ABriefHistoryoftheUK.docVIP

A BRIEF HISTORY OF BRITAIN THE EARLY INHABITANTS OF BRITAIN When the Ice Age ended, more than 7,000 years ago, melting ice flooded low-lying lands in continental Europe, creating the English Channel and the North Sea and turning Britain into an island. While set apart from continental Europe, Britain absorbed numbers of immigrants whose descendants would establish an empire incorporating a quarter of the earth’s population. Around 3,000 BC Stone Age people, who lived by farming, arrived in Britain, probably from the Iberian Peninsula. They were followed around 2000 BC by the Beaker people 比克尔人或宽口陶器人 from Holland and Rhineland in Germany, so-called because of their pottery. A more important wave of immigrants was that of the Celts the Goidels or Gales, the Brythons and the Belgaes from eastern and central Europe, who arrived in Britain in 700 BC. Those Celts were the ancestors of the Highland Scots, the Welsh, and the Irish. ROMAN BRITAIN Recorded history began in Britain in 55 BC, when Julius Caesar crossed the English Channel. The Romans ruled Britain for nearly 400 years. Only the Scottish tribes remained independent. Scottish raiding parties were contained by Hadrian, the emperor who had a wall built bearing his name across the north of England see pics . Eventually, the Romans abandoned Britain in order to fight the barbarians at the gates of Rome. The Romans left behind a network of towns, a superb road system, and a new religion, Christianity. ANGLO-SAXON BRITAIN Gradually the native Celts were pushed west into Wales and north in Scotland by the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes, invaders from central Europe. Anglo-Saxon domination lasted for four centuries, even though it did not include Scotland, where the Picts and the Scots established a separate kingdom. The Anglo-Saxons were a ferocious people. Nevertheless, they divided the country into shires and devised an effective farming system, thereby laying the foundations of the English state. The Teutonic religi