Early Man in Britain and His Place in the Tertiary Period/Chapter 14

by William Boyd Dawkins

 

CHAPTER XIV.

BRITAIN IN THE HISTORIC PERIOD.—CONCLUSION.

The Exploration of the British Coasts.—Physical Geography and Climate.—Population at the time of the Roman Conquest.—Roman Britain.—The English Conquest—The English Breed of Cattle.—The Extinction of the Larger Wild Animals.—Conclusion.

 

The Exploration of the British Coasts.

We are now in a position to realise the condition of Britain at the time when its history began, which may conveniently be taken to be the invasion of Julius Cæsar (B.C. 55). The British Isles, first known to the civilised nations of the Mediterranean through the memorable voyage of Himilco, were visited by the Phœnician traders from that time forward, and the tin of Cornwall became famous in the marts of the south. The Phœnicians, however, only explored the south-western parts of Britain and Ireland. The east and north-eastern coasts were opened out by Pytheas, and a commerce was developed overland between Massilia and Cornwall along the routes already described in the preceding chapter (Fig. 168). The Greeks of Massilia were also acquainted with Ireland. The poet Avienus, writing while Himilco's narrative was preserved, terms Ireland "Insula sacra," which is evidently a translation of the mistake made by the Massilian Greeks in confounding the Ἴρις of the sailors with ιερά νῆσος,^[1] the island of the West (Erse, iar or eir, Thurnam^[2]) with Holy Island. After the invasion of Cæsar the attention of the geographers and historians was directed to the British Isles, and in A.D. 84 their circumnavigation was completed by a Roman fleet under the command of Agricola, which subdued the Orcades (Orkneys). The northern coast of Scotland had, however, been visited before 44 B.C., since Diodorus Siculus mentions the promontory of Horca (Dunnet Head) as the northern extremity of the island. The whole of the British Isles, with the exception perhaps of the Faröes, were well known by the year 120,^[3] and there was no necessity for the further exploration of the coasts.

 

Physical Geography of Britain.

Britain, at the beginning of the Historic period, differed considerably from the Britain of to-day, although there is no reason to suppose that any vertical movements have altered the relation of sea to land. The dash of the waves for the last nineteen centuries has destroyed large tracts of land where the cliffs are composed of soft and incoherent materials. The inroads of the sea on the south coast have been so great in some places, such as Pevensey and Pagham, in Sussex, that it is by no means improbable that the Isle of Wight may have been united at low water to the adjoining coast during the Roman occupation.^[4] Large tracts of land also have been destroyed on the coasts of Lancashire and Cheshire, and on those of Essex, Norfolk, and Suffolk. In other places great additions have been made to the land by the accumulation of sand, shingle, and mud. The island of Thanet is now joined to Britain by fertile meadows; and Romney Marsh, and the large tracts of shingle at Dungeness and Rye, have been formed for the most part since the Roman Conquest. Great accumulations of alluvium have been formed in the lower parts of our larger rivers, and large areas in Lincolnshire and in Essex have been reclaimed from the waves by the hand of man. The creation of new and the destruction of old land may be taken to neutralise one another, so that Britain at the beginning of the Historic period was probably about as large as it is now. It is very unlikely that an island then occupied the site of the Goodwin Sands, as is asserted by tradition, for it is incredible that it could have escaped the notice of Ptolemy, who has given such a minute description of the coasts and islands.

The rainfall at the beginning of the Historic period in Britain must have been greater than it is now, because of the large extent of forest and morass, and the fogs and mists^[5] more often intercepted the light of the sun. In other respects the climate was more temperate than on the Continent, and with its extremes far less marked. It was warm enough in the south for the vine, but too cold for the olive.

The surface of the country was densely covered with trees. In the south the Anderidan forest extended over the greater part of Kent and Sussex, and into Wiltshire and Hampshire; in the north the Caledonian over- shadowed the region of the Grampians; and in the middle there was the wild region of the Pennine hills. Morasses bordered most of the principal rivers and streams. Wild animals were sufficiently abundant to allow of a trade being carried on in furs with merchants from Gaul. There were bears, wild boars, wolves, and foxes, in the forests; stags and roe-deer in the glades; beavers^[6] in the rivers; and bustards were numerous on the south-eastern downs. In the north of Scotland the reindeer still survived, and was hunted by the inhabitants of Caithness, who lived in the circular stone "burgs" or "broughs."^[7] The dogs used by the British hunters soon became famous in Italy.^[8]

The dwellings consisted of small circular huts, made of wood or wattles, or of stone, which were sometimes protected by a stockade of timber in the woods, or by the ramparts which had been inherited from the former Neolithic inhabitants of the country. They were connected with each other by narrow tracks sufficiently wide to allow of the passage of a small horse, or sometimes of a chariot. These tracks are still to be seen in many parts of the country, and are remarkable for their irregular, winding course, so different from the wide, straight Roman road to be seen in many places close by.

 

Population at the Time of the Roman Conquest.

The inhabitants were numerous, collected together into villages and towns, and governed by chiefs frequently at war with each other, who consequently fell an easy prey to the Romans. They subsisted principally on their swine, small short-horned cattle, and horned sheep, and to a lesser degree on their crops of wheat and barley. They brewed beer from both of these, and used honey for making mead. The tribes of northern Britain in the time of Agricola, A.D. 80, were pastoral and ignorant of agriculture. Under the Roman power the land rapidly passed under the plough in southern and eastern Britain, and in the days of Julian^[9] sufficient corn was grown to freight eight hundred ships, by which it was carried to the mouth of the Rhine. The corn was cut off close to the ear, or, according to Pytheas, collected in sheaves, which were thrashed in large buildings,^[10] roofed over for protection against the ungenial climate. It was stored in subterranean granaries.

The personal appearance of the Britons of the southern counties is described by the Roman writers as follows:—The hair was worn long, and sometimes the beard and whiskers were shaved. The dress consisted of Gaulish trousers, and a tunic with a belt, almost like a Norfolk jacket, over which was worn a plaid, fastened with a brooch. It varied in thickness according to the season, and was of different colours, and sometimes was embroidered with gold.^[11] Their shoes were open in front, and fastened round the ankle. Boadicea wore a many-coloured tunic, drawn closely around her bosom, and over this a mantle, with a gold collar or torque round the neck. In the tin districts black mantles were worn.^[12] The natives of the interior wore skins in the days of Cæsar, and those of North Britain are described by Herodian and other writers as being half naked. Woad was used for staining the skin blue, and the figures of various animals are stated by the above-mentioned author^[13] to have been tattooed on their bodies. The personal ornaments were the same as those described in the twelfth chapter. Their weapons were daggers, long iron swords, and short spears; small round targets also were used, and in the south oblong shields like those of the Gauls; helmets and breast-plates were unknown. Cavalry were used in warfare, and large numbers of chariots, like those of the Homeric heroes, drawn by small galloways, and sometimes bearing scythes on either side.^[14]

The tribes of the south-eastern districts were, as might be expected from their contact with Gaul, and those of Cornwall from their intercourse with the Phoenician and Greek traders, more highly civilised than the other Britons. Coins were used as far north as York, but were not current among the Silures.^[15] Many of the mines were worked in various parts of the country, and a brisk export trade was carried on not merely in tin, but in gold, silver, iron, corn, and cattle, peltry, slaves, and hunting-dogs; the imports being, according to Diodorus Siculus, ivory bracelets, necklaces, amber, bronze wares, glass vessels, and "such like mean merchandise" from Gaul. This trade was sufficiently important to be taxed by Cæsar. British pearls also were known in Rome, and a breastplate inlaid with them, presented by Cæsar to Venus Genetrix, was preserved in Rome in her temple. Coracles, and boats made of osiers covered with hides, were employed in navigation, as well as wooden boats and ships; and in these the hardy natives of the west were in the habit of crossing over into Ireland. The tribes inhabiting Ireland were, as might be expected from their remoteness from the Continent, more rude and barbarous than those of Britain, although they belonged to the same races. Their ignorance of coins marks their lower position in the social scale.

Three, if not more, distinct peoples were in the British Isles at the time of the Roman conquest—(1) the small dark Iberians in the west, the remnants of the Neolithic aborigines; (2) their Celtic conquerors, who introduced a new civilisation from the Continent in the Bronze age, occupying by far the larger portion of the island; and (3) the Caledonians in the north, large-limbed, and with red hair, considered by Tacitus to be of Germanic origin.^[16] The last are identified by Dr. Beddoe with the tall red-haired population in the east in Athole and Mar.^[17] They probably arrived in Scotland from Scandinavia by the same route as the Norwegians in later times found their way into Caithness, setting sail from Thule, and making for the Orkneys. The Belgic Gauls also had crossed over from the opposite coasts of France, and had taken possession of the southern counties. They are not to be distinguished by any physical character from the Celtic peoples.

 

Roman Britain.

The Roman civilisation rapidly followed the Roman arms into Britain, and, although felt but to a slight degree between the invasion of Julius Cæsar and the conquest under Claudius, was carried by the policy of Suetonius and Agricola as far west as the Atlantic, and as far north as the Highlands of Scotland. The military occupation of the country led to the springing up of new towns, such as Chester, round the Roman camps, and the country was opened up by roads similar in their effects to the railways of the nineteenth century. Many of these are still in use. The strong central power which put an end to the rivalry between petty chieftains turned the attention of the people from war to agriculture, and Britain became one of the most important grain- producing countries in the Roman Empire.

The morasses were drained, forests cut down, and large tracts of land at the mouths of the rivers re-claimed from the tidal waters by the embankments which still do their work. The mineral wealth of the country was eagerly sought, not only the tin of Cornwall, or the iron of the Weald of Sussex, of the forest of Dean, and of the northern counties, but the gold and the copper of Wales, the lead of Derbyshire and of Somerset, the jet of Yorkshire,^[18] and the coal of Northumberland.^[19]

The influence of Rome penetrated into every part of the country south of the Highlands, and the Roman villas, with their tesselated pavements, baths, columns, and statues, originally designed for the sunny skies of Italy, rose under the inclement skies of Northumberland, Lancashire, and Wales, and were very numerous in the southern districts. Latin was the official language, occupying the same relation to the British tongue that French held till recently in Russia, and Britain was a province in the same sense as Gaul and Spain, and became Christian like the rest of the empire by the edict of the Emperor Constantine.^[20]

The Romans have also left their mark in the animals and plants which they naturalised in Britain. The fallow deer of southern Europe was introduced into the forests, the pheasant into the woodlands, and the hornless sheep, the goose, and the domestic fowl,^[21] were added to the animals used for the table. The last two were, however, known before the days of Cæsar; but from some superstitious feeling were not eaten. The elm, now so common, may be inferred not to have existed in Britain before the Historic period, from its not occurring in the forests buried under peat or submerged beneath the sea, and was probably naturalised by the Romans.

 

The English Conquest.

The invasion of Gaul by the Goths was swiftly followed by that of Britain by the English, and the destruction of the Roman empire by that of the province of Britain. In the long and deadly warfare^[22] which followed the landing of the three keels in the Isle of Thanet, in the year 449, the tide of conquest flowed steadily to the west, and the borders of England were enlarged until they extended to the western shores. The Roman civilisation was destroyed, the cities were burnt, their inhabitants driven away, until in the seventh century after Christ the Roman provincials were only represented by the Welsh of Cornwall, Wales, and Cumbria (Strathclyde). Christianity was replaced by the worship of Thor and Odin. The character of this conquest is eloquently described by Gildas,^[23] by the metaphor that the flame kindled in the east raged over nearly all the land till it flared red over the western ocean. In 607 Æthelfrith advanced from the line of the Upper Trent on Chester, and the Northumbrian and British armies confronted each other. A body of monks from the monastery of Bangor^[24] having come out to pray for victory over their enemies, Æthelfrith asked who they were, and on being told said, "If they fight against us with their prayers they are as truly our enemies as if they were armed," and began the battle by putting them to the sword. Bæda, who tells the story, says that eight hundred of them were killed. The British were routed, and Chester so ruthlessly destroyed, that it lay desolate for nearly three centuries until it was rebuilt by Æthelflaed, the Lady of the Mercians. The slaughter of the monks of Bangor may be taken as an example of the fate of the British Christians, and the sack of Chester illustrates the treatment of the British towns and cities. The conflict between the two races did not lose its deadly character until the English became converts to Christianity.

The British, as they were gradually pushed westward, took refuge in Brittany and in Ireland, and under their influence the north of Ireland became a great centre from which Christianity^[25] and civilisation spread not merely over a large part of England and Scotland, but over Scandinavia, Germany, and as far south as St. Galle. To them we owe the illuminated missals, the elaborate chalices, and the sculptured crosses in which the late Celtic designs are blended with the Germanic, introduced into Britain by the English, and into Ireland by the Danes and Norse.^[26]

 

The English Breed of Cattle.

The English came over to Britain not as bodies of fighting men, but with their wives and families and household stuff; and the migration was so complete that, according to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, the Angleland which they forsook was left desolate for four centuries afterwards.^[27] They effected as great a revolution in farming in Britain as in the language and whole political system, and with them appears, for the first time, the large breed of oxen from which., by a continual process of selection, our larger and more valuable breeds are descended.

The small Celtic short-horn was the only domestic breed known in Roman Britain, and its remains are exceedingly abundant in the refuse-heaps belonging to that period. Had any other large cattle been used, their bones would undoubtedly have been preserved in the same manner as those of all the other animals kept by the British farmers.

The first notice of cattle differing from the small dark Celtic short-horn is to be found in the Venedotian laws of Howel Dha, in which "white cows with red ears" are mentioned. These laws were codified in the tenth or eleventh century, but the customs to which they relate date back to a much earlier period. In a later translation of the Welsh laws, a hundred white cows with red ears are considered equal in value to a hundred and fifty black cattle. The white cattle are identical with those of Chillingham,^[28] usually considered to be wild, but which more probably are their descendants, and have inherited their characters without change. It is not likely that so large an animal could have survived in Britain into the Historic period in a wild state, because its creamy- white colour would make it conspicuous to its enemies, and render concealment impossible in so densely-populated an island as Britain. These large cattle are distributed throughout every part of Britain conquered by the English, while the Celtic short-horn only survives in those parts in which the British had taken refuge. From these considerations it may be inferred that the larger cattle represented by the breed of Chillingham were introduced by the English farmers into Britain, and probably by the Norwegians and Danes into Ireland.

The Vikings were in the habit of taking cattle on shipboard, and the Norwegian settlers in Iceland, in 874,^[29] brought their cattle along with them. Thorsin, a wealthy Icelander, founded a colony in Vinland, taking with him sixty sailors, much cattle, and implements of husbandry.

From the English Conquest down to the present day the additions to our domestic animals have been few and unimportant. The ass^[30] was known before A.D. 850, and the domestic cat was highly valued in Wales before the tenth or eleventh centuries.

 

The Extinction of the larger Wild Animals.

The wars which followed the invasion of Britain by the English delayed, in an important degree, the destruction of the larger and fiercer wild animals that found shelter in the uncultivated lands. The wolves increased in numbers after that time, and became sufficiently formidable to be worthy of special enactments in the days of Eadgar^[31] and Edward the First. Those of Sussex devoured the bodies of the English slain on the battlefield of Senlac. They were exterminated in England about the end of the fourteenth century, in Scotland in 1680, and in Ireland in 1710. The bear has left no traces of his existence of a later date than the Roman occupation. The beaver was trapped for its fur in the twelfth century in the river Teivi. The wild boar disappeared from England before the reign of Charles the First,^[32] and lingered in the waste lands of Ireland into the next century. The reindeer was hunted by the jarls of Orkney in the remote north in Caithness^[33] as late as the year 1159, while Henry the Second occupied the throne of England, and Alexander Neckam was writing his history. The gradual disappearance of these animals marks the increase of population, the cutting down of forests, the drainage of morasses, the multiplication of roads, by which man became master of the whole of the British Isles.

 

Conclusion.

It remains for us to sum up the principal results of our enquiry into Early Man in Britain. The succession of events from the beginning to the end of the Tertiary period has been treated; a succession in which each stage is intimately connected with that which went before and followed after. In the Eocene and Meiocene ages our islands formed part of a continent extending northwards to Iceland, Spitzbergen, and Greenland, with a warm climate and a luxuriant vegetation, inhabited by wild beasts belonging to extinct species. As none of the mammalia then alive are now living, it is unreasonable to suppose that man, the most highly specialised of all, should then have been on the earth. Nor is it likely that he lived in Europe in the Pleiocene age, after the land connecting Britain with Greenland had been submerged, and the Atlantic was united to the North Sea and the Arctic Ocean, because the living species of mammalia are so few. When the living species became abundant, he appears just in the Pleistocene stage in the evolution of mammalian life in which he might be expected to appear. The River-drift man first comes before us, endowed with all human attributes, and without any signs of a closer alliance with the lower animals than is presented by the savages of to-day; as a hunter, armed with rude stone implements, living not merely in Britain but throughout western and southern Europe, northern Africa, Asia Minor, and India. Next follows the Cave- man, possessed of better implements, and endowed with the faculty of representing animal forms with extraordinary fidelity, living in Europe north of the Alps and Pyrenees as far as Derbyshire, and probably belonging to the same race as the Eskimos. The disappearance of the Cave-man from Britain coincided with the geographical change by which it became an island, the change from a severe to a temperate climate, the extinction of some animals, and the retreat of others to northern and to southern regions. In the Prehistoric age the earliest of the present inhabitants arrived in Britain. The small, dark, non-Aryan peoples, who spread over France and Spain, brought with them into Britain the domestic animals and the cultivated plants and seeds, and laid the foundation of our present culture. The next invaders were the bronze-using Celtic tribes composing the van of the Aryan race. They crossed over from the Continent and introduced a higher civilisation than that of the Neolithic age. In the course of time the use of iron became known, and in the Prehistoric Iron age the condition of Britain was higher than it had ever been before. A commerce was carried on with the Mediterranean peoples, and works of Etruskan art penetrated as far to the west as Ireland.

We have also noted the gradual disappearance of the wild animals, which stands in an inverse ratio to the increase in the domestic species.

The influence of the classical peoples of the Mediterranean on the nations of the north has also engaged our attention, and we have remarked the trade-routes by which Greek, Etruskan, and Phœnician commerce was carried on with the barbarians of the north, a commerce which was aimed more particularly at the gold, tin, and amber so eagerly sought in the ancient world. We have also traced the progress of discovery in the north-western seas by the Phoenicians and Greek mariners, and have only ended our enquiry with the circumnavigation of Britain in the time of Agricola. The Etruskans, from their commanding position in northern Italy, were most powerful in spreading civilisation northwards, in Gaul and Germany. Their influence was felt in Gaul in the Bronze age, and throughout Germany in the late Bronze and Iron ages. It is natural to suppose, also, that the Phœnicians, from their extended commerce, must have exercised a powerful influence on the peoples of Spain and of Gaul, but this it is impossible to trace, because they were mere manufacturers and merchants, without any art of their own. In later times the Greek influence became powerful in Gaul and Germany, penetrated into Britain, and was followed in due time by that of Rome. There is obviously a considerable overlap between the Historic period of the Mediterranean and the Neolithic, Bronze, and Prehistoric Iron ages in central and northern Europe.

We found Britain at the beginning of our enquiry part of a continent, without human inhabitants; we leave it at the end an island, with its inhabitants and its condition to be dealt with by the historian. Each of the changes recorded has left its mark in the Britain of to-day, and so intimate is the continuity running through all the events, that the Tertiary period must be extended so as to embrace our own time. History takes up the story of human progress at the point where it is dropped by geology, archæology, and ethnology, and carries it on to the present day.

1. Dr. Latham, Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography.
2. Crania Britannica, i. p. 64.
3. Claudius Ptolemæus, Geographia, Mon. Hist. Brit.
4. It was an island in the days of Claudius. Suetonius, Mon. Hist Brit. 1.
5. The fogs are generally mentioned in the accounts of Roman Britain. See Mon. Hist. Brit. vii., etc.
6. For evidence as to the animals see my Preliminary Treatise, Palæont. Soc. 1878, cii.
7. Laing and Huxley, Prehistoric Remains of Caithness, 8vo, 1866. Dawkins, Pop. Sc. Rev. 1868: "The Range of the Reindeer." For an account of these circular buildings see Wilson, Prehistoric Annals of Scotland, ii. 338 et seq.
8. Strabo, Mon. Hist. Brit. vi.
9. On the authority of Zosimus (circa A.D. 500).
10. This statement was so strange to Strabo, accustomed only to the open threshing-floors of the south, that it is quoted as proving the untrustworthiness of Pytheas. Mon. Hist. Brit. xc.
11. Thurnam, Crania Britannica, i. p. 75.
12. Strabo, Mon. Hist. Brit. v.
13. Mon. Hist. Brit. lxii.
14. For these facts, see Mon. Hist. Brit.; also Thurnam, Crania Britannica, i. p. 85 et seq.
15. Solinus, A.D. 80. See Evans, Ancient British Coins, c. i.
16. Dr. Thurnam considers this a mere speculation of Tacitus. Crania Brit. i. p. 169. Jornandes notes the large size and red hair of the Caledonians, as well as the dark complexions and curly black hair of the Silures, Mon. Hist. Brit. lxxii.
17. Proceed. Soc. Antiq. Scot., 1855.
18. Solinus, c. 22. Priscianus, Perieg. v. 202. Isidorus, xiv. c. 6. Bæda, Hist. Eccles. i. 1.
19. Cinders occur in the refuse-heaps of the Roman garrisons on the Roman Wall. See Bruce, The Roman Wall.
20. Sozomen, i. c. 6.
21. It is abundant in most Romano-British refuse-heaps.
22. For the history of this conquest see Freeman, Early History of England; Green, History of the English People.
23. xxiv.
24. Bæda, Hist. Eccles. i. 2. Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.
25. See Cave-hunting, c. iii.
26. See pp. 443-4.
27. Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, A.D. 449. The MS. A (Mon. Hist. Brit.) from which the statement is taken ends in A.D. 975.
28. Further details as to the English cattle are given in my Preliminary Treatise, British Pleistocene Mammalia, Palæont. Soc. 1878, p. xiv.
29. Malet, Northern Antiquities, p. 291. 1770.
30. Bell, British Quadrupeds, p. 386.
31. For the authorities for these dates, see Preliminary Treatise, British Pleistocene Mammalia, Palæont. Soc., 1870, c. ii.
32. He attempted to re-introduce them from the Continent.
33. "Hreina," in the Orkneyinga Saga. For a criticism on this see Pop. Science Rev., 1868, p. 42, and Proceed. Soc. Antiq. Scot. viii. p. 1, 1869.