Britain in ancient times. England in the Middle Ages.
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1. The Earliest Settlers
he Iberians
About 3 thousand years before our era the land we now call Britain was not separated from the continent by the English Channel and the North Sea. The Thames was a tributary of the Rhine. The snow did not melt on the mountains of Wales, Cumberland and Yorkshire even in summer. It lay there for centuries and formed rivers of ice called glaciers, that slowly flowed into the valleys below, some reaching as far as the Thames. At the end of the ice age the climate became warmer and the ice caps melted, flooding the lower-lying land that now lies under the North Sea and the English Channel. Many parts of Europe, including the present-day British Isles, were inhabited by the people who came to be known as the Iberians. Some of their descendants are still found in the North of Spain, populating the Iberian peninsular. Although little is known about the Iberians of the Stone Age, it is understood that they were a small, dark, long-headed race that settled especially on the chalk downs radiating from Salisbury Plain. All that is known about them comes from archaeological findings – the remains of their dwellings, their skeletons as well as some stone tools and weapons. The Iberians knew the art of grinding and polishing stone.
On the downs and along the oldest historic roads, the Icknield Way and the Pilgrim’s Way, lie long barrows, the great earthenworks which were burial places and prove the existence of marked class divisions. Other relics of the past are the stone circles of Stonehenge and Avebury on Salisbury Plain. Avebury is the grandest site while Stonehenge is the best known. The name of the place comes from the Saxon word Stanhengist, or “hanging stones”. Stonehenge is fifteen hundred years older than the Egyptian pyramids. It is made of stone gates standing in groups of twos. Each vertical stone weighs fifty tons or more. The flat stones joining the gates weigh 7 tons. Nobody knows why that huge double circle was build, or how primitive people managed to move such heavy stones. Some researchers think that it was built by the ancient Druids who performed their rites in Stonehenge. Others believe that it was built by the sun-worshippers who came to this distant land from the Mediterranean when the Channel was a dry valley on the Continent. Stonehenge might also have been an enormous calendar. Its changing shadows probably indicated the cycle of the seasons and told the people when it was time to sow their crops.
People and crops have vanished, but the stones stand fast and stubbornly keep their secrets from us.
The Celts
The period from the 6th to the 3rd century BC saw the migration of the people called the Celts. They spread across Europe from the East to the West and occupied the territory of the present-day France, Belgium, Denmark, Holland and Great Britain. (See Map 1.)
The Celtic tribes that crossed the Channel and landed on the British Isles were the Britons, the Scots, the Picts and the Gauls. The Britons populated the South, the Picts moved to the North, the Scots went to Ireland and the rest settled in between. Later, the Scots returned to the main island and in such numbers that the northern part of it got the name of Scotland. The history of the Picts and their struggle with the Scots was beautifully described by R.L. Stevenson in the ballad Heather Ale.
Map 1
(From S.D. Zaitseva. Early Britain. Moscow, 1975.)
In reality, the Picts were not exterminated but assimilated with the Scots. As for the Iberians, some of them were slain in battle, others were driven westwards into the mountains of Wales, the rest assimilated with the Celts. The last wave of the Celts were the Belgic tribes which arrived about 100 BC and occupied the south-east of the main island.
The Celts are known from the Travelling Notes by Pytheus, a traveller from Massilia (now – Marseilles). He visited the British Isles in the 4th century BC. Later, Herodotus wrote that even in the 5th century BC Phoenicians came to the British Isles for tin, which was used for making bronze. The British Isles were then called the Tin Islands.
Another person whom we owe reminiscences about early Britain is Guy Julius Caesar. In 55 BC his troops first landed in Britain. According to Caesar’s “Commentaries on the Gallic War,” the Celts, against whom he fought, were tall and blue-eyed people. Men had long moustaches (but no beards) and wore shirts, knee-long trousers and striped or checked cloaks which they fastened with a pin. (Later, their Scottish descendants developed it into tartan.) Both men and women were obsessed with the idea of cleanliness and neatness. As is known from reminiscences of the Romans, “neither man nor woman, however poor, was seen either ragged or dirty”.
Economically and socially the Celts were a tribal society made up of clans and tribes. The Celtic tribes were ruled by chiefs. The military leaders of the largest tribes were sometimes called kings. In wartime the Celts wore skins and painted their faces blue to make themselves look more fierce. They were armed with swords and spears and used war chariots in fighting. Women seem to have had extensive rights and independence and shared responsibility in defending their tribesmen. It is known that when the Romans invaded Britain, two of the largest tribes were ruled by women.
The Celts were pagans and their priests, the Druids, who were important members of the ruling class, preserved the tribal laws, religious teachings, history, medicine and other knowledge necessary in Celtic society. They worshipped in sacred places (on hills, by rivers, in groves of trees) and their rites sometimes included human sacrifice.
The Celts lived in villages and practised a primitive agriculture: they used light ploughs and grew their crops in small square fields. They knew the use of copper, tin, and iron, kept large herds of cattle and sheep which formed their chief wealth.
The Celts traded both inside and beyond Britain. On the Continent, the Celtic tribes of Britain carried on trade with Celtic Gaul. Trade was also an important political and social factor in relationship between tribes. Most trade was conducted by sea or river. It is no accident that the capitals of England and Scotland appeared on the river banks, in place of the old trade routes. The settlement on the Thames, which existed before London, was a major trade outpost eastwards to Europe.
The descendants of the ancient Celts live on the British Isles up to this day. They are the Welsh, the Scottish and the Irish. The Welsh language, which belongs to the Celtic group, is the oldest living language in Europe. In the Highlands of Scotland, as well as in the western parts of Ireland, there is still a strong influence of the Celtic language. Some words of the Celtic origin still exist in Modern English. Scholars believe that about a dozen common nouns are of the Celtic origin; among these are cradle, bannock, cart, down, loch (dial.), coomb (dial.), mattock. Most others are geographical names. These are the names of Celtic settlements which later grew into towns: London, Leeds and Kent which got its name after the name of a Celtic tribe. There are several rivers in England which still bear Celtic names: Avon and Evan, Thames, Severn, Mersey, Derwent, Ouse, Exe, Esk, Usk. The Celtic word loch is still used in Scotland to denote a lake: Loch Ness, Loch Lomond.