Britain's prehistory (History- Night Shift)

BRITAIN’S PREHISTORY

Prehistoric Britain was a period in the human occupation of Great Britain that was the later part of prehistory, ending with the Roman invasion of Britain in AD 43, though some historical information is available about Britain before this, derived from archaeological research.
Britain has not always been an island, it became one only after the end of the last ice age. The temperature rose and the ice cap melted, flooding the lower-lying land that is now under the North Sea and the English Channel. The Ice Age was not just one long equally cold period. There were warmer times when the ice cap retreated, and colder periods when the ice cap reached as far south as the River Thames.

~ 250, 000 BC

• Our first evidence of human life is a few stone tools, dating from one of the warmer periods.

• There were two different kinds of inhabitant:
* The earlier group made their tools from flakes of flint, similar in kind to stone tools found across the north European plain as far as Russia.
* The other group made tools (hand axes) from a central core of flint, probably the earliest method of human tool making, which spread from Africa to Europe.

• However, the ice advanced again and Britain became hardly habitable until another milder period, probably around 50,000 BC. During this time a new type of human being seems to have arrived, who was the ancestor of the modern British. These people looked similar to the modern British, but were probably smaller and had a life span of only about thirty years.

~ 10, 000 BC

• As the Ice Age finally ended, there was a gradual amelioration of climate leading to the replacement of tundra by forest.

• Britain was peopled by small groups of hunters, gatherers and fishers. Few had settled homes, and they seemed to have followed herds of deer which provided them with food and clothing.

~ 5000 BC
• The rising sea levels caused by the melting glaciers cut Britain off from continental Europe and Britain had become heavily forested. For the wanderer-hunter culture this was a disaster, for the cold- loving deer and other animals on which they lived largely died out.
• Humans spread and reached the far north of Scotland during this period
~ 3000 BC (Neolithic or New Stone Age)

• People crossed the narrow sea from Europe in small round boats of bent wood covered with animal skins. These people kept animals and grew corn crops, and knew how to make pottery. They probably came from either the Iberian (Spanish) peninsula or even the North African coast. They were small, dark, and long-headed people, and may be the forefathers of dark-haired inhabitants of Wales and Cornwall today. They settled in the western parts of Britain and Ireland.

• These were the first of several waves of invaders before the first arrival of the Romans in 55 BC.

• Industrial flint mining began, with evidence of long distance trade, this period are mainly defined by technological advances and changes in tools or weapons.

• The great "public works" of this time, tell us a little of how prehistoric Britain was developing. The earlier of these works were great "barrows", or burial mounds, made of earth or stone. Most of these barrows are found on the chalk uplands of south Britain. They were airy woodlands that could easily be cleared for farming, and as a result were the most easily habitable part of the countryside. By 1400 BC, the climate became drier, and as a result this land could no longer support many people.

After 3000 BC

• The chalkland people started building great circles of earth banks and ditches. Inside, they built wooden buildings and stone circles. These "henges", were centres of religious, political and economic power.

• By far the most spectacular, was Stonehenge, which was built in separate stages over a period of more than a thousand years. The precise purposes of Stonehenge remain a mystery. It was almost certainly a sort of capital, to which the chiefs of other groups came from all over Britain.

• In Ireland the centre of prehistoric civilisation grew around the River Boyne and at Tara in Ulster.

After 2400 BC

• New groups of people arrived in southeast Britain from Europe. They were roundheaded and strongly built, taller than Neolithic Britons. It is not known whether they invaded by armed force, or whether they were invited by Neolithic Britons because of their military or metal working skills. Their influence was soon felt and they became leaders of British society. Their arrival is marked by the first individual graves, furnished with pottery beakers, from which these people get their name: the "Beaker" people.

• The Beaker people:

* They brought with them from Europe a new cereal, barley, which could grow almost anywhere.

* They probably spoke an IndoEuropean language and seem to have brought a single culture to the whole of Britain.

* They also brought skills to make bronze tools and these began to replace stone ones. But they accepted many of the old ways.

~ 1300 BC onwards

• The henge civilisation seems to have become less important, and was overtaken by a new form of society in southern England, that of a settled farming class. At first this farming society developed in order to feed the people at the henges, but eventually it became more important and powerful as it grew richer.

• The new farmers grew wealthy because they learned to enrich the soil with natural waste materials so that it did not become poor and useless. This change probably happened at about the same time that the chalk uplands were becoming drier.

• Family villages and fortified enclosures appeared across the landscape, in lowerlying areas as well as on the chalk hills, and the old central control of Stonehenge and the other henges was lost.

• From this time, power seems to have shifted to the Thames valley and southeast Britain. Except for short periods, political and economic power has remained in the southeast ever since.

• Hill-forts replaced henges as the centres of local power, and most of these were found in the southeast.

• There was another reason for the shift of power eastwards. A number of better-designed bronze swords have been found in the Thames valley, suggesting that the local people had more advanced metalworking skills.


Around 700 BC  another group of people began to arrive: the Celts