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Chapter 2
From Nomads to Farmers: The Earliest Peoples
In This Chapter
Considering the first people who visited and settled in Scotland
Looking at the Stone Age, Bronze Age and Iron Age in Scotland
Identifying the people who came to Scotland from throughout Europe
Envisioning everyday life for Scotland’s first settlers
In this chapter, I cover a greater period of time than the rest of the book put together. We can date settlement of Scotland to some 7,000 to 8,000 years ago, but we don’t have much of a clue about the earliest settlers. So much of what is written about them is guesswork, but intelligent guesswork. Because history relies on the written record, which didn’t exist during this period, what we know of the lives of the earliest settlers is derived almost solely from archaeology. However, it seems clear that well before the birth of Christ, we moved from being people who only hunted or foraged for food to people who herded animals and grew food – in other words, from nomads to farmers.
We know very little about Scotland’s ancient ancestors, but a number of things stand out. They lived through different ages, which lasted much longer than the period of recorded history. These ages were identified by the kind of raw materials (stone, bronze and iron) used and the technologies that developed around them. Perhaps the biggest change in the history of mankind was the transformation of the nomadic lifestyle into settled communities. That laid the basis for the evolution of more complicated societies – as the basic needs were met, the surplus could be used to maintain people (such as artists, kings, priests and warriors) who did not work the land.
In this chapter, I walk you through these earliest days of Scotland’s history, before anyone had even heard of ‘Scotland’.
Technically, we can’t speak about ‘Scotland’ in prehistory, because boundaries didn’t exist. But I use the term
Scotland
throughout this book to refer to the land we think of as Scotland today.
Boundaries and Landscape: The First People to Inhabit Scotland
The first map of Scotland was drawn up by the Roman Ptolemy in his
Geography,
written in the second century AD; the next map was drawn up 11 centuries later by Matthew Paris, a monk of St Albans. But for most of this period, Scotland was uninhabitable – it was too cold! Indeed, most of Scotland remained covered by glaciers when the cave paintings of Lascaux in France were created sometime in the 14th mille
It was only when the Ice Age began to come to an end in the 11th mille
The melting of the ice caps allowed for human habitation. As I mention earlier, Scotland was inhabited something like 7,000 to 8,000 years ago. Evidence drawn from archaeological finds shows that from 6,000BC, men from the south travelled up to Scotland and stayed for a few weeks, eating deer, wild boar and fish. Visitors also crossed from Ireland and did pretty much the same thing.
These visitors were
nomads
– people searching for food wherever they could find it. But some of them must have settled – even if for a short time – because the remains of Scotland’s first house, from 7,000 years ago, were discovered at Crathes, near Banchory, Aberdeenshire. This circular stone structure measured about 7.6 metres (25 feet) across and housed eight or nine people.
Prior to the Bronze Age, and 1,000 years before the Romans arrived in Scotland, complex societies existed. All we have as reminders of them are the mysterious stone circles, the henge monuments that can be found all over Britain. But there are other structures to consider. Chambered cairns like Maes Howe in Orkney were built to honour the dead, and many were built before the pyramids. At Maes Howe, the stone slabs, some weighing three tons, are so closely fitted together that you can’t insert a knife blade between them.
The Ages of Man: The Stone Age, Bronze Age and Iron Age in Scotland
Although it’s a bit unscientific, archaeologists and historians tend to think of the transition from nomads to farmers in terms of ‘ages’. An
age
is defined by the technology that is used to make tools and other objects. So, the three main ages of man are the Stone Age, the Bronze Age and the Iron Age.
The Stone Age
The first settlers were hunter-gatherers, who were active in what is known as the Middle Stone Age or Mesolithic period. The tools used by people during this period were made of stone, which gave rise to the name Stone Age. The polished stone axe heads that you see displayed in museums are probably the best known Stone Age tools.
During this period, people hunted animals and then processed the hides for clothes and shelter. From around 3,500BC, farming became a way of life. Human beings realised that herding and growing their food would be easier than struggling to find and kill it.
Stone Age people settled by the sea and on the islands. Travelling by land meant having to cope with forests, swamps and wild animals. For this reason, water became the only means of communication between these island communities. Most of these settlements were small in size but not without knowledge of each other. Skara Brae in Orkney, preserved by a freak sandstorm, is the finest example of a New Stone Age (or Neolithic period) village in northern Europe. It housed about 30 people, who shared the accommodation with their animals.
Old traditions of a nomadic life slowly died out, but by 2,000BC, communities in most parts of Scotland had settled on the land.
The Bronze Age
The Bronze Age is thought to have followed the Stone Age and began around 2,000BC. Bronze is made out of an amalgam of copper and tin. It grew in popularity because it was easier to work with and shape than stone. The knowledge of how to make bronze and work with it is thought to have come to Scotland from southern Britain or Ireland. At first, bronze was used only to make decorations such as brooches, but as the tools became more sophisticated, the emphasis was more on making weapons, such as swords and spearheads.
The Bronze Age is considered to have been warmer than the Stone Age, which is borne out by evidence of a fair number of settlements 91.4 metres (300 feet) above sea level. The fact that these settlers lived in timber roundhouses with extended families is further proof that the climate was changing for the better.
However, sometime during this period, settlement moved from upland areas to lowland areas. The most plausible explanations for this move are soil erosion and exhaustion. But there was also climatic change to consider. Dust clouds from volcanoes in Iceland floated in and made farming difficult, as did the fact that it was becoming wetter in the latter part of the second mille
The Iron Age
From around 800BC, iron technology was imported into Scotland from southern Europe. The advantages of iron over bronze were threefold:
It was harder.
It was sharper.
It lasted longer.
The major invention of the age was the rotary quern for grinding grain. Its invention coincided with a major expansion of arable farming. This tool resulted in another push into the upland areas, as hillsides, such as the Cheviots, were cleared of forests.
The closing of BC also saw construction of large underground grain stores known as
souterrains.
When the Romans arrived, they entered a land largely cleared of forest, but extensive bogs and marshlands remained.
Anybody Out There? The People Who Came to Scotland from Europe
All these ages – particularly the Bronze Age and Iron Age – were identified with people who had come to Scotland from other parts of Europe. The two groups we have the most knowledge of were the Beaker people and the Celts. I fill you in on these groups in this section.
The Beaker people: Let’s get hammered!
Remains of the Beaker people – archers and horsemen – who lived at the begi
The Beaker people didn’t just stand around all day drinking beer or making pottery; they were also skilled engineers and surveyors. They may have built the stone circles like the Stones of Ste
The most famous stones are at Callinish, Isle of Lewis. Here an avenue of 19 monoliths leads to a circle of 13 stones, which were completed around 1,500 BC. Evidence of this Beaker culture has also been discovered at Stonehenge in England and at Mycenae in Greece.
The Celts: Holding firm
Since the 18th century, it has been common to think of the British Isles, except England, as a Celtic fringe – in other words, the remnants of peoples who once inhabited a ‘Celtic Europe’ before the expansion of the Roman Empire. But where did these people come from?
The Celts seem to have replaced the Beaker people as the Celts’ language and culture spread throughout Europe. How do we know this? Well, because examples of the La Tène style of pottery and ironwork, which is decorated with circles and swirling patterns, turned up all over Britain. La Tène was a village in Switzerland, so how did this Celtic artwork make its way here? Through networks of trade.
People needed a common language that would allow them to communicate with each other. But in the end, how the Celts and their culture found their way to Britain is a still a bit of a mystery. Archaeologists have discounted colonisation because there was little evidence of a large-scale movement of people into Scotland a thousand years before the Romans arrived. So, it seems that the native late Bronze Age inhabitants gradually absorbed European Celtic influences and language.