Lecture One: Introduction

The Island

Britain is an island, and Britain s history has been closely connected with the sea .

Until modern times it was as easy to travel across water as it was across land , where

roads were frequently unusable. At  moments of great danger Britain has been

saved from danger by its surrounding seas. Britain's history and its strong national

sense have been shaped by the sea. 

Britains  pre-history

Britain has not always been an island . It became one only after the end of the last ice

age. The temperature rose and the ice cap melted , flooding the lower-lying land that

is now under the North Sea and the English Channel .

There is no accurate picture of what the early settlement of the British-Irish Isles was

actually like, and there were long periods when the islands were uninhabited.

Historians and archaeologists constantly revise traditional theories about the gradual

growth of the country as new evidence comes to light. The earliest human

bones found (1994) in Britain are 500,000 years old. The first people were

probably Palaeolithic (Old Stone Age) nomads from mainland Europe, who were

characterized by their use of rudimentary stone implements. They travelled to

Britain by land and sea, especially at those times when the country was joined to the

European land mass.

Later settlers in the Mesolithic and Neolithic (Middle and New Stone Age) periods

between 8300 and 2000 BC had more advanced skills in stone carving. Some came

from central Europe and settled in eastern Britain. Others arrived by sea from

Iberian (Spanish-Portugese) areas and populated Cornwall, Ireland, Wales, the Isle

of Man and western Scotland. Their descendants live today in the same western parts.