Scenes From Prehistoric Life

the parish church, windmill and lovely Georgian houses of the little Fen village of Moulton

The more we learn, the more we realize that prehistorica communities were extremely adaptable and were able to settle in a number of very different landscapes, some of which we might view, even today, as being quite challenging, if not actually hostile. This was done by keeping in regular touch with other, often quite widely separated, groups of pe

The Burren is today an Irish National Park and nature reserve best known for its glaciated ‘karst’g landscapes, where the underlying limestone lies at the surface. The exposed, bare limestone does not favour luxuriant plant growth, but those that do grow there are hugely varied and find their sustenance in pockets of soil preserved between the slab

Maes Howe belongs to a tradition of tombs known as passage graves, which probably originated in Brittany. It was built in the later Neolithic, shortly after 3000 BC, and consists of a long entrance passage that leads into a central hall with small side cells for burials. In common with the other great passage grave from these islands, Newgrange, in

From around 4000 BC, thousands of small communities slowly evolved towards the strong tribal kingdoms that were eventually to confront the invading Roman army.

Onions provide the basis for many modern dishes, but the large cultivated varieties originated in the Middle East and Asia and probably only reached Britain in Roman times.

I can remember being very moved by the fact that the more recent footprints in the muds of the Severn were made by men, women and children and when I visited the site I could imagine Mesolithic families out for a stroll along the foreshore. But what we now realize were the earliest footprints in Europe, at Happisburgh, were probably left by a famil

One of the clearest examples of a rapid, long-lasting change took place over some fifty years around 9600 BC.4 It was during this time – maybe a short human lifetime – that the climate of northern Europe warmed by some ten degrees Celsius, before it levelled off.

So Martin and Richard took a stroll along the beach, which had just had much of its sand removed by a particularly severe storm. The washing away of the sand had revealed the undisturbed muds of the ancient Thames estuary that formed the bed of the beach. Normally such deposits are quite smooth and you can spot little streams and the remains of pat