Ancient Britain

I

Introduction

Ancient Britain, term used to denote the islands of Great Britain from the time of the earliest human presence, about 700,000 years ago, to the arrival of the Angles and Saxons in the 5th and 6th centuries. During that time enormous changes took place. The name Britain comes from the Latin name Britannia, which the ancient Romans applied to the island, and the name Britain is still widely used to mean Great Britain.

II

The First Hunters

The earliest prehistoric humans reached Britain during the Pleistocene Epoch. They belonged to a species older than Homo sapiens (modern human beings), and they wandered from mainland Europe, which was then connected to Britain by extensive lowlands. They were probably following herds of wild animals on which they depended for food and clothing.

Hand axes, the multipurpose tools of stone age people, have been found at Swanscombe and Hoxne in southern England. Excavations in Sussex have revealed hand axes and other flint implements that date from around 500,000 years ago. They indicate sites where animals were killed and butchered by ice age hunters. The human remains from the site, some of the oldest in the world, are those of Homo heidelbergensis. Even older stone tools, dated to 700,000 years ago, have been found at another site in Sussex. Although no human bones were recovered with the objects, the tools may have been made by Homo antecessor, an earlier human species.

By the end of the Pleistocene Epoch, about 11,500 years ago, Britain was thinly settled by people who physically resembled modern humans. They had more sophisticated tools and more permanent settlements than their predecessors but still lived primarily by hunting. Some remains of settlement have been found at the mouths of caves.

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By about 6000 bc the marshy land bridge across the North Sea, linking Britain and mainland Europe, had flooded, and Britain became a cluster of islands. Tools were designed to hunt specific animals; arrows, for example, were used to shoot birds. Hunting was still an important activity, but some evidence suggests that people gathered other foods, such as fish and shellfish, as well as fruits, nuts, and roots.

III

Settlers and Farmers

A significant change in the development of ancient Britain was the adoption of agriculture, which allowed people to abandon the wandering lifestyle of the hunter-gatherer and settle permanently on the land. Communities formed and they led to the development of new forms of social organization, of religious and ceremonial activities, and of technology and material culture (pottery, housing, ornaments, and other items).

Early in the Neolithic period, large areas of forest were chopped down in Britain as early farmers cut out clearings for their flocks and crops. The plants (including wheat and barley) and animals (hogs and sheep) that were raised were not native to Britain, but came originally from the Near East, where farming had begun as early as 9000 bc. The first seeds and domesticated animals must have crossed the English Channel in boats with immigrants from Europe to Britain.

IV

Neolithic Monuments and Sites

By about 3500 bc, the emerging communities in Britain had begun to construct monuments of earth, timber, and stone in a landscape that was increasingly deforested and open. These monuments indicate the extent to which ritual and ceremony dominated Neolithic life. Among the earliest monuments are areas enclosed by ditches and embankments that are roughly circular in shape. Sites of this type may have been used for meetings of scattered communities; there is evidence of the ritual slaughter of cattle and of the exchange of goods such as stone axes.

The most distinctive monument of the early Neolithic period is the long barrow, a rectangular mound of earth or rubble covering a burial place. These funerary monuments served entire communities. It is possible that they were associated with the worship of ancestors. By around 2500 bc new types of monuments had begun to emerge in Britain. Most important is the henge monument, a circular, banked earthwork constructed for ceremonial purposes. The best-known henges are Avebury and Stonehenge, but nearly 100 such sites have been found in Britain. Stonehenge also has a great circle of 30 massive uprights, joined by a circle of stone lintels, which dates from a later period.

The best-preserved settlement in Britain is the village of Skara Brae in the Orkney Islands. Here, stone houses cluster closely, linked by stone passages. Beds, tables, dressers, and hearths made of stone furnish the houses. But most Neolithic dwellings were made of timber and have not survived.

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