-Prehistoric Britain- beginning about 70,000 BC with the end of the Ice Age.
-No written records, so we only know about it from archaeology.
-c. 60,000 BC- woolly mammoths, giant deer, and other crazy creatures wandered around prehistoric Britain.
-c. 40,000 BC- Neanderthals arrive.
-c. 30,000 BC- arrival of homo sapiens arrive.
-c. 22,000 BC- cold snap, vegetation dies and the land becomes a tundra, lots of migration south.
-c. 14,000 BC- the weather warms up again, people repopulate the land, vegetation returns.
-c. 7150 BC- around the time that the caveman "Cheddar Man" (found in modern-day Cheddar Gorge, Somerset) lived. Oldest complete human skeleton found in Britain so far. Hole in his skull suggests that he was murdered.
-Also, his bones had been scarped clean...possible evidence of either cannibalism or weird religious shit.
-c. 6500 BC- because of rising tides, Britain becomes an island!
-c. 4000 BC- Britain's Neolithic Age.
-About 10,000 people now living on the island during this time.
-c. 2500 BC- Stonehenge is built!
-c. 1000 BC- Britain's Bronze Age. Hill forts begin being built across the land.
-However, mainland Europe at this time was already in the Iron Age.
-c. 700 BC- iron technology is finally introduced to the island.
-c. 500-400 BC- the Celts begin immigrating into Britain from France and northern Spain.
-Celts originally came from Central Europe and had spread throughout the continent by 275 BC.
-One group of Celts were known as the Britons. The Britons spoke a language today known as Brittonic, which is the ancestor of modern-day Welsh, Cornish, Breton, and many others which are still around to this day.
-Another group of these Briton newcomers settled in modern-day Ireland. These Britons spoke Goidelic, an ancestor of modern-day Gaelic.
-The Celts weren't really a unified civilization, and they fought each other constantly. However, culturally they were all quite similar, which is why these groups of people are all labeled as "Celts".
-The Brittonic name for Britain was "Albion", which is the oldest name of the island that we know of, and possibly means "white" or "hill" (it's unclear).
-c. 325 BC- the Greek explorer Pytheas discovers Albion for the Greeks.
-Pytheas records that he encountered barbarians who were either painted or tattooed (it's unclear what he meant) and that they called their land "Prydain", so he called them "Prettanikē" (in Greek) which in turn would be translated to "Britannia" in Latin.
-Around this time there were basically two types of Celts living in Britain- the coastal, trading, agrarian folk (focused around modern-day Kent) and the inland hunter-gatherer folk.
-These communities were small due to geographic barriers and other shit.
-c. 200 BC- trade picks up and Greek coins and products start appearing in Britain.
-c. 100 BC- a local currency appears on the island, derived from coinage from mainland Europe.
-The theory is the that the Celts of Britain were getting paid to be mercenaries.
-Oppida (walled villages) started being built across the island.
-Largely agricultural societies.
-Population was booming (about a million people now!).
-Shared a common religion with the Celts of Gaul- Celtic polytheism, with a priestly caste known today as "druids".
-Drank shitty beer (no hops) as a way to consume extra calories. However, they preferred to drink mead, as it was probably much tastier.
-We don't know much about the history, culture, or religion of the Celts of Britain because the druids were their record-keepers, and they practiced a tradition of oral history only.
-Of course, when the Romans eventually wiped out the druids (it's unclear as to why exactly they did this, and it could have been for any combination of reasons from the druids practicing human sacrifice (for which there is some archaeological evidence) to them typically being fiercely anti-Roman), their records almost completely were lost with them.
-Speaking of the Romans, they're about to enter the narrative, as during this time they were in the middle of conquering/pacifying/slaughtering the Celts of Gaul... the Celts of Britain during this time would soon follow
