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Timeline of prehistoric Britain

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Timeline of prehistoric Britain
Other centuries
Prehistory | 1st century

Events from the prehistory of Britain (to 1 BC).

Conventions

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  • This timeline focuses on species of Homo and covers the Pleistocene from the first evidence of humans.
  • The names used for glaciations and interglacials are those with historic usage for Britain and may not reflect the full climate detail of modern studies.
  • Dates for the Paleolithic are given as Before Present (BP), which uses 1 January 1950 as the commencement date of the age scale. All later dates are given as Before Christ (BC), which uses the conventional Gregorian calendar with AD 1 as the commencement date of the age scale.

Events

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Paleolithic

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A selection of stone tools from Eartham Pit, Boxgrove
  • c. 970,000 to 936,000 BP
  • c. 700,000 BP
  • c. 500,000 BP
  • c. 478,000 BP
    • Anglian glaciation begins – the most extreme in the Pleistocene. Britain extensively covered by ice.
  • c. 450,000 BP
  • c. 425,000 BP
    • Hoxnian Interglacial begins as the Anglian glaciation ends.
  • c. 400,000 BP
  • c. 352,000 BP
    • Wolstonian glaciation begins. Neanderthal occupation intermittent.
  • c. 180,000 BP
    • Neanderthals completely driven out. There will be little human occupation of any kind for many thousands of years.
  • c. 160,000 BP
  • c. 130,000 BP
  • c. 125,000 BP
  • c. 115,000 BP
    • Devensian glaciation ('Last Glacial Period') begins.
  • c. 60,000 BP
    • Sea levels have dropped sufficiently for Neanderthals to return to Britain in the warmer periods, possibly only as summer visitors.[11]
  • c. 44,000-41,000 BP
  • c. 40,000 BP
    • Neanderthals go extinct across Europe.
  • c. 26,000-13,000 BP
    • Dimlington stadial[14] ('Last Glacial Maximum'). Britain almost entirely under ice. Southern England a polar desert. Humans driven out.
  • c. 16,500-14,670 BP
    • Windermere interstadial[15] (the 'Allerød oscillation' or 'Late Glacial Interstadial'). Temperatures rise. Homo sapiens returns to Britain.
  • c. 12,890-11,700 BP
    • Loch Lomond stadial[16] ('Younger Dryas'). Temperatures drop rapidly. Humans driven out.
  • c. 11,700 BP
    • The Holocene epoch begins as the Younger Dryas stadial ends. The first Mesolithic people arrive and this marks the start of continuous human (Homo sapiens only) occupation.

Mesolithic

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The upper body of the Cheddar Man a Mesolithic skeleton.
  • c. 9335–9275 BC
    • The earliest date for structures and artefacts at Star Carr, Yorkshire, a site then inhabited for around 800 years.[17]
  • c. 7600 BC
    • Howick house, Northumberland, a Mesolithic building with stone tools, nut shells and bone fragments.
  • c. 7150 BC
    • Cheddar Man, the oldest complete human skeleton in Britain
  • c. 6500-6200 BC
    • Rising sea-levels cause the gradual flooding of Doggerland. The culminating tsunami caused by the Storegga Slide, likely contributes to the final isolation of Great Britain from the European mainland.
  • c. 6000 BC
    • The earliest evidence of some form of agriculture: Wheat of a variety grown in the Middle East was present on the Isle of Wight.[18]
  • c. 4600-3065 BC
    • Date range of artefacts from a Mesolithic midden on Oronsay, Inner Hebrides, giving evidence of diet.

Neolithic

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Stonehenge2007 07 30.jpg
Stonehenge, a neolithic stone monument constructed from 3000 BC to 2000 BC.

Bronze Age

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Uffington-White-Horse-sat.jpg
The Uffington White Horse, a Bronze Age hill figure.

Iron Age

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Old Oswestry Hillfort (aerial).jpg
Old Oswestry, an Iron Age hillfort

See also

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References

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  1. ^ Miriam Frankel (7 July 2010). "Early Britons could cope with cold : Nature News". Nature. Nature.com. doi:10.1038/news.2010.338. Retrieved 13 November 2012.
  2. ^ Parfitt, Simon A.; Ashton, Nick M.; Lewis, Simon G.; Abel, Richard L.; Coope, G. Russell; Field, Mike H.; Gale, Rowena; Hoare, Peter G.; Larkin, Nigel R.; Lewis, Mark D.; Karloukovski, Vassil; Maher, Barbara A.; Peglar, Sylvia M.; Preece, Richard C.; Whittaker, John E.; Stringer, Chris B. (2010). "Early Pleistocene human occupation at the edge of the boreal zone in northwest Europe". Nature. 466 (7303): 229–233. Bibcode:2010Natur.466..229P. doi:10.1038/nature09117. PMID 20613840. S2CID 4418334.
  3. ^ Parfitt.S et al (2005) 'The earliest record of human activity in northern Europe', Nature 438 pp.1008-1012, 2005-12-15. Retrieved 2011-04-16.
  4. ^ Roebroeks.W (2005) 'Archaeology: life on the Costa del Cromer', Nature 438 pp.921-922, 2005-12-15. Retrieved 2011-04-16.
  5. ^ Parfitt.S et al (2006) '700,000 years old: found in Pakefield', British Archaeology, January/February 2006. Retrieved 2008-12-24.
  6. ^ Good. C & Plouviez. J (2007) The Archaeology of the Suffolk Coast Archived 8 March 2012 at the Wayback Machine Suffolk County Council Archaeological Service [online]. Retrieved 2009-11-28.
  7. ^ Tools unlock secrets of early man, BBC news website, 2005-12-14. Retrieved 2011-04-15.
  8. ^ "500000 BC – Boxgrove". Current Archaeology. 24 May 2007. Retrieved 23 April 2019.
  9. ^ a b Gupta, Sanjeev; Jenny S. Collier; Andy Palmer-Felgate; Graeme Potter (2007). "Catastrophic flooding origin of shelf valley systems in the English Channel". Nature. 448 (7151): 342–345. Bibcode:2007Natur.448..342G. doi:10.1038/nature06018. PMID 17637667. S2CID 4408290.
  10. ^ Hendry, Lisa (15 December 2017). "First Britons". Natural History Museum. Archived from the original on 4 August 2018. Retrieved 17 April 2019.
  11. ^ a b Greenhalgh, Tate; Hendry, Lisa. "The making of an island". Natural History Museum. Retrieved 2019-12-30.
  12. ^ Higham, T; Compton, T; Stringer, C; Jacobi, R; Shapiro, B; Trinkaus, E; Chandler, B; Groening, F; Collins, C; Hillson, S; O'Higgins, P; FitzGerald, C; Fagan, M (2011), "The earliest evidence for anatomically modern humans in northwestern Europe", Nature, 479 (7374): 521–524, Bibcode:2011Natur.479..521H, doi:10.1038/nature10484, PMID 22048314, S2CID 4374023
  13. ^ "Fossil Teeth Put Humans in Europe Earlier Than Thought". The New York Times. 2 November 2011.
  14. ^ Rose, James (1985). "The Dimlington Stadial Dimlington Chronozone – A proposal for naming the main glacial episode of the Late Devensian in Britain". Boreas. 14 (3): 225–230. Bibcode:1985Borea..14..225R. doi:10.1111/j.1502-3885.1985.tb00724.x.
  15. ^ Pennington, W. (1977). "The Late Devensian flora and vegetation of Britain". Biological Sciences. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. Series B. 280: 247–271.
  16. ^ Gray, J.M.; Lowe, J.J. (1977). "The Scottish Lateglacial Environment: a synthesis.". In Gray, J.M.; Lowe, J.J. (eds.). Studies in the Scottish Late-GlacialEnvironment. Oxford: Pergammon Press. pp. 163–181.
  17. ^ Milner, Nicky; Conneller, Chantal; Taylor, Barry, eds. (2018). Star Carr: Volume 1: A Persistent Place in a Changing World. York: White Rose University Press. ISBN 978-1-912482-04-7.
  18. ^ Balter, Michael. "DNA recovered from underwater British site may rewrite history of farming in Europe". Science. Retrieved 16 March 2015.
  19. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u Palmer, Alan & Veronica (1992). The Chronology of British History. London: Century Ltd. pp. 13–16. ISBN 0-7126-5616-2.
  20. ^ Bondevik, Stein; Mangerud, Jan; Dawson, Sue; Dawson, Alastair; Lohne, Øystein (1 August 2005). "Evidence for three North Sea tsunamis at the Shetland Islands between 8000 and 1500 years ago". Quaternary Science Reviews. 24 (14): 1757–1775. Bibcode:2005QSRv...24.1757B. doi:10.1016/j.quascirev.2004.10.018. hdl:1956/735. ISSN 0277-3791.
  21. ^ Olalde, Iñigo; et al. (2017). "The Beaker Phenomenon And The Genomic Transformation Of Northwest Europe". bioRxiv 10.1101/135962.