Prehistoric Britain
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History of the British Isles |
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Several species of humans have intermittently occupied
Fossils of very early Neanderthals dating to around 400,000 years ago have been found at Swanscombe in Kent, and of classic Neanderthals about 225,000 years old at Pontnewydd in Wales. Britain was unoccupied by humans between 180,000 and 60,000 years ago, when Neanderthals returned. By 40,000 years ago they had become extinct and modern humans had reached Britain. But even their occupations were brief and intermittent due to a climate which swung between low temperatures with a tundra habitat and severe ice ages which made Britain uninhabitable for long periods. The last of these, the Younger Dryas, ended around 11,700 years ago, and since then Britain has been continuously occupied.
Traditionally it was claimed by academics that a post-glacial land bridge existed between Britain and Ireland, however this conjecture began to be refuted by a consensus within the academic community starting in 1983, and since 2006 the idea of a land bridge has been disproven based upon conclusive marine geological evidence. It is now concluded that an ice bridge existed between Britain and Ireland up until 16,000 years ago, but this had melted by around 14,000 years ago.[1][2] Britain was at this time still joined to the Continent by a land bridge known as Doggerland, but due to rising sea levels this causeway of dry land would have become a series of estuaries, inlets and islands by 7000 BC,[3] and by 6200 BC, it would have become completely submerged.[4][5]
Located at the fringes of Europe, Britain received European technological and cultural developments much later than
No written language of the pre-
Stone Age
Palaeolithic
First trace of human settlement at Happisburgh
There is evidence from animal bones and
Summer temperatures at Happisburgh were an average of 16-17 degrees C and average winter temperatures were slightly colder than present day temperatures, around freezing point or just below. Conditions were comparable to present-day southern Scandinavia.[9] It is not established how early humans at Happisburgh would have been able to deal with the cold winters. It is possible that they migrated southwards during the winter but the distances are large. No evidence has been found for the use of fire during that period.[9]
At this time, Britain was a peninsula of Europe, connected by a chalk ridge running across to northern France and the English Channel did not yet exist.[9] There were two main rivers in eastern Britain: the Bytham River, flowing east from the English Midlands and then across the north of East Anglia, and the River Thames, which then flowed further north than today. Early humans may have followed the Rhine and thence around the huge north-facing bay into which the Thames and Bytham also flowed.[9] Humans in Happisburgh were in a great valley downstream from the joining of the two great rivers.
Reconstructing this ancient environment has provided clues to the route first visitors took to arrive at what was then a peninsula of the Eurasian continent. Archaeologists have found a string of early sites located close to the route of a now lost watercourse named the Bytham River which indicate that it was exploited as the earliest route west into Britain.
Settlement at Pakefield
Chronologically, the next evidence of human occupation is at Pakefield on the outskirts of Lowestoft in Suffolk 48 kilometres south of Happisburgh. They were in the lower Bytham river, and not the Thames which had now moved further south. Pakefield had mild winters and warm summers with average July temperatures of between 18 and 23 degrees C. There were wet winters and drier summers. Animal bones found in the area include rhinos, hippos, extinct elephants,giant deer, hyaenas, lions and sabre-toothed cats.[9]
Sites such as
The extreme cold of the following
Britain was populated only intermittently, and even during periods of occupation may have reproduced below replacement level and needed immigration from elsewhere to maintain numbers. According to Paul Pettitt and Mark White:
- The British Lower Palaeolithic (and equally that of much of northern Europe) is thus a long record of abandonment and colonisation, and a very short record of residency. The sad but inevitable conclusion of this must be that Britain has little role to play in any understanding of long-term human evolution and its cultural history is largely a broken record dependent on external introductions and insular developments that ultimately lead nowhere. Britain, therefore, was an island of the living dead.[10]
This period also saw Levallois flint tools introduced, possibly by humans arriving from Africa. However, finds from Swanscombe and Botany Pit in Purfleet support Levallois technology being a European rather than African introduction. The more advanced flint technology permitted more efficient hunting and therefore made Britain a more worthwhile place to remain until the following period of cooling known as the Wolstonian Stage, 352,000–130,000 years ago. Britain first became an island about 350,000 years ago.[11]
230,000 years BP the landscape was reachable and Early Neanderthal remains discovered at the Pontnewydd Cave in Wales have been dated to 230,000 BP,[12] and are the most north westerly Neanderthal remains found anywhere in the world.
The next glaciation closed in and by about 180,000 years ago Britain no longer had humans.[13] About 130,000 years ago there was an interglacial period even warmer than today, which lasted 15,000 years. There were lions, elephants hyenas and hippos as well as deer. There were no humans. Possibly humans were too sparse at that time. Until c.60,000 years ago there is no evidence of human occupation in Britain, probably due to inhospitable cold in some periods, Britain being cut off as an island in others, and the neighbouring areas of north-west Europe being unoccupied by hominins at times when Britain was both accessible and hospitable.[14]
This period is often divided into three subperiods: the Early Upper Palaeolithic (before the main glacial period), the Middle-Upper Palaeolithic (the main glacial period) and the Late Upper Palaeolithic (after the main glacial period). There was limited Neanderthal occupation of Britain in
The earliest evidence for modern humans in North West Europe is a jawbone discovered in England at Kents Cavern in 1927, which was re-dated in 2011 to between 41,000 and 44,000 years old.[17][18] The most famous example from this period is the burial of the "Red Lady of Paviland" (actually now known to be a man) in modern-day coastal South Wales, which was dated in 2009 to be 33,000 years old. The distribution of finds shows that humans in this period preferred the uplands of Wales and northern and western England to the flatter areas of eastern England. Their stone tools are similar to those of the same age found in Belgium and far north-east France, and very different from those in north-west France. At a time when Britain was not an island, hunter gatherers may have followed migrating herds of reindeer from Belgium and north-east France across the giant Channel River.[19]
The climatic deterioration which culminated in the
The first distinct
The dominant food species were
Between about 12,890 and 11,650 years ago Britain returned to glacial conditions during the Younger Dryas, and may have been unoccupied for periods.[23]
Mesolithic
(c. 9,000 to 4,300 BC)
The Younger Dryas was followed by the
The warmer climate changed the arctic environment to one of
It is likely that these environmental changes were accompanied by social changes. Humans spread and reached the far north of Scotland during this period.
In 1997,
Though the Mesolithic environment was bounteous, the rising population and the ancient Britons' success in exploiting it eventually led to local exhaustion of many natural resources. The remains of a Mesolithic elk found caught in a bog at Poulton-le-Fylde in Lancashire show that it had been wounded by hunters and escaped on three occasions, indicating hunting during the Mesolithic. A few Neolithic monuments overlie Mesolithic sites but little continuity can be demonstrated. Farming of crops and domestic animals was adopted in Britain around 4500 BC, at least partly because of the need for reliable food sources. The climate had been warming since the later Mesolithic and continued to improve, replacing the earlier pine forests with woodland.
Neolithic
(c. 4,300 to 2,000 BC)
The Neolithic was the period of domestication of plants and animals, but the arrival of a
In any case, the Neolithic Revolution, as it is called, introduced a more settled way of life and ultimately led to societies becoming divided into differing groups of farmers, artisans and leaders. Forest clearances were undertaken to provide room for cereal cultivation and animal herds. Native cattle and pigs were reared whilst sheep and goats were later introduced from the continent, as were the wheats and barleys grown in Britain. However, only a few actual settlement sites are known in Britain, unlike the continent. Cave occupation was common at this time.
The construction of the earliest earthwork sites in Britain began during the early Neolithic (c. 4400 BC – 3300 BC) in the form of long barrows used for communal burial and the first causewayed enclosures, sites which have parallels on the continent. The former may be derived from the long house, although no long house villages have been found in Britain — only individual examples. The stone-built houses on Orkney — such as those at Skara Brae — are, however, indicators of some nucleated settlement in Britain. Evidence of growing mastery over the environment is embodied in the Sweet Track, a wooden trackway built to cross the marshes of the Somerset Levels and dated to 3807 BC. Leaf-shaped arrowheads, round-based pottery types and the beginnings of polished axe production are common indicators of the period. Evidence of the use of cow's milk comes from analysis of pottery contents found beside the Sweet Track. According to archaeological evidence from North Yorkshire, salt was being produced by evaporation of seawater around this time, enabling more effective preservation of meat.[39]
Pollen analysis shows that woodland was decreasing and grassland increasing, with a major decline of elms. The winters were typically 3 degrees colder than at present but the summers some 2.5 degrees warmer.[citation needed]
The Middle Neolithic (c. 3300 BC – c. 2900 BC) saw the development of cursus monuments close to earlier barrows and the growth and abandonment of causewayed enclosures, as well as the building of impressive chamber tombs such as the Maeshowe types. The earliest stone circles and individual burials also appear.
Different pottery types, such as
Changes in Neolithic culture could have been due to the
Analysis of the
Bronze Age
(Around 2200 to 750 BC)
This period can be sub-divided into an earlier phase (2300 to 1200 BC) and a later one (1200 – 700 BC).
Britain had large, easily accessible reserves of tin in the modern areas of Cornwall and Devon and thus tin mining began. By around 1600 BC the southwest of Britain was experiencing a trade boom as British tin was exported across Europe, evidence of ports being found in Southern Devon at Bantham and Mount Batten. Copper was mined at the Great Orme in North Wales.
The Beaker people were also skilled at making ornaments from gold, silver and copper, and examples of these have been found in graves of the wealthy Wessex culture of central southern Britain.
Early Bronze Age Britons buried their dead beneath earth mounds known as
There has been debate amongst archaeologists as to whether the "Beaker people" were a race of people who migrated to Britain en masse from the continent, or whether a Beaker cultural "package" of goods and behaviour (which eventually spread across most of Western Europe) diffused to Britain's existing inhabitants through trade across tribal boundaries. A 2017 study suggests a major genetic shift in late Neolithic/early Bronze Age Britain, so that more than 90% of Britain's Neolithic gene pool was replaced with the coming of a people genetically related to the Beaker people of the lower-Rhine area.[6]
There is evidence of a relatively large scale disruption of cultural patterns (see
In an archaeogenetics study, Patterson et al. (2021) uncovered a migration into southern Britain during the 500-year period 1,300–800 BC.[50] The newcomers were genetically most similar to ancient individuals from Gaul, and had higher levels of EEF ancestry.[50] During 1,000–875 BC, their genetic marker swiftly spread through southern Britain,[51] making up around half the ancestry of subsequent Iron Age people in this area, but not in northern Britain.[50] The "evidence suggests that, rather than a violent invasion or a single migratory event, the genetic structure of the population changed through sustained contacts between Britain and mainland Europe over several centuries, such as the movement of traders, intermarriage, and small scale movements of family groups".[51] The authors describe this as a "plausible vector for the spread of early Celtic languages into Britain".[50] There was much less migration into Britain during the Iron Age, so it is likely that Celtic reached Britain before then.[50] The study also found that lactose tolerance rose swiftly in early Iron Age Britain, a thousand years before it became widespread in mainland Europe; suggesting milk became a very important foodstuff in Britain at this time.[50]
Iron Age
(around 750 BC – 43 AD)
In around 750 BC iron working techniques reached Britain from southern Europe. Iron was stronger and more plentiful than bronze, and its introduction marks the beginning of the Iron Age. Iron working revolutionised many aspects of life, most importantly agriculture. Iron tipped ploughs could turn soil more quickly and deeply than older wooden or bronze ones, and iron axes could clear forest land more efficiently for agriculture. There was a landscape of arable, pasture and managed woodland. There were many enclosed settlements and land ownership was important.
It is generally thought that by 500 BC most people inhabiting the British Isles were speaking
The traveller Pytheas, whose own works are lost, was quoted by later classical authors as calling the people "Pretanoi", which is cognate with "Britanni" and is apparently Celtic in origin. The term "Celtic" continues to be used by linguists to describe the family that includes many of the ancient languages of Western Europe and modern British languages such as Welsh without controversy.[55] The dispute essentially revolves around how the word "Celtic" is defined; it is clear from the archaeological and historical record that Iron Age Britain did have much in common with Iron Age Gaul, but there were also many differences. Many leading academics, such as Barry Cunliffe, still use the term to refer to the pre-Roman inhabitants of Britain for want of a better label.
Iron Age Britons lived in organised tribal groups, ruled by a chieftain. As people became more numerous,
Late pre-Roman Iron Age (LPRIA)
The last centuries before the Roman invasion saw an influx of
From around 175 BC, the areas of Kent, Hertfordshire and Essex developed especially advanced pottery-making skills. The tribes of southeast England became partially Romanised and were responsible for creating the first settlements (oppida) large enough to be called towns.
The last centuries before the Roman invasion saw increasing sophistication in British life. About 100 BC, iron bars began to be used as currency, while internal trade and trade with continental Europe flourished, largely due to Britain's extensive mineral reserves. Coinage was developed, based on continental types but bearing the names of local chieftains. This was used in southeast England, but not in areas such as Dumnonia in the west.
As the Roman Empire expanded northwards, Rome began to take interest in Britain. This may have been caused by an influx of refugees from Roman occupied Europe, or Britain's large mineral reserves. See Roman Britain for the history of this subsequent period.
Protohistory
The first significant written record of Britain and its inhabitants was made by the
After some further false starts, the
See also
- Prehistoric Europe
- Prehistoric Scotland
- Prehistoric Wales
- Prehistoric Cornwall
- Boxgrove
- Gough's Cave
- Genetic history of the British Isles
- Happisburgh footprints
- Kents Cavern
- List of prehistoric structures in Great Britain
- Pakefield
- Paviland
- Pontnewydd
- Swanscombe
- Arras Culture
- Wetwang Slack
- Danes Graves
- Arthur's Stone, Herefordshire
Notes
- ^ Edwards, R.J., Brooks, A.J (2008). "The Island of Ireland: Drowning the Myth of an Irish Land-bridge?". The Irish Naturalists' Journal: 19–34. Retrieved 3 April 2022.
{{cite journal}}
: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) - S2CID 128396341. Retrieved 3 April 2022.)
{{cite journal}}
: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link - S2CID 229168218.)
{{cite journal}}
: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link - ^ Nora McGreevy (2020). "Study Rewrites History of Ancient Land Bridge Between Britain and Europe". Smithsonian Magazine. Retrieved 3 April 2022.
- ^ Cunliffe, 2012, pp. 47–56
- ^ a b c The Beaker Phenomenon And The Genomic Transformation Of Northwest Europe (2017)
- ^ The 4th-century BC account by Pytheas has not survived, and only brief pieces of it are known from other writers.
- PMID 20613840. Retrieved 20 March 2024.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Britain One Million Years of the Human Story by Rob Dinnis & Chris Stringer published by the Natural History Museum, London 2013. Reprinted with updates 2023. ISBN 978 0 565 09337 2
- ^ Pettitt and White, pp. 132–33
- .
- ^ "The oldest people in Wales – Neanderthal teeth from Pontnewydd Cave". National Museum of Wales. 2007. Archived from the original on 13 June 2013.
- ^ Ancestors - A Prehistory of Britain in Seven Burials. Audiobook by Alice Roberts 2021
- ^ Pettitt and White, p. 292
- ^ Pettitt and White, pp. 332, 349–51
- doi:10.1002/jqs.2669.
- S2CID 4374023
- ^ "Fossil Teeth Put Humans in Europe Earlier Than Thought". The New York Times. 2 November 2011.
- ^ Dinnis, Robert (Winter 2012). "Hunting the Hunter". The British Museum Magazine (74): 26.
- S2CID 1324559.
- ^ Pettitt and White, p. 422
- ^ U-series dating suggests Welsh reindeer is Britain's oldest rock art, http://www.bris.ac.uk/news/2012/8606.html
- ^ Pettitt and White, pp. 489, 497
- ISSN 0267-8179.
- ^ Ashton, pp. 243, 270–72
- ^ Cunliffe, 2012, p. 58
- .
- ISBN 978-0-19-538476-5p.24
- ^ Cunliffe, 2012, p. 56
- ^ ISSN 0261-3077. Archived from the originalon 3 July 2023. Retrieved 3 June 2023.
- ^ "6.1 Mesolithic lifestyles | The Scottish Archaeological Research Framework". Scottish Archaeological Research Framework. 16 April 2012. Archived from the original on 21 October 2020. Retrieved 3 June 2023.
- ^ Balter, Michael. "DNA recovered from underwater British site may rewrite history of farming in Europe". Science. Retrieved 16 March 2015.
- ^ Saville, A. and Wickham-Jones, C. 2019. Palaeolithic and Mesolithic. Scottish Archaeological Research framework (ScARF). Accessed April 2022.
- S2CID 206521424.
- S2CID 9487217.
- S2CID 14667681.
- PMID 22748318.
- PMID 23523248.
- ^ "How new archaeological discovery in Yorkshire could rewrite British prehistory". The Independent. 31 March 2021. Retrieved 19 April 2021.
- ^ Molecular Biology and Evolution 19: 1008–1021 (full text)
- ^ Stephen Openheimer, The Origins of the British
- ^ Overlapping Genetic and Archaeological Evidence Suggests Neolithic Migration, Say Stanford Researchers (2002) Archived 9 June 2011 at the Wayback Machine (press release)
- ^ European Journal of Human Genetics (2005) 13, 1293–1302 (full text)
- S2CID 162960418.
- ^ Lemercier 2012, p. 131.
- ISSN 1578-5386. Retrieved 17 May 2010.
- ^ Koch, John. "New research suggests Welsh Celtic roots lie in Spain and Portugal". Retrieved 10 May 2010.
- ISBN 978-1-84217-410-4. Archived from the original on 12 June 2010.)
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link - ^ "O'Donnell Lecture 2008 Appendix" (PDF).
- ^ PMID 34937049.
- ^ a b "Ancient DNA study reveals large scale migrations into Bronze Age Britain". University of York. 22 December 2021. Retrieved 21 January 2022.
- ^ The Agricola, Tacitus.
- ^ Collis, John. The Celts – Origins, Myths and Inventions. Tempus, 2003
- ^ James, Simon. The Atlantic Celts British Museum Press, 1999
- ISBN 0-415-01035-7.
- Hogg, A.H.A.(1979). British Hill-forts: An Index. Oxford: BAR Brit. Ser. 62.
- ISBN 978-0-7134-1329-8.
Sources
- Ashton, Nick (2017). Early Humans. London: William Collins. ISBN 978-0-00-815035-8.
- Ball, Martin J. & James Fife (ed.). 1993. The Celtic Languages. London: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-01035-7.
- British History Encyclopedia. 1999. Paragon House. ISBN 1-4054-1632-7.
- Collis, John. 2003. The Celts – Origins, Myths and Inventions. Tempus.
- ISBN 978-0-19-967945-4.
- James, Simon. 1999. The Atlantic Celts. British Museum Press.
- Lemercier, O. (2012). "Interpreting the Beaker phenomenon in Mediterranean France: an Iron Age analogy". Antiquity. 86 (331): 131–43. S2CID 19294850.
- Pearson, Mike; Cleal, Ros; Marshall, Peter; Needham, Stuart; Pollard, Josh; Richards, Colin; Ruggles, Clive; Sheridan, Alison; S2CID 162960418.
- Pettitt, Paul; White, Mark (2012). The British Palaeolithic: Human Societies at the Edge of the Pleistocene World. Abingdon, UK: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-67455-3.
Further reading
- Alonso, Santos, Carlos Flores, Vicente Cabrera, Antonio Alonso, Pablo Martín, Cristina Albarrán, Neskuts Izagirre, Concepción de la Rúa and Oscar García. 2005. The place of the Basques in the European Y-chromosome diversity landscape. European Journal of Human Genetics 13:1293–1302.
- Cunliffe, Barry 2001. Facing the Ocean: The Atlantic and Its Peoples, 8000 BC to AD 1500. Oxford University Press.
- Cunliffe, Barry. 2002. The Extraordinary Voyage of Pytheas the Greek. Penguin.
- Darvill, Timothy C. 1987. Prehistoric Britain. London: B.T. Batsford ISBN 0-7134-5179-3
- Hawkes, Jaquetta and Christopher. 1943. Prehistoric Britain. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
- Miles, David. 2016. "The Tale of the Axe: How the Neolithic Revolution Transformed Britain". London Thames & Hudson Ltd. ISBN 978-0-500-05186-3
- Oppenheimer, Stephen. 2006. The Origins of the British. London: Constable.
- Pryor, Francis. 1999. Farmers in Prehistoric Britain. Stroud, Gloucestershire and Charleston, SC: Tempus. ISBN 0-7524-1477-1
- Pryor, Francis. 2003. Britain BC: Life in Britain and Ireland before the Romans. London, Harper-Collins. ISBN 0-00-712692-1
- Sykes, Brian. 2001. The Seven Daughters of Eve: The Science That Reveals Our Genetic Ancestry. Bantam, London. ISBN 0-593-04757-5
- Sykes, Brian. 2006. Saxons, Vikings, and Celts: The Genetic Roots of Britain and Ireland. New York, Norton & Co. (Published in the UK, also in 2006, as Blood of the Isles. London, Bantam Books.)
- Wainright, Richard. 1978. A Guide to Prehistoric Remains in Britain. London: Constable.
- Weale, Michael E.; Weiss, Deborah A.; Jager, Rolf F.; Bradman, Neil; Thomas, Mark G. (2002). "Y Chromosome Evidence for Anglo-Saxon Mass Migration". Molecular Biology and Evolution. 19 (7): 1008–1021. PMID 12082121.
External links
- Ancient Human Occupation of Britain Project
- Britain's human history revealed
- Scottish Archaeological Research Framework (ScARF)
- 700,000-year-old remains in Norfolk
- The Boxgrove project
- Ancient Britons come mainly from Spain
- An audio-visual presentation by Dr Mike Weale of UCL talking about genetic evidence for migration
- Britain BC Episode 1, the first episode of the film of Dr. Francis Pryor, a known expert on the Bronze Age, about British civilization, flourishing long before the Romans.