People have been coming to what is now the UK for over a 100,000 years.
Precised from Wikipedia Prehistoric settlement of the British Isles
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prehistoric_settlement_of_Great_Britain_and_Ireland
The British Isles have
experienced a long history of migration from across Europe. Over the millennia,
successive waves of immigrants have come to the Isles. The main settlement came
in the Palaeolithic
and Mesolithic periods.
Research into this prehistoric settlement is
controversial, with differences of opinion from many academic disciplines.
There have been disputes over the sizes of the various immigrations, as well as
to whether they were peacefully integrated.
Pre-Homo sapiens
Europe about 20,000 years ago,
showing coastline, extent of Ice caps and regions where refugia are thought to
have been situated. Coloured areas are the furthest extent of known human
activity between 15 kya and 20 kya.
Flints found in 2003 on the Suffolk coast are evidence of the
settlement of hominini
in Britain from about 700,000 BC.[3] A shinbone belonging to
"Boxgrove Man", a member of the species Homo heidelbergensis found in West
Sussex, is the oldest human bone found in Britain, and has been dated at c.
480,000 BC. Evidence of Neanderthal occupation has been found in the
island of Jersey dated to c. 250,000 BC.[4] Neanderthals are thought to have
appeared in the rest of Britain around 130,000 BC and become the dominant
species until their disappearance from the archaeological record c. 30,000 BC.
Stone Age
Upper Paleolithic
Cro-Magnons (the first anatomically modern
humans) are believed to have arrived in Europe about 40,000 years ago.[6] They are known to have had a
presence in the geographical region that was to become Great Britain by 33,000 years before present (BP) due to
the discovery of the skeletal remains of a young man of the Aurignacian culture, and may be the oldest
modern human remains yet discovered in Great Britain and Ireland.[8]
A chapter in The Ancient Human Occupation of
Britain states that the Last Glacial Maximum "saw an almost complete depopulation of England.
Germany and the northern half of France, starting around 23,000 years ago. with
the possible exception of rare ephemeral incursions into the southern half of
Germany".[9] Humans probably returned to the
region of the British and Irish peninsula about 14,700 years ago as the Ice Age
started to end.[10]
Mesolithic and Neolithic
Around 6500 BC Britain became separated from
continental Europe. About 4000 BC, the Neolithic Revolution reached Britain and Ireland, with domestication of
animals, arable farming and pottery. Christopher Smith has estimated the
population of Britain around 9000 BC to be 1,100–1,200 people, in 8000 BC to be
1,200–2,400, in 7000 BC to be 2,500–5,000, and in 5000 BC to be 2,750–5,500.
Francis Pryor estimates that by 4000 BC the population of Great Britain was
around 100,000. For 2000 BC his estimates is 250,000.
Bronze Age
Defined by a style of pottery from the 3rd millennium BC,
found across most of Europe in archaeological digs,
the Beaker people
have been considered to represent early immigration to the British Isles during
the Bronze Age.
Analyses of the uptake of isotopes of the element strontium in teeth and bones in
individuals have found evidence of a great deal of mobility, particularly of
females, within central and western Europe.[15] However, it is generally
accepted by archaeologists today that the Beaker people may also be indicative
of the development of particular manufacturing skills that spread independently
of any population movement.[15]
Iron Age
Genetic studies have concluded that there was some
Late Iron Age migration of Celtic La Tène people to Britain.[16] In the late Iron Age Pryor estimates that the
population of Britain and Ireland was between 1 and 1.5 million.
By about the 6th century AD (Sub-Roman Britain), most
of the inhabitants of the British Isles were speaking Celtic languages, leaving
open the question of whether this had also been the case much earlier.
After Caesar's conquest of Gaul in the 50s BC, some Belgic people seem to have come to central southern Britain from
the continent.[18][19][20] Possibly because of this
migration, the names of the tribes Parisi (in Eastern Yorkshire), Brigantes and Atrebates can be found both in Britain and
on the continent.
The adoption of Celtic culture and language was
likely a gradual transformation, brought on by cultural exchange with Celtic
groups in Britain or southwest mainland Europe.
Notes
1. Bradley, Richard (2007). The prehistory of
Britain and Ireland. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. p. 8. ISBN 0-521-84811-3.
2. - ^ Norman Hammond. "Flint hints at existence of Palaeolithic man in Ireland". The Times, 27 July
2008.
3. - ^ "700,000 years old: found
in Suffolk" British Archaeology.
January/February 2006. Issue 86. ISSN 1357-4442.
7. - ^ "Out of Africa: modern
human origins special feature: isotopic evidence for the diets of European
Neanderthals and early modern humans". Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.
106 (38): 16034–9. September 2009. doi:10.1073/pnas.0903821106. PMC 2752538. PMID 19706482.
8. - ^ though there are other
contenders. Ancient jaw bone raises questions over early man from ArchaeoNews. 24 April 2005. Retrieved 20
February 2007.
9. - ^ Wil Roebroeks, Jean-Jacques
Hublin and Katharine MacDonald (2010). "Continuities and Discontinuities
in Neandertal Presence: A Closer Look at Northwestern Europe". In Nick
Ashton, Simon Lewis, Chris Stringer. The Ancient Human Occupation of Britain.
Elsevier Science. p. 115. ISBN 978-0444535979.
11. - ^ Owen, James (2005). "British Have Changed Little Since Ice Age, Gene Study Says". National Geographic Society. p. 2. Retrieved
1 August 2013.
15. ^ - to: a b Pollard,
AM (2007). Analytical chemistry in archaeology. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
University Press. p. 190. ISBN 978-0-521-65572-9.
16. - ^ McEvoy and Bradley, Brian P and
Daniel G (2010). Celtic from the West Chapter 5: Irish Genetics and Celts.
Oxbow Books, Oxford, UK. p. 117. ISBN 978-1-84217-410-4.
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