Scotland's history as you've never heard it before. Understand the sequences and time line of the oldest kingdom in the world, told in emotive and bloody stories from our country's past. Tony Harmsworth has been involved in presenting Scottish Histo...
Probably the least violent period in Scotland's history was the arrival of Mesolithic people around eight thousand years ago. There was no one here for them to fight, otherwise it would, no doubt, have been a different story!
This does mean, of course, that some nameless individual would have been the very last person to make that walk from France across the English Channel, before rising sea levels made it too dangerous and the route was lost for centuries. [Image at top.]
These stone age people gradually made their way up from England to Scotland over the next few thousand years.
The end of the ice age in Scotland just twelve thousand years ago saw firstly an invasion of wind blown seeds like grasses and silver birch trees. These were quickly followed by the heavier seeds carried by birds and animals - holly, rowan, blackthorn, wild cherry then hazel and oak. The heavier wind blown seeds also spread northwards. By six thousand BC, most of Scotland was covered in the most wonderful forest which became known as the Caledonian Forest.
Sadly, only tiny remnants of this forest exist today as climate stunted new growth and what remained was all cut down, beginning in the bronze age and continuing until the industrial revolution. Where did the timber go? To make charcoal for the smelting of bronze, iron and other metals. All of those forests gone forever in the name of progress. Readers wishing to experience one of the last truly original areas of this great forest which managed to survive the plunder should visit Glen Affric in Inverness-shire.
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We know very little about these early Highland people because they lived in caves and makeshift shelters. Their existence may well have been tribal and that, no doubt, will have led to the odd slit throat or smashed skull, but we have no written records of that time. What little we do know has been gleaned by archaeologists sifting through meagre evidence.
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At some point, about three thousand years later, some of these Mesolithic Highlanders came up with a great idea. They planted crops. The Neolithic era had begun.
Now growing crops and domesticating animals, their makeshift shelters were no longer very suitable. They gathered stones, timber and grass and built permanent houses.
This provided them with more security, the archaeologists with a treasure trove called a garbage pit and the neighbouring tribes with a more pressing reason to kill them and steal their growing number of possessions!
