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Chapter One: Prehistoric Britain
Though the scribes that accompanied the Roman
invaders of the greater part of the islands of Britain
gave us the first written history of the land that came to be known as England,
its history had already been writ large in its ancient monuments and
archeological findings.
Present day England is riddled with evidence
of its long past, of the past that the Roman writers did not record but which
is indelibly etched in the landscape. Where the green and cultivated land is
not disfigured by cities and towns and villages of later civilizations --
those dark Satanic mills so loathed by William Blake -- one can see what seem
to be anomalies on the hillsides. There are strange bumps and mounds; remains
of terraced or plowed fields; irregular slopes that bespeak ancient hill
forts; strangely carved designs in the chalk; jagged teeth of upstanding
megaliths; stone circles of immense breadth and height; and ancient,
mysterious wells and springs.
Humans settled here long before the
islands broke away from the continent of Europe.
They found there way here long before the seas formed what is now known as
the English Channel, that body of water that protected the islands for so
long, and that was to keep it out of much of the maelstrom that became
medieval Europe. Thus England's peculiar character as
part of an island nation came about through its very isolation.
Early man came, settled, farmed, and
built. His remains tell us much about his life style and his habits. We know
of the island's early inhabitants from what they left behind. In such sites
as Clacton-on-Sea in Essex, and Swanscombe in Kent, the exploration of gravel
pits has opened up a whole new way of seeing our ancient ancestors dating
back all the way to the lower Paleolithic (early Stone Age). Here were
deposited not only fine tools made of flint, including hand-axes, but also
animal bones including those of elephants, rhinoceroses, cave-bears, lions,
horses, deer, giant oxen, wolves and hares. From the remains, we can assume
that man lived at the same time as these animals, most of which have long
disappeared from the English landscape. So we know that a thriving culture
existed around 8,000 years ago in the misty, westward islands the Romans were
to call Britannia, though some have suggested the occupation was only
seasonal, due to the still-cold climate as the glacial period came slowly to
an end.
As the climate improved, however, there
seems to have been an increase in the movements of people into Britain
from the Continent, attracted by its forests, its wild game, abundant rivers
and fertile southern plains. An added attraction was its relative isolation,
giving protection against the fierce nomadic tribesmen that kept appearing
out of the east, forever searching for new hunting grounds and perhaps,
people to subjugate and enslave.
The new age of settlement took place around
4,500 B.C, in what we now term the Neolithic Age. Though isolated farm houses
seem to be the norm, the remarkable findings at Skara Brae and Rinyo in the
Orkneys give evidence of settled, village life. In both sites, extensive use
was made of local stone for interior walls, beds, boxes, cupboards and
hearths. Roofs seem to have been supported by whale bone, more plentiful than
timber, and more durable. Much farther south, at Carn Brea in Cornwall,
another Neolithic village attests to a life-style similar to that enjoyed at
Skara Brae, except in the more fertile south, agriculture played a much
larger part in the lives of the villagers. Animal husbandry took place at
both sites.
Very early on, farming began to transform
the landscape of Britain
from virgin forest to ploughed fields. An excavated settlement at Windmill
Hill, Wiltshire, shows us that its early inhabitants kept domestic animals;
they cultivated wheat and barley, and also grew flax; they gathered fruits,
and they made pottery. They buried their dead in long barrows -- huge
elongated mounds of earth raised over a temporary wooden structure in which
several bodies were laid. These long barrows are found all over southern
England, where fertile soil allied to a flat, or gently rolling landscape
greatly aided settlement, the keeping of animals, and soil cultivation.
To clear the forests, stone axes of a sophisticated design were used. Many of
these were provided by trading with other groups of people or by mining
high-quality flint. Both activities seem to have been widespread, as stone
axes appear in many areas away from the source of their manufacture). At
Grimes Grave, in Norfolk (in the eastern half
of England),
great quantities of flint were mined by miners working deep hollowed-out
shafts and galleries in the chalk.
At the same time the Windmill people
practiced their way of life, other farming people introduced decorated
pottery and different shaped tools to Britain. The cultures may have
combined to produce the striking Megalithic monuments, the burial chambers
and the henges. The tombs consisted of passage graves, in which a long narrow
passage leads to a burial chamber in the very middle of the mound; and
gallery graves, in which the passage is wider, divided by stone partitions
into stall-like compartments. Some of these tombs were built of massive
blocks of stone standing upright as walls, with other huge blocks laid across
horizontally to make a roof. They were then covered with earthen mounds, most
of which have eroded away.
One of the most impressive of these tombs is
New Grange in present-day Ireland.
They are the oldest man-made stone structures known, older even than the
great Pyramids of Egypt.
Sometime in the early and Middle Neolithic
period, groups of people began to build camps or enclosures in valley bottoms
or on hilltops. Perhaps these were originally built to pen cattle, later
being developed for defense, for settlement, or as meeting places for
exchange of products. These enclosures began to evolve into more elaborate
sites that may have been used for religious ceremonies, perhaps even for
studying the night stars so that sowing, planting and harvesting could be
done at the most propitious times of the year.
Whatever their purpose, most of these henges, are circular or semi-circular
in pattern. They include banks and ditches; the most impressive, at Avebury,
in Wiltshire, had a ditch 2l meters in width, and 9 meters deep in places.
Many sites still contain circles of pits, central stones, cairns or burials, and clearly defined
stone or timber entrances.
It was not too long before stone circles began to dot the landscape, spanning
the period between the late Neolithic and the early Bronze Ages (c. 3370 -
2679 B.C). Outside these circles were erected the monoliths, huge single
standing stones that may have been aligned on the rising or setting sun at
midsummer or midwinter. Some of these, such as the groups of circles known as
the Calva group in present-day Scotland, also were used for
burials and burial ceremonies. Henges seem to have been used for multiple
purposes, justifying the enormous expenditure of time and energy to construct
them.
The arrival of the so-called "Beaker
people" brought the first metal-users to the British
Isles. Perhaps they used their beakers to store beer, for they
grew barley and knew how to brew beer from it. At the time of their arrival
in Britain,
they seem to have mingled with another group of Europeans we call the
"Battle-axe people," who had domesticated the horse, used wheeled
carts, and smelted and worked copper. They also buried their dead in single
graves, often under round barrows. They also may have introduced a language
into Britain
derived from Indo-European. The two groups seem to have blended together to
produce the cult in southern England that we call the Wessex Culture,
responsible for the enormous earthwork called Silbury Hill, the largest
man-made mound in prehistoric Europe. Silbury is 39 meters high; it was built
as a series of circular platforms, but its purpose is still unknown. Nearby
is the largest henge of all, Avebury -- a vast circular ditch and bank, an
outer ring of one hundred standing stones, and two smaller inner rings of
stones. Outside the monument was a mile-long avenue of standing stones.
Stonehenge, in the same general area as Silbury and Avebury, is perhaps the
most famous, certainly the most photographed of all the prehistoric monuments
in Britain.
We can only guess at the amount of labor involved in its construction. The
task was enormously complex, including the transporting of the inner blue
stones from the Preseli Hills in distant West Wales;
and the erection of the great circle and horseshoe of large sarsen stones,
shaped and dressed. The architectural sophistication of the monument bears
witness to the tremendous technological advances being made at the time of
the arrival of the Bronze Age. Grave goods also attest to the sophistication
of the Wessex
culture: these include stone battle axes; metal daggers with richly decorated
hilts; precious ornaments of gold or amber; gold cups and amulets; even a
scepter with a polished mace-head at one end.
To make bronze, tin came from the western
peninsula now known as Cornwall; gold came
from what is now Wales,
and products made from these metals were traded freely both within the
British Isles and with peoples on the continent of Europe.
Bronze was used to make cauldrons and bowls, shields and helmets, weapons of
war, and farming tools. It was at this time, too, that the Celtic peoples
arrived in the islands we now call Britain.
One of the most significant elements in the new
culture was the system of burial. Important people were buried along with
their most precious possessions, including wheeled wagons, in timber built
chambers under earthen barrows. The Celts were very highly skilled craftsmen,
using iron, bronze and gold, and producing fine burnished pottery. It wasn't
long after they reached the British Isles
that their culture began to infiltrate the mineral-rich islands off the
Continent. The Greeks called these people Keltoi, the Romans Celtai. Their
arrival into the British Isles from the
Continent probably took place in successive waves. In present day Yorkshire,
"the Arras Culture" with its chariot burials attests to the
presence of a wealthy and flourishing Celtic society in the northeast of Britain.
In the southwest, cross-Channel influence is seen. Here, a culture developed
that was probably highly involved in the mining and trading of tin. Hill
forts from the Iron Age, the age of the Celts, are found everywhere in the British Isles. Spectacular relics from prehistoric
times, they had as many purposes as sites; varying from shelters for people
and livestock in times of danger, purely local settlements of important
leaders and their families, to small townships and administrative centers.
Long practiced in the arts of warfare, the
people of these isolated settlements were responsible for some of the finest
artistic achievements known. In addition to their beautifully wrought and
highly decorated shields, daggers, spears, helmets and sword, they also
produced superb mirrors, toilet articles, drinking vessels and personal
jewelry of exquisite form and decoration.
The Celts in Britain used a language derived
from a branch of Celtic known as either Brythonic (later becoming Welsh,
Cornish and Breton) or Goidelic (giving rise to Irish, Scots Gaelic and
Manx). Along with their languages, the Celts brought their religion to Britain,
particularly that of the Druids, the guardians of traditions and learning.
The Druids glorified the pursuits of war, feasting and horsemanship. They
controlled the calendar and the planting of crops, and they presided over the
religious festivals and rituals that honored local deities. Many of Britain's Celts came from Gaul,
driven from their homelands by the Roman armies and by Germanic tribes to
their east. They brought with them a sophisticated plough that was to
revolutionize agriculture in the rich, heavy soils of their new lands. Their
society was well organized in urban settlements, the capitals of their tribal
chiefs. Their crafts were highly developed; bronze urns, bowls, and torques
illustrate their metal working skills. They also introduced a coinage to Britain, and they conducted a lively export
trade with Rome and Gaul,
including corn, livestock, metals, leather and slaves.
Of the Celtic lands of the mainland of Britain, Wales
and Scotland
have received extensive coverage in the companion volumes of this history.
The largest non-Celtic area by far, at least linguistically, is now known as England,
and it is here that the Roman influence is most strongly felt. It was here,
in the southern half of the island that the armies of Rome came to stay, to farm, to mine, to
build roads, small cities, and to prosper, but mostly to govern.
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Originally published at http://www.picturesofengland.com/history/#
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