, invoking a
lost source to give authority to what was
narrated. Joffrey most likely
combined old Welsh traditions,
Latin texts, and oral accounts and
wove them together into a grand epic that filled in
the gaps in Britain's past with
heroes, battles, and wonders. and he did it
with such talent that for centuries
almost no one dared to doubt him. In
his version, Arthur is no longer a
local warlord fighting the Saxons, but
a monarch with a throne, court, and vast
empire. He conquers Scotland, Ireland and
part of Gaul. Joffrey presents him
as a new Alexander the Great, as the
model of the perfect king, brave, wise
and glorious. His Arthur does not limit himself to
defending his land, but creates an
empire. That's where the
political background behind the myth appears.
When Jofre wrote his book around
1136, England had already been under
Norman rule for 70 years. Those descendants
of Vikings had become the
country's new aristocracy, but they were still
searching for a history to justify their
power. Joffrey's work suited them
perfectly. It presented the
ancient British kings, including
Arthur, as heirs to a
glorious lineage, giving the island a
common past that united conquerors and
conquered under a single identity.
Without mentioning them directly, he offered
the Normans a place within the
mythical history of Britannia. The effect
was immediate because Historia Reg
Britanes became a
continental success. It was copied, translated, and
read as if it were a
true historical account. For more than two
centuries it was one of the most
influential sources in Europe. Even the
most critical chroniclers such as William of
Nberg accused him of blatant lying,
but admitted that it was impossible to compete
with his popularity. Joffrey had done
what every storyteller dreams of: telling a
story so compelling that no one
would want to stop believing it. In addition,
it introduced characters and elements that would
forever define the
Arthurian universe. One of them was Merlin, the
king's magical advisor. Joffrey was
inspired by a legendary figure
known as Mirdinville, a
wildling prophet from northern
Britannia, and adapted his name to Merlinus
to avoid its resemblance to a
French swear word. He had already
presented him before in his text, The
Prophecies of Merlin, but in the story
of the Kings of Britannia he united him for the
first time with Arthur, thus creating one of
the most famous couples in
medieval literature. The sword Caliburnus also appears
, which would later be known
as Escalibur, a symbol of divine power
and the authority of the monarch. Joffrey
narrates for the first time the birth of
Arthur, son of Ucer Pendragon and
Iguerna, conceived thanks to the
magical arts of Merlinn. All of this gave the
story a narrative coherence that
made it seem almost more like a biography than
a legend. Of course, Joffrey had no
qualms about exaggerating. In his story,
Arthur defeats the Roman Empire,
represented by the legate Lucius
Iberius, conquers much of Europe
and prepares to invade Rome until
his nephew Mordre betrays him. With this
plot he transforms a possible local leader
of the 6th century into a universal emperor
of the 11th century. It was an epic fantasy,
almost a literary revenge, the old
British people humiliating Rome, their
former oppressor. As exaggerated as it
may seem today, the story, as I say,
had enormous power. It offered
national pride in an age without heroes,
turned ruin into glory, and gave
England a past as great as that
of Rome or France. The book was
circulated at just the right time, when
courtly culture was flourishing in France and
Normandy. The European courts were
fascinated by the ideals of
chivalry, honor, and refined love.
French-speaking poets and writers
began to adapt the story to their
own style, filling it with
impossible loves, brave knights, and
heroic deeds. Thus was born the
romantic tone that we associate with Camelot today,
although that literary twist would come a few
decades later. Even before Joffrey, the
monk William of Malmesbury, one of
the most careful chroniclers of his
time, had acknowledged that he could not
confirm Arthur's existence, but
the public accepted Joffrey's version
as quasi-official truth. Joffrey
died around 1155 or shortly after and
probably never imagined that his story
would survive for almost 1,000 years. The great
irony is that by defining King Arthur
as we know him, Joffrey also
erased the possible historical Arthur, if he
ever existed. He covered it with
a mountain of magic,
impossible battles and medieval fantasies. By the
11th century, the legend of King Arthur
had already spread throughout Europe. But
something was missing, physical proof and something to
prove it wasn't just a
story. And that proof appeared just
when it was most needed or perhaps when it was
most convenient. Around 1191, at the
Benedictine abbey of Glastonbury in
southwest England, a group of
monks announced a surprising discovery. They
claimed to have discovered
King Arthur's tomb. The writer Giraldus
Cambresis or Geral of Wales, who claimed to
have been at Gastonbury shortly afterwards,
described the find as
told to him by the monks. According to his account,
beneath the slab were two oak coffins,
one containing the bones of a tall man,
identified as Arthur, and the other containing the bones
of a woman believed to be a Ginista. He
even recounted that when her coffin was opened,
strands of golden hair appeared
that fell apart when he touched them. It
was such a vivid description that
many took it at face value.
The context, however, made one
suspicious. A few years earlier, in 1184,
a fire had destroyed a large part
of the abbey. Glastonbury, one of the
richest and most influential monasteries in
England, had been left in ruins.
Donations had declined and the
monks needed funds to
rebuild the place. Suddenly, the
discovery attracted crowds of
pilgrims with offerings and nobles
willing to donate money. Thus, the
abbey was revived in a very short time. In the
Middle Ages this was not uncommon.
Monasteries competed to have the
most venerated relics, bones of
saints, fragments of the cross or
miraculous stories. Each bay
needed to bring pilgrims because
pilgrims brought wealth. Glastonbury,
which would later also be associated with
Joseph of Aimathea and the legend of the Holy
Grail, knew how to exploit the myth. Adding
King Arthur's Tomb to his repertoire
was a masterstroke. For the
next two centuries, the alleged tomb was
a prominent pilgrimage site. In
1278, the monks moved the remains
to a more visible location within the
monastery, in a ceremony presided over
by King Edward I and Queen Eleanor.
The bones were laid to rest under a
dark stone monument in the
church choir stalls, and the presence of the monarch
lent the whole ceremony an air of
legitimacy. That scene
officially turned the myth into history, but
when modern archaeology came along, the
house of cards came tumbling down.
Excavations in the 20th century showed
that the layers of soil where
the tomb was supposedly found
dated back to the 11th century or later, a
long way from the time in which
Arthur is said to have lived. The famous lead cross
disappeared centuries ago, and only
transcriptions of its
inscription survive, with Latin errors,
incidentally, which were inappropriate for
antiquity. And everything points to the fact that it
was more of a medieval forgery,
probably made by the
monks themselves or by someone in their circle.
Still, the deception was ingenious. The
inscription used the word abalonia,
directly connecting Glastonsbury with
Abalone, the mythical place where, according to
Joffrey, Arthur had been taken
after being wounded. With that simple
word, literary fiction was united with
religious devotion. It was a
perfect move. linking England's most beloved myth
to the place where the
Church needed to bring pilgrims.
Furthermore, the alleged discovery served to
resolve a political problem. At
that time, a very popular prophecy was circulating
: that of the sleeping king. According to her,
Arthur had not died, but
was resting in some hidden place,
waiting for the moment to return to
save England from its enemies. For
the Welsh, this idea was a symbol of
hope and resistance to
Norman rule. But if the monks
proved that Arthur was really
dead and buried, that hope
disappeared. In other words, the
discovery also served the
Norman crown, which wanted to end
the myth of return. During the
Dissolution of the Monasteries ordered
by Henry VII in the 10th century, the Abbey
was sacked and Arthur's supposed remains
disappeared at some point,
probably during that process, but it
no longer mattered because history had
served its purpose. In the centuries
that followed, Glastonbury continued to be surrounded
by new legends, visions, and
dubious relics. and later rumors that
related it, as I have already told you, to
the Holy Grail. Today, most
historians consider that
discovery a forgery, but
also a brilliant example of how the
medieval Church knew how to use myth as
a tool of power. At that
time, Arthur ceased to be a
legendary warrior and became something
else: a secular saint, a
national symbol, and a highly profitable miracle.
Until this point, Arthur had been
above all a symbol of power and
unity for the British people. But
at the end of the 11th century, a French poet
decided to give him something no
previous chronicle had given him: a heart that
could break. His name was Ktien de
Tois and what he did forever changed
the way stories were told
. Under the patronage of Mary of
Champagne he wrote stories about Arthur,
Queen Geneva and a knight named
Lancelot. And what surprised his
audience was that they were no longer stories of
war or conquest, but of love,
desire, and guilt. Without intending to, Hetien
transformed the Arthurian world into the
setting for one of the most
influential tragedies in medieval literature.
In his work, The Knight of the Cart, he
first presented Ancelot
Dulac, the perfect knight. He was
brave, elegant and absolutely
devoted to his queen. His love for
Geneva was neither political nor expedient,
but rather a forbidden passion that
consumed him completely. In one of the
most memorable scenes, Lancelot agrees to
climb aboard a wagon, normally
reserved for
criminals, simply because it's the only way
to rescue her. In the
11th century mentality, that gesture was equivalent to losing
one's honor for love. It may
seem romantic to us, but for the public
of the time it was a scandal.
Adultery was a sin and Geneva was not only a
wife, but a queen. However,
Hetien does not portray them as sinners,
but as human beings caught in a
moral conflict. Lancelot embodies the
struggle between loyalty and desire. And
Geneva represents the fragility of
feminine power in a world made by
men. That way of approaching love
as a moral dilemma and not just as a
chivalrous adventure was what made
the story so resonant. The
context also helped because in the
11th century, European courts were
fascinated by the fashion of courtly love,
a movement that idealized
impossible love and devotion to an
inaccessible lady. Inspired by the poetry of
the troubadours, this vision of love
mixed passion, reverence and
suffering. The lover was to serve his
lady with the same fidelity with which
a knight served his king. In this
context, Lancelot became the
perfect model, a knight willing
to lose everything for love. Getien did not create
the Arthurian myth from scratch, although he
was the first to give shape to the
character of Ancelot and this
love story with Guinevere. He probably
collected oral legends and
previous traditions, but he was the one who gave them a
solid literary structure and
emotional charge. His version influenced all of
Europe. He inspired French,
German and English romances and his Lancelot
also became part of the legend that today is
hard to imagine without him. With his work he
completely changed the tone of the story.
In the chronicles of Joffrey that we have already seen,
Arthur was an invincible conqueror.
But in Ktien's poems he appears as
a more passive, almost symbolic king,
while his court begins to fracture
from within. That shift also reflects
a larger cultural shift. In
11th-century Europe, literature
began to take an interest in psychology,
emotions, and moral dilemmas. The
triangle of Arthur, Guinevere, and Lancelot
is not only a love story, but
a kind of reflection on the
conflict between duty and desire and
between Christian reason and
human emotion. The genius of this myth is
that it shows that heroes can also
lose everything without having to shed
a drop of blood. From a
historical perspective, this shift fits
well with the moral climate of the time.
Europe was experiencing tensions,
crusades, clashes between church and
monarchy, and the social changes of a
changing era. The courts
saw themselves reflected in Arthur. They were
powerful, but also vulnerable.
They were virtuous, but at the same time they were
full of contradictions. The myth of
Camelot became a mirror of
medieval society. Lancelot, this
exemplary knight who allows himself to be overcome
by love, symbolized the tension
between the chivalric ideal and
human reality. And Geneva represented
the fragility of the moral order. And Arthur,
powerless in the face of this betrayal, embodied
the end of an era where ideals were
no longer enough to sustain the world. In
a way, Ancelot's betrayal was a
reflection of this Europe in crisis, of
this Europe that was beginning to look
inward and discover that the true
enemy didn't always come with an
army, but sometimes lived within
the soul. In the 20th century,
archaeologists decided to ask a
question. What if
there was something real behind all this legend? They weren't looking for
wizards, of course, nor for magic swords,
but for traces of a leader in
post-Roman Britannia who
might have inspired history. One
of the first places to arouse
real archaeological interest was
Catbury Hill in Sommerset. For
generations, the local people
had called it Camelot. Not because there was any
evidence, but because the hill, with its
size and walls, fit the
image everyone had of
King Arthur's castle. Between 1966 and 1970,
Scottish archaeologist Leslie Alcock led
excavations there with support from the BBC, and
what he found was more revealing than
expected. Beneath the medieval layers
appeared a fortified
earthwork enclosure with walls reinforced with stone
and wood dating back to the 5th century, or
precisely to the period when, according to the
earliest sources,
a British resistance leader may have existed. The
walls had been restored, and
inside were found remains of banquets and
objects imported from the Mediterranean, such as
pottery, wine, and oil, indicating
a level of wealth that was unusual
in Britannia at that time. Alcock
never claimed to have found Camelot and
avoided using the word in his reports,
but his excavations showed that
highly organized centers of power existed in southwest England. They
were British lordships with resources,
culture and contacts perfectly
compatible with the idea of a
powerful Celtic leader like Ambrosius Aurelianos
or, for many, Arthur himself. The
press, however, was not as
cautious, as headlines in the
1960s reported the discovery of
Camelot, although Alcoc himself
denied it. Another key point in this
search was Tintagel on the
Cornoes coast. Joffre de Moremouth had
placed Arthur's birth there on
that site and from then on the place
became a magnet for researchers
and dreamers. In the 20th century,
archaeologist Riley Ratford excavated the area
and later researchers such as
Christopher Snyider studied his
results. Excavations revealed
the remains of a
fortified settlement that flourished between the
5th and 6th centuries. Ceramics
imported from the Eastern Mediterranean and
North Africa were found, along with fragments
of luxury glass, demonstrating that
the site was an important
trading center and also the residence of a
local elite. In 1998, a
slate slab was discovered bearing a
Latin inscription mentioning a certain Art of No, a
name some have linked to
ancient Welsh lineages. The media
quickly renamed it Arthur's Stone
, although experts clarified
that it had no connection to the
legendary king. Still, he showed that
literacy and
cultural continuity existed in Britannia in the 6th century. Far
from being a barbaric land, it was a
more complex society than previously
thought, which is already quite revealing
and a rather
important discovery. Meanwhile, Glastbury,
the supposed site of Arthur's grave,
was also revisited by
modern archaeology. Excavations confirmed
that the monastery had
ancient origins and that the area had been inhabited
since Roman times, but
no trace of a tomb
associated with Arthur or any
figure of his time was found. In fact, as I
have already said, the soil layers from the
supposed medieval discovery were
much more recent. Over
the decades, the findings at all
these sites have formed a
fairly coherent picture. After
the Roman withdrawal, Britannia did not
collapse completely as was believed, but
was reorganized into small kingdoms
with local leaders and which maintained
a certain structure, wealth, and
trade contacts with the
Mediterranean and Gaul. But
none of these bosses can be
safely identified as
Arthur. If there was a real person
behind the myth, it must have been one of
those 5th or 6th century British chieftains
who fought against
Saxon expansion. Some even point to
Riotamus, a British leader mentioned
by some Gallo-Roman chroniclers who
fought in Gaul. But in all
cases the connection with the
legendary Arthur remains a hypothesis and
not proof. Still, what is interesting
is that the excavations confirm the
context in which this myth may have been
born. There were wars, alliances,
fortresses and leaders who had
real power. It is possible that the story that
Joffrey of Mormouth transformed into the
Epopella was originally a mixture
of memories, fragmented facts, and
local legends. There is no trace of
Camelot, but there are many places that
may have resembled it for a time
. Today, no archaeologist claims to
have found direct evidence of
King Arthur, but almost all agree
that his myth reflects a deeper truth
: that of a culture that, in the face
of collapse, turned his memory into
legend. As Leslie Alcock himself said
, years after excavating
Catbury Hill, we didn't find Arthur,
but we did find the kind of world in
which Arthur would have made sense.
Perhaps that is, in the end, the only
real clue the myth leaves behind.
That's all for today's video.
I hope you enjoyed it and that
you'll let me know in the comments what you knew
about this story and whether you thought
it was real or were convinced it
was just a myth. Many
thanks to the channel members for
supporting us in this way. Thank you
for watching this video. If you don't know what to
comment, leave me this emoji and I'll
like it as soon as I can. And now,
without anything else to say, we'll see you
next time. Hello. [Music]
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