The hardest time period to survive in the British Isles
The Pre-Human occupation of Britain
As with every single country on earth, the British Isles have gone through many changes which have, at points, made daily life almost unbearable. The Victorian workhouses saw children trapped in a cycle of nothing but work and sleep, and for just enough money to buy food to survive. Getting a small infected cut during the medieval period could be a death sentence, and for thousands of years there was the very real possibility that the next settlement over didn’t like you enough to attack and kill everyone. Yet through all of these troubles, nothing matches the scale and danger delivered by nature herself during the last ice age.
(A photo taken in Antarctica of the landscape, which would have looked almost the same as England during the first time our ancestors tried to occupy it)
The first ancestors of humans arrived in the British Isles around 800,000 years ago after crossing the land bridge between mainland Europe and England, and since then they had to abandon the entire territory at least 10 times, getting chased out by extreme blizzards and mountain sized sheets of ice.
There have been at least 4 different potential ancestors of humans to settle the land, with the first species remaining a mystery. The only evidence we have of the first occupation is a set of preserved footprints in an estuary, and two sets of stone tools found at sites in Happisburgh, Norfolk, and at Pakefield in Suffolk. Whoever left these tools abandoned the British Isles by 700,000 years ago, most likely being chased off by a glacier or unbearable temperatures.
The next inhabitants were the Homo heidelbergensis, who came to Britain around 500,000 years ago. The oldest evidence we have of them comes from two teeth and a leg bone which were found at Boxgrove in West Sussex. There have also been tools and weapons found at numerous sites around the southern half of England, along with burial sites for bones of their butchered prey. They were tall and muscular and had larger brains than the previous occupants, and most likely lived as a nomadic people who travelled and hunted game like woolly rhino, bear and deer.
(An example of some of the tools found from the ice age)
The Homo heidelbergensis wouldn’t be able to settle in the country for long, because the worst glacial period of any ice age experienced in the area would peak around 450,000 years ago. This was called the Anglian glaciation, and it saw ice sheets over 2 kilometres thick covering the northern half of England. This glaciation period was the most extreme the British Isles have ever experienced and made it impossible to live anywhere in the territory, with the population being forced to flee back across the land bridge onto mainland Europe.
After this the next inhabitants were Neanderthals, with the earliest evidence coming from the finding of one of their skulls in Swanscombe, Kent. They arrived somewhere around 400,000 years ago but left the British Isles numerous times between their initial arrival and 50,000 years ago, once again due to unlivable conditions from the extreme cold.
One interesting time period since the first appearance of the Neanderthals was between 180,000 and 60,000 years ago. During this time, the entire British Isles were thought to have been abandoned, a theory that is supported by a complete lack of any kind of Neanderthal or human activity. Between these times, there hasn’t been a single tool, fragment of clothing or even remains of a campfire discovered, suggesting that the entire population were once again forced to flee back across the land bridge back to Europe to escape the cold. Neanderthals thrived during this period across most of modern day Central Europe, and it was only the colder northern countries that were abandoned.
(The Megalecerous was a huge deer that died out at the end of the ice age, but was common across north-west Europe)
Neanderthals came back as early as they could, which seems to be around 60,000 years ago, as the extreme cold period was ending. Temperatures across southern England would have averaged about -10 °C, which is survivable but far from ideal. It’s thought the huge animals available to hunt here would have been the only way to survive, with wholly mammoths and rhinos providing enough meat and skins to supply a small village for quite some time.
The first evidence that we have of modern-day humans arriving in Britain comes from a jaw bone found in Kents Cavern in Devon. It’s thought to be at least 40,000 years old and is the oldest piece of evidence ever found of humans in Britain, but this didn’t mean the island would finally be settled.
There have been periods of time lasting for several thousand years where no evidence of occupation has been found, which once again would be due to the climate. The earliest permanent settlement nearest to Britain is widely believed to be a place called Doggerland, which lay on the land bridge between Britain and the rest of Europe. Temperatures were much easier to deal with there, and the climate would have been similar to living in modern-day Scotland, but with a huge amount of animals to hunt and wild plants to forage.
Due to rising sea levels, Doggerland became an island before completely disappearing beneath the waves some time between 14,000 and 13,000 years ago. To this day no one knows exactly what was there, but it’s likely to have consisted of nothing more than stone tools and stick huts covered in skins, which would have completely decomposed by now.
Modern-day humans were already spreading across the British Isles at the point the land bridge went beneath the waves, but by this time Neanderthals had all but gone extinct. The two main reasons for this are believed to be fighting against the more intelligent and numerous early humans, and also their limited brain capacity that stopped them from being able to use certain resources. Evidence on Neanderthals usually shows the same thing, which ever country it’s in. When a group of Neanderthals found somewhere to settle down, they would stay close to the area their entire lives, usually never going more than a few miles from their homes. The reason was most likely their simple nature and lack of intellect, but whatever it was, it caused them to go extinct.
Humans on the other hand spread across the whole British Isles very quickly, and at the end of the last glacial period, which was between 12,000 and 10,500 years ago, they practically expanded at the rate the glaciers would retreat, with the first humans arriving in Scotland about 12,000 years ago.
After this it would take thousands of years until someone discovered how to create bronze, which happened about 3,500 BCE. Then someone worked out how to get a smelter hot enough to melt iron about 800 BCE, then came along steel when the Romans invaded in 43AD. After that, the human population of Britain went through countless kings and queens, tribal leaders and groups of people which will forever be forgotten, but none of them had the same risks as our ancestors. Hunting huge tusked mammoths that weigh several tons with a piece of sharp rock on a stick, in a climate so hostile that an entire population would have to retreat many times over the years, is probably the toughest time period to survive in for humans or any of our ancestors.