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Ancient Britain was a period in the human occupation of Great Britain that extended throughout prehistory, ending with the Roman invasion of Britain in AD 43.
Britain has been inhabited by humans for tens of thousands of years. None of the pre-Roman inhabitants of Britain had any written language, so their history, culture and way of life are known only through archaeological finds.
Located at the fringes of Europe, Britain received foreign technological and cultural achievements at later dates than did mainland areas during prehistory. The story of ancient Britain is traditionally seen as one of successive waves of settlers from the continent, bringing with them new cultures and technologies. More recent archaeological theories have questioned this migrationist interpretation and argue for a more complex relationship between Britain and the continent. Many of the changes in British society demonstrated in the archaeological record are now suggested to be the effects of the native inhabitants adopting foreign customs rather than being subsumed by an invading culture.
The first written record of Britain and its inhabitants was by the Greek navigator Pytheas, who explored the coastal region of Britain in around 325 BC. Ancient Britons were however involved in extensive trade and cultural links with the rest of Europe from the Neolithic onwards, especially in exporting tin which was in abundant supply.
There is evidence from bones and flint tools found in coastal deposits near Happisburgh in Norfolk that Homo erectus was present in what is now Britain around 700,000 years ago. At this time, south eastern Britain was linked to continental EuropeFor the band of the same name, see Europe (band . Europe is a continent forming the westermost part of the Eurasian supercontinent. Europe is bounded to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the west by the Atlantic Ocean, to the south by the Mediterranean Se by a land bridge allowing humans to move freely. The current position of the English ChannelThe English Channel is the part of the Atlantic Ocean that separates the island of Great Britain from northern France, and joins the North Sea to the Atlantic. In French it is called La Manche ("the sleeve"). It is about 350 miles long and at its widest i was a large river flowing westwards and fed by tributaries that would later become the ThamesThis article is about the River Thames in southern England. For other meanings of the word Thames, see Thames The Thames ( pronounced /temz/) is a river flowing through southern England and connecting London with the sea. Course The Thames has a length of and Seine. Reconstructing this ancient environment has provided clues to the route first visitors took to arrive at what was then a peninsula of the Eurasian continent. Archaeologists have found a string of early sites located close to the route of a now lost watercourse named the Bytham RiverThe Bytham River is a now lost ancient river that ran through the English Midlands until around 450,000 years ago. Its course has been suggested as the route that the first humans to visit Britain took. The river rose in the vicinity of modern day Stratfo which indicate that it was exploited as the earliest route west into Britain.
Sites such as Boxgrove in SussexThis article refers to the county in England. traditional county. Sussex is a traditional county in southern England, divided for administrative purposes into the two counties of West Sussex and East Sussex and the city of Brighton and Hove. It correspond illustrate the later arrival in the archaeological record of an archaic Homo sapiens subspecies called Homo heidelbergensisHomo heidelbergenis is an extinct species of the genus Homo and the common ancestor of both the Neanderthal man Homo neanderthalensis and the Cro-Magnon man Homo sapiens . It descended from the morphologically very similar Homo erectus''. However, H. around 500,000 years ago. These early peoples made Acheulean flint tools and hunted the large native mammals of the period. They drove elephants, rhinoceroses and hippopotamuses over the tops of cliffs or into bogs to more easily kill them.
The extreme cold of the following Anglian glaciation is likely to have driven humans out of Britain altogether and the region does not appear to have been occupied again until the ice receded during the Hoxnian interglacial. This warmer period lasted from around 420,000 until 360,000 years ago and saw the Clactonian flint tool industry develop at sites such as Barnfield Pit in Kent.
A further period of cooling lasted until around 240,000 years ago and saw Levallois flint tools introduced, possibly by humans arriving from Africa. This more advanced flint technology permitted more efficient hunting and therefore made Britain a more worthwhile place to remain during this ice age. However, there is little evidence of human occupation during the subsequent Ipswichian interglacial between around 180,000 and 70,000 years ago. Meltwaters from the previous glaciation cut Britain off from the continent for the first time during this period which may explain the lack of activity.
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