Early hominins in Britain

Our recent and forthcoming talks programme shows continuing interest in the earliest human inhabitants of Britain, so the Editor thought a lightning overview might be welcome of the various human species visiting Britain at different periods.  An excellent more detailed account can be found in ‘Homo Britannicus’ (pub.Allen Lane 2006, now in paperback)  by one of our recent speakers, Professor Chris Stringer of the Natural History Museum.

It was Homo erectus that originally left Africa for Asia and southern Europe, soon after 2 million years ago.  Probably they, or maybe a species of their descendants eventually made it north to Pakefield, Suffolk, the site of the earliest human occupation in Europe north of the Alps (pace the recent ‘Charnia’ account of the Chairman’s AGM Report).  Here flint cores, flakes and flake tools show them present,  perhaps around 750,000 years ago, on what has been nicknamed the ‘Costa del Cromer’, basking in the same hot Mediterranean climate as they had left in Italy, Spain and Greece. 

By about 50 thousand years later, our climate had cooled considerably for the next settlers here, at Happisburgh, Norfolk, further north along the same coastline as Pakefield.  In addition to flake tools, they used the earliest handaxes in Britain, and must have been technically more accomplished, to cope with the cold winters we are now used to. They certainly required clothing and shelters, unlike their predecessors at Pakefield.

The first actual fossil remains of humans in Britain were not found until those from a site dated around 500,000 years ago.  Boxgrove quarry, Sussex, produced a shinbone and 2 teeth from different individuals of the species H. heidelbergensis, a strong well-built 6-footer.  He/she led a very vigorous and active life as a hunter of such large wild beasts as horses and woolly rhinoceros, at close quarters, armed only with a stabbing spear such as that found at the later site of Clacton, Essex, and using handaxes to butcher the carcase.

It was from H. heidelbergensis that Neanderthal man (H. neanderthalensis) began evolving in Europe.  The base of the skull at Swanscombe quarry, Kent, around 400,000 years ago, and the teeth at Pontnewydd Cave in North Wales about 225 thousand years ago both have Neanderthal traits.  Their tools were made using a very much more complex technology, the ‘Levallois’ technique.  Neanderthalers’ favourite prey, as at Lynford quarry in Norfolk around 60,000 years ago, was the woolly mammoth, ranging in vast herds across the rich grassland steppes of Britain, then a peninsula on the northwest tip of Eurasia.  Neanderthalers made tools out of local quartzite at Creswell Crags, on the Notts/Derbys. border, around this same time, and it was probably Neanderthalers who paused awhile at Glaston, Rutland about 30,000 years ago to re-arm a hunting spear with a new flint blade point.

However, very soon afterwards this successful ‘home-bred’ European was extinct, replaced by another immigrant from Africa, anatomically-modern man, H.sapiens.This new species had evolved there from H. erectus or their descendants by around 150,000 years ago, and eventually reached Britain about 35-30,000 years ago.

Did the two species ever meet?  We do not know… but DNA evidence shows that Neanderthals are not ancestors of the modern human population.  Why did they die out?  Again, we just do not know, though climate change is one of many theories:  see Chris Stringer’s book for more details.

 Anne Graf