Category: Notes

• Covering 70,000BCE to about 100BCE
• 70,000BCE start of the last ice age, temperature dropped by less than 10^oF
• There were Woolly Mammoths and Giant Deer in Britannia
• 40,000BCE neanderthals started arriving to Britannia
• 30,000BCE modern humans started arriving to Britannia
• 22,000BCE A “cold snap”. Britannia became a treeless tundra for 1,000s of years.
  • Everything went south.
  • Things that did stay adapted to the dropping temperature.
  • Sea level was about 417 feet lower than it is today
  • Britannia was connected to both the continent and Ireland

Doggerland was the connecting area of land that connected britannia to the continent that, by around 6,500BCE, was completely underwater:

14,000BCE

• People started arriving back to Britannia as the temperatures began to rise again. The came from southern France and Spain.

12,000BCE

• End of the last Ice Age.
• Ireland is split off from Britannia completely.
• Britannia still just about connected to continent by a land bridge
• Woodlands began coming back
• Humans begin using small flint tools
• Many animals dying out due to rising temperatures. That, and the humans hunting them.

7,150BCE

• Cheddar Man
  • Man of about 21 years old
  • From the Cheddar Region
  • Died due to a blow on the head
  • Marks on his skeleton due to bones being scraped clean:
    • This is thought to be either burial rituals (secondary burial)
    • Or possibly cannibalism
  • He is related to at least two residents of modern-day Cheddar
  • Also related to about 11% of modern European population
• The land from Britannia to continent becoming marshy.

6,500BCE

• Doggerland now completely sank into the channel
• Britannia is separated from the continent.

4,000BCE

• Britannia hits the Neolithic Age (aka New Stone Age)
• Britannia Population of about 10,000

2,500BCE

• Stonehenge was built.

1,000BCE

• Hill forts begin popping up across country.
• Britannia now in Bronze age, whilst the rest of Europe was in the Iron Age.

700BCE

• Iron begins being introduced into Britannia.
• There was a slow switch over to Iron, probably sped up by warring tribes wanting the upper hand in battle.

500-400BCE

• Celts begin arriving from France and Northern Spain
• At least 2 groups of Celts:
  • Goidelic (which became Gaelic) – Settled in Ireland around 350BCE
  • Brythonic (which became Welsh, Cornish and Briton)
  • Celts as a whole came from the Hellstat Territory in central Europe around 6th Century BCE
• Britannia was actually known of Albion, from the Latin word meaning white.

325BCE

• Greek navigator Pytheas arrived on shores of Britannia
  • Had a way of navigating and mapping the island by putting a stick in the ground and noting it’s shadow at various times of the day.
  • The name Britannia came from him calling the people he found “Pretani”, meaning “The Painted People” – This made “Pretannike” – The land of the painted people. In Latin P’s often substituted to B’s and so became Britannia.

• Distinct cultural groups
  • Coastal people — often traders.
    • Kent was most advanced
  • Inland people — often hunters and scavengers.
• The way the land was meant that many communities were small in size.

200BCE

• Trade is increased
• Contact with Greece emerges due to the widely available Greek coins.
• Major exports from Britannia were thought to be Tin, Copper and Hunting Dogs.

100BCE

• Gallo Belgic coins start appearing.
  • Believed to be due to people accepting payments from military services.
  • Some Britons were mercenary fighters for hire.
• “Oppidum” sites increasing — this is according to Caeser.
  • Large walled towns often in thickly wooded areas, protected by ditches.
• Britannia was largely an agricultural economy.
• Population now around the 1,000,000 area.
  • They spoke a Celtic language
• The “Traditional English countryside” pretty much had its beginnings at this point.
• The Religion of the time was Druidism.
• Discovery of Lindow Man in a peat bog at Lindow Moss near Wilmslow in Cheshire
  • Possibly struck on the head (but not killed)
  • Then strangled (but not killed)
  • Then his throat cut.
  • Mistletoe pollen found in his stomach.
    • A possible back up for the claim by Romans that the Druids did human sacrifice.