It is more than 2,000 years since Caesar’s legionaries first splashed ashore on a beach in Kent; 4,500 since the arrival of people with metal tools; 12,000 since the first hunters after the ice and 33,000 since the time when the oldest modern human being we know about lived and died here. It is half a million years since Boxgrove Man closed his eyes for the last time on a Britain roamed by elephants, lions and hyenas.
