Long, long ago, before there were any books, houses or shops, people still lived in Britain. This huge stretch of time is called prehistory because it came before writing — we name three parts of it after the tools people used.
Three ages, three big changes
In the early Stone Age, people hunted wild animals and gathered plants, moving to follow the food. Then people learned to plant seeds and keep animals — the start of farming — so they could settle in one place. Later, people learned to mix metals to make bronze for sharper tools and jewellery, and finally to work iron, which was stronger still. Iron Age people often lived in round houses inside hilltop forts.
Put these developments in order, earliest first:
- Hunting and gathering with stone tools
- The first farmers grow crops and keep animals
- Bronze tools and jewellery
- Iron tools and hilltop-fort villages
How do we know?
Nobody wrote any of this down, so we rely on archaeologists: people who dig up and study what the past left behind, like bones, pots and tools. Two amazing places help us: Skara Brae in Scotland, a Stone Age village buried under sand for thousands of years, whose stone houses still have stone beds and shelves; and Stonehenge in England, a huge ring of giant standing stones built about 4,500 years ago, which many think was a special place to watch the Sun and the seasons. Every dug-up bone or broken pot is a clue — historians and archaeologists are like detectives piecing the story together.