Tag Archives: Pre-History

The History of Britain – Pt 3 The Bronze Age

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The History of Britain - Pt 3 The Bronze Age

In my previous post I mentioned that the Stone Age ended and the Bronze Age started at around 2500 BC, but that was for the purposes of expediency, because talking about dates in prehistoric times isn’t an exact science. Some sources place the date at anything between 2500 and 2000 BC and this blurred overlap is sometimes referred to as the Late Neolithic/Early Bronze Age.

Like the Stone Age, historians often break the Bronze Age down into three periods – the Early Bronze Age (c2500-1700 BC), the Middle Bronze Age (c1700-1200 BC) and the Late Bronze Age (c1200-800 BC).

It’s generally accepted that the Bronze Age in Britain began with the arrival of the Beaker people from Central and Southern Europe around 2,500-2,300 BC. Their name derives from the pottery found in round barrow graves, and their arrival had such a big impact that experts believe that they replaced about 90% of the existing population.

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Originally posted 2025-12-27 08:46:48.

The History of Britain – Pt 2 The Prehistoric Stone Age

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The History of Britain - Pt 2 The Prehistoric Stone Age

The term ‘Prehistoric’ generally means the time before records were written down, but more specifically in Britain it’s considered to be the period from the arrival of the first humans until the Roman Conquest in AD 43. Within that time period, there were three distinct ages, each named after the predominant material used for making tools at the time: They were Stone, Bronze and Iron.

Broadly speaking, the Stone Age ran from around 900,000 years ago to 2,500 BC, the Bronze Age from 2,500 to 800 BC, and the Iron Age from 800 BC to 43 AD. For obvious reasons, dates connected to prehistoric times are always going to be approximate, but not only do the dates above give a convenient generalization, they also make it easier to understand.

Furthermore, the Stone Age was also broken down into three separate periods; Old Stone Age (Paleolithic – 900,000-10,000 BC), Middle Stone Age (Mesolithic – 10,000-4,000 BC), and New Stone Age (Neolithic – 4,000-2,500 BC).

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Originally posted 2025-12-07 10:32:38.

The History of Britain – Pt 1 The First Humans and How Britain Became an Island

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The History of Britain - Pt 1 The First Humans and How Britain Became an Island

Where do I start when discussing the history of Britain? The obvious answer is ‘at the beginning’, and for me that means when humans first set foot on the land we now refer to as Great Britain – but when was that? Nobody knows for certain of course, but archaeologists believe that footprints discovered at Happisburgh on the Norfolk Coast in 2013 date from around 850,000 to 950,000 years ago making these footprints the earliest evidence of human activity on the island, which in this context, refers to the countries of England, Wales and Scotland including their associated islands (but not Ireland).

Who these people were and where they came from is best left to anthropologists, but the age of these footprints suggests that they may have been left by Homo antecessor, an early human species known to be present in Europe at the time.

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Originally posted 2025-11-28 10:55:37.