Placeholder Image

Subtitles section Play video

  • History in a Nutshell

  • What happened in the Neolithic, you ask? Well, the period lasted for nearly 2,000 years in

  • Britain, so it's a pretty safe bet to say that loads happened. Loads and loads and loads.

  • The trouble is, we just don't know about most of it.

  • Because the people of this period didn't write anything down, we've had to piece

  • together their past from the things they left behind, like monuments, burials and everyday

  • bits and pieces like stone tools and pots.

  • But let's find out what we do know.

  • First off, the Neolithic period in Britain lasted from about 4,000 BC to 2,300 BC.

  • The people at the time wouldn't have known they were Neolithicit's just the name

  • archaeologists use to describe the time when people began to farm.

  • Neolithic means 'New Stone Age'. It was the last of three Stone Agesthe first

  • one, known as the Palaeolithic, began in Britain a whopping nine hundred thousand years ago.

  • You could say the Stone Age went on for ages and ages and ages.

  • But let's stick with the Neolithic for now.

  • People first started farming in the Middle East about 11,000 years ago.

  • At this point, people in Britain were nomadic hunter-gatherers. Farming didn't reach Britain

  • for another 7,000 years. Once it arrived here it spread quickly. Farming meant that people

  • could store food and have supplies of meat, milk and cereals that could last them through

  • the winter months.

  • To begin with, farming actually involved a lot more work, a less varied diet and more

  • infectious diseases. Compared with hunter gatherers, the early farmers were not just

  • shorter, but their lives were shorter too!

  • Britain underwent a total transformation in the Neolithic, and that was mostly thanks

  • to farming.

  • From about 4000 BC people in Britain grew new crops like wheat, barley and pulses, and

  • they herded goats, sheep, pigs and cows. They chopped down woodland and cleared scrub, making

  • room for fields and space to build monuments.

  • They began to make simple pottery, and they quarried stone to make polished axes.

  • From around 3,800 BC they started building communal tombs called long barrows and large

  • earthwork enclosures, which may have been gathering places. It's possible that people

  • built the communal tombs to worship their ancestors, perhaps believing that the dead

  • could help the living.

  • Later on in the period, they built more mysterious monuments, including the massive earth mound

  • at Silbury Hill, and, most famously, circles from stone and wood, like Castlerigg, Woodhenge,

  • Avebury and Stonehenge. Stonehenge was built in about 2,500 BCthat's 180 generations ago!

  • These were huge undertakings for people with limited technology. Why did they bother faffing

  • around with all this fancy building work when there was so much farming to be getting on with?

  • Again, we don't know for certain, but it probably had something to do with how they

  • saw the world. The sheer amount of effort that went into them suggests that they were

  • deeply important places.

  • Some monuments, like Stonehenge, were aligned with the midsummer sunrise and midwinter sunset.

  • For these farming people, the changing of the seasons and the movements of the sun,

  • moon and stars must have played a massive part in their beliefs about the world.

  • Even as Stonehenge was being built, the days of the Neolithic were numbered. Bronze was

  • coming to Britain, and the Stone Age was drawing to a close.

History in a Nutshell

Subtitles and vocabulary

Click the word to look it up Click the word to find further inforamtion about it