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sixth century
Gaels
Gaels did indeed arrive from Ireland,
Picts in the east and north
Britons in the south.
For the next few centuries there was war and peace and war again between Gaels and Picts – until at last, around AD 900, the two became one by means still not fully understood. In time, though, the sons and daughters of the new union adapted the old nickname for one of them to form a new identity for all: from now on they were the Scots.
east of Ireland and the west of Scotland have always been closely tied,
elite.
population of perhaps half a million people.
Apart from a few exceptions there is scant evidence of permanent homes or settlements. During the centuries following 1500 BC, however, all of that began to change.
Flag Fen,
1300 BC
The idea of living in families within permanent homes – houses that are built to last a lifetime and that are themselves part of permanent settlements – sounds utterly unremarkable in our modern world. But it was all a construct, a concept that was invented in the Bronze Age and matured and became ever more complicated from that time on.
Dartmoor reaves
your clan
Between 1500 and 1000 BC – the later Bronze Age – the seeds of the first permanent villages were sown.
It has been estimated that Late Bronze Age Britain, from around 1000 BC onwards, was home to about half a million souls.
Great Orme
During much of the Bronze Age
round barrows
cremated,
pottery urns.
Llyn Fawr,
iron,
Earliest Iron Age.
eastern Mediterranean,
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wrought iron.
For all its challenges and difficulties, the practical beauty of iron is that hematite, or iron ore, is infinitely more plentiful than copper or tin, the constituents of bronze.
All Cannings Cross,
Maiden Castle, the most complex Iron Age hill fort in Britain, was begun as a causewayed enclosure during the Neolithic period.
Hill forts started to appear in Britain from around 600 BC often in lofty positions overlooking prime agricultural land.
By around 500 BC something else had changed as well: iron objects began to appear all across the country – and in useful quantities.
Silbury Hill,
Our own world is a consequence of the eighteenth-century Industrial Revolution. No more than fifteen generations have passed, just over three lifetimes of threescore and ten, since that tumultuous period – the Industrial Age – began
Crickley Hill
Hallstatt,
called La Tène
The triple spiral – or triskele – is also a recurrent feature of Celtic
W.B. Yeats
Human beings make eye contact with one another while they eat. This is unique in the animal kingdom.
companions
from the Latin panis.
