The Origins

The Iberians

About 2000 years before Christ, the prehistoric inhabitants of the British islands (pre-Celtic people)
were tall and dark-haired Iberians (Bronze Age and Iron Age). They were hunters and farmers.
They have built temples and fortifications. They built Stonehenge in the south of England, on
Salisbury plain, a group of huge blue stone slabs placed in concentric circles.

The Celts (700 B.C. - 43 A.D.)

Around 700 B.C. Celts began to arrive from Northern Europe (Germany) ( at the beginning there
were the Gaels - in the North - and then the Brythons - in the South-West and West - in the fourth
century). They were different from the Iberians, the were tall and faire-haired. They were organised
into clans, some clans joined together forming tribes. The were led by a tribal chif, but the political
power was in the hands of druids; they were administrator of justice and they had also to control the
education. There were no towns but only assemblies of hut made with timber and thatched roof.
Among the clans there seemed to be equality between woman and men. They were tribes of
warriors. They shared a similar language, culture and religion with the Iberians. They worshipped
the natural elements and they held their religious rites in the woods ( and near the sacred water of
wells and springs) the Druids were their priests; Romans presented them as barbarians. They
brought ironworking to the British isles. It effected trade and helped develop local economy and
also made beginning a good relation with the mediterranean population. Celts practised agriculture
when they were not fighting in wars. They introduced the iron plough wich made the cultivation of
soil easier. We don’t know if the hill forts were made by the Celts as they moved into hostile
territory or by the native Britons to defend themselves. Hill forts consisted of a small ditch and bank
surrounding a hilltop. The Celt’s literature depend on the oral transmission of culture especially
trhough bards.

The Romans (43A.D. - 409 A.D.)

Britain was a very productive land with a mild climate, due to the Gulf Stream. The Romans
decided to invade it.

They really conquered it under Emperor Claudius (43-47 AD) and they established a Roman-British
culture across the southern half of Britain.

Latin almost completely disappeared when the Anglo-Saxons invaded Britain in the 5th century.
Most remarkable feature of Roman Britain: the towns. Many of them were originally army camps
and the Latin name for camp, castra, has remained in modern town names ending in "caster",
"chester", or "cester". Also the roads are still in existence to this day. They did not succeed in
conquering Caledonia (Scotland).

Emperor Hadrian (76-138 AD) ordered the building of a wall (121 AD) to mark the border between
the two countries. Long stretches of Hadrian's wall still exist.

Roman control of Britain came to an end as the empire began to collapse and in 409 Emperor
Honorius was obliged to withdraw his soldiers to defend Rome against Barbarian raiders.
The Romano-British, the Romanised Celts, (who were Celtic Christian) were left alone to fight the
Scots, the Irish and Saxon raiders from Germany.

The Anglo-Saxons

In 449 AD, Germanic tribes (The Angles, the Saxons and, the Jutes) raided the country destroying
the Roman British towns. ( England is the "land of the Angles"). They were warlike and illiterate
and used only the runic alphabet, mostly used for carving inscriptions on stone or metal.

At the end of the 6th century, a monk, Augustine, was sent by Pope Gregory I (590-604) to bring
Christianity to England. He became the first Archbishop of Canterbury, the capital of Kent. But it
was the Celtic Church that brought Christianity to the common people of Britain. Monasteries
became important centres of learning.

In the 8th and 9th century new enemies arrived from overseas: the Vikings, who came from Norway
and Denmark and were pirates.

In 1066, William, Duke of Normandy, defeated the Anglo-Saxons in the battle of Hastings. The
Normans spoke French and were Christians.