Great Britain prehistory

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This article covers the prehistory of Britain from its first settlement in prehistoric times to the Roman invasion in AD 43.

The sequence

Britain was permanently settled by humans around ten thousand years ago. In pre-Roman times no script was developed, so that the culture and way of life of the inhabitants can be reconstructed on the basis of archaeological finds and findings.

Settlement of the British Isles in the ice-free period of the English Channel during the Weichsel-Würm glacial period. For thousands of years, the Doggerland was a refuge and passage area for ice age hunters and gatherers. Comparison of the geographic situation in the year 2000 to the late years of the Weichsel-Würm Ice Age

Because Great Britain was on the edge of Europe , new technologies and cultural achievements were introduced later than on the continent, especially after the land connection that had existed until then was interrupted by the post-glacial sea rise some 5,500 years ago. The history of Great Britain was previously viewed as a series of waves of immigration. Recent archaeological theories question this interpretation and assume a more complex relationship between the island and the continent. Many changes in society are seen as the adoption of the technologies by the locals. It used to be assumed that new technologies were imposed by invaders.

Ancient historians such as Herodotus already mentioned the legendary tin islands or Kassiteriden as the place of origin of the tin introduced into the Mediterranean. The first detailed description of the British Isles and their inhabitants was made by the navigator Pytheas from the then Greek colony of Marseille , who lived around 325 BC. Explored their coasts. However, cultural relations with the continent already existed in the Neolithic Age , especially the abundant tin was exported and resold by Phoenician long-distance traders.

Old Stone Age

The Paleolithic of the British area covers the period between 750,000 and 8300 years before our time. During this long period of time, many environmental changes occurred, including several ice ages and warm ages , which either affected people's lives or forced them to abandon the islands. Finding exact dates from this age is difficult. The people of that time were hunters and gatherers who followed the herds of wild animals.

Findings of bone tools and flint found at Happisburgh in Norfolk indicate that Homo erectus lived in Britain 700,000 years ago. At that time there was a land bridge to mainland Europe, which allowed unhindered migration. The English Channel was a river at that time. The Thames and the Seine were later to form from its tributaries . Great Britain was an offshore peninsula .

Various finds, for example at Boxgrove in Sussex , prove the immigration of Homo heidelbergensis 500,000 years ago. These members of the Acheuléen culture made tools out of sandstone ( quartzite ) and hunted the mammals that were native to the region . They drove elephants , hippos and rhinos over cliffs or in bogs to kill them.

The extreme cold of the subsequent Elster Ice Age drove all residents of Great Britain to warmer areas. Only in the subsequent warm period did the people return. This period was 420,000 to 360,000 years ago. Tools from this period have been found at Barnfield Hill in Kent .

During the Saale Ice Age , which took place 240,000 to 180,000 years ago, improved sandstone tools of the Levallois culture were introduced. These new tools enabled more efficient hunting and allowed settlement even during the Ice Age. However, only a few traces have been found from the next warm period (180,000 to 70,000 years ago). For the first time, Great Britain was separated from the continent, which may explain the lack of settlement.

Around 60,000 years ago, the Neanderthals settled in the southern, unglaciated part of Great Britain. The most important finds of this period were made at Oldbury in Kent and at Kents Cavern in Devon .

The Neanderthals' era ended around 30,000 years ago after the immigration of modern humans ( Homo sapiens ). The best-preserved find from this period is the so-called Red Lady of Paviland from Wales , a skeleton of a young man painted with red ocher , whose age is said to be more than 30,000 years. The Worm Ice Age drove people away again and Great Britain was uninhabited until about 13,000 years ago. The landscape during the last ice age was a treeless tundra . Around 10,000 years ago, people came back over a land bridge.

Mesolithic

The increasingly warmer climate favored the growth of pine , birch and alder forests . The large herds of reindeer and horses had migrated and were replaced by elk , deer and aurochs . The residents of Great Britain had to change their hunting methods and develop new tools. At the same time, barbs were used for the first time in fishing. Humans migrated to the north of Scotland during this period . It used to be thought that the people of Great Britain during the late Paleolithic were nomads . Today it is believed that they settled down seasonally or even built permanent dwellings when the conditions were favorable. Finds u. a. from Star Carr in Yorkshire and the mussel heaps from Oronsay ( Hebrides ). In Howick , Northumberland , the 9,600 year old remains of a round building six meters in diameter have been found. The excavators assume a massive wooden structure.

Increased hunting ( overkill hypothesis ) or changes in the environment led to the extinction of numerous animal species. At Poulton-le-Fylde in Lancashire , a Palaeolithic was in a bog moose found who was wounded by hunters and escaped. The Agriculture and Livestock Breeding held around the year 4700 v. Moving in because new people came to the island. Around the same time, the coniferous forests were replaced by deciduous forests due to the warmer climate .

Neolithic

The transition to the Neolithic took place around 3900 BC. Chr. Instead, whether through immigration or taking over cultural elements from the mainland is controversial.

In 1997 a DNA analysis was performed on the skeleton of the Mesolithic Cheddar Man found in the Cheddar Gorge of Somerset . According to the findings - which, however, were only published in a non-peer-reviewed online publication - some Brits are still related to the population to which Cheddar Man belonged.

In the Neolithic Age, people began to create earthworks. Paved paths have been known in Ireland since the Mesolithic. In Great Britain, the first are from the Neolithic. A wooden footbridge over a Somerset bog ( Sweet track , Somerset Levels) dates to around 3807 BC. The Belmarsh Trackway in London is even 200 years older. In order to create space for agriculture and livestock, more forests were cleared.

The secured food supply led to further population growth. There was enough manpower to build monuments ( e.g. Silbury Hill ) and burial mounds ( West Kennet Long Barrow ). Longhouses were built of wood (Claish, Balbridie ) and flint was mined in mines such as Cissbury , Blackpatch and Harrow Hill in West Sussex, and later also in Grimes Graves in Norfolk .

Bronze age

Around 2500 BC The so-called Bell Beaker Culture, the first metalworking culture on the island, found its way into Great Britain. At first they made tools out of copper , but around 2150 BC. Chr. One went over to the production of bronze. The addition of a little tin made the copper much harder. This is how the Bronze Age began in Great Britain. Over the next thousand years, stone tools and weapons were gradually replaced by bronze ones.

Great Britain had rich tin deposits, especially in Cornwall and Devon . Around 1600 BC British pewter was distributed throughout Europe by trade. The bell- beaker people (English Beaker ) were also skilled goldsmiths. Gold jewelry has also been discovered in Wessex culture tombs in southern England.

The British of the Early Bronze Age buried their dead in burial mounds, often with grave goods from the bell-cup culture. Later, people began to cremate the dead and keep the ashes in urns. The people of that time built structures like Stonehenge .

It has been proven that in the 12th century BC An invasion or mass immigration to southern England must have taken place.

Iron age

Around 750 BC The iron processing of southern Europe reached from Great Britain. Iron , the introduction of which marks the beginning of the Iron Age , was stronger and more abundant than the basic materials for bronze . Iron processing revolutionized numerous areas of life, most likely in agriculture . Iron plows could dig up the land better than bronze ones, and iron axes could cut trees much more efficiently.

Around 800 BC A limited immigration from the continent began, but above all an increasing spread of the Celtic language on the island. Until 500 BC BC it had probably spread over almost the entire British Isles . Since the material culture of Britain, despite clear Celtic influences, also exhibits considerable deviations and peculiarities, the British of the Iron Age are no longer considered to be Celts in the narrower sense from an archaeological point of view. Unlike in the past, the Celtic influence is explained by intensive cultural and trade contacts rather than massive immigration from the mainland. The British were skilled artisans and blacksmiths. They made ornate gold jewelry as well as weapons made of bronze and iron. They lived in tribes led by a chief . Fortified settlements ( oppida ) arose in several places , for example in Camulodunum .

Large farms produced food on an almost industrial scale. Roman sources report that the Celts exported hunting dogs, animal skins, and slaves. Around 175 BC BC people apparently moved from Gaul and what is now Belgium ( Belgae ) to Great Britain and settled in Kent , Hertfordshire and Essex . Their pottery skills were more advanced than anything UK residents have known before.

Around 100 BC . AD were iron bars as currency used; trade with Europe flourished mainly thanks to the export of metals. The first coins were minted soon afterwards . These were based on those from the continent, but bore the names of local rulers. As the Roman Empire expanded north, the Romans began to take an interest in Britain. Above all, the rich metal deposits promised rich booty.

Iron Age Tribes in the British Isles

Before the Roman conquest of England and Wales, the following tribes lived in Great Britain and Ireland:

See also

literature

  • Rodney Castleden: The Stonehenge people: an exploration of life in neolithic Britain, 4700-2000 BC Routledge & Kegan Paul, London 1987, ISBN 0-415-04065-5 .
  • Nicola Barber, Andy Langley: British history encyclopedia: from early man to present day. Parragon, Bath 1999, ISBN 0-7525-3222-7 .

Single topics

  • Clive Waddington, Geoff Bailey, Ian Boomer, Nicky Milner, Kristian Pederson, Robert Shiel, Tony Stevenson: A Mesolithic Settlement at Howick, Northumberland. Antiquity 295, 2003.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Julian Thomas: Current debates on the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition in Britain and Ireland. ( Memento of February 11, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 412 kB)
  2. ↑ See for example: Herodotus , Historien 3.115 .
  3. ↑ Selina Brace et al .: Population Replacement in Early Neolithic Britain. In: bioRxiv. Online publication from February 18, 2018, doi: 10.1101 / 267443