Sublime

not, as might be expected, in caves, but out in the open, where most Palaeolithic people lived out their lives.

the population in Britain’s various regions had been steadily growing since the arrival of farming around 4000 BC.

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

There has been much stress in academic circles on the competitive nature of later prehistoric society in Britain. The rise of powerful leaders, the importance of impressive hillforts and the growing luxury of fine objects, including massive gold neck-rings (known as torcs) and even the importation of wine from the Mediterranean.h

I have spent most of my professional life working in the Fens, excavating sites in a landscape that has changed beyond recognition over the past four centuries, when wholesale drainage converted a complex network of shallow lakes, slow-flowing rivers, marshy meadows and lush willow and alder woodland into a series of huge rectangular arable fields

Fishing net weights and hooks suggest that fish remained important. This is confirmed by levels of 15N in the bones of people who lived on the Dnieper Rapids, which indicate a meat diet containing more than 50% fish.

It has recently been suggested that wood might have symbolized the world we live in and stone the permanent, everlasting realm of the ancestors.

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