History of the British Isles

The history of the British Isles are the collective histories of the people in the British Isles archipelago, which comprises the islands of Great Britain, Ireland, Mann, the Hebrides, Orkney, Shetland, the Isles of Scilly and the Channel Islands. England and Scotland were separate independent countries until 1603, and then legally separate under one monarch until 1707, when they united as one kingdom. Wales and Northern Ireland were composed of several independent kingdoms with shifting boundaries until the medieval period. The British monarch was head of state of all of the countries of the British Isles from the Union of the Crowns in 1603 until the enactment of the Republic of Ireland Act in 1949, although the term "British Isles" was not used in 1603. Additionally, since the independence of most of Ireland, some historians of the region often avoid the term British Isles due to the complexity of relations between the peoples of the islands (see: Terminology of the British Isles). Prehistoric Britain and Prehistoric Ireland The Palaeolithic and Mesolithic, also known as the Old and Middle Stone Ages, were characterised by a hunter-gatherer society and a reliance on stone tool technologies. The Lower Palaeolithic period in the British Isles saw the region's first known habitation by early hominids, specifically the extinct Homo heidelbergensis. This period saw many changes in the environment, encompassing several glacial and interglacial episodes greatly affecting human settlement in the region. Providing dating for this distant period is difficult and contentious. The inhabitants of the region at this time were bands of hunter-gatherers who roamed Northern Europe following herds of animals, or who supported themselves by fishing. One of the most prominent archaeological sites dating to this period is that of Boxgrove Quarry in West Sussex, southern England. By the Mesolithic, Homo sapiens, or modern humans, were the only hominid species to still survive in the British Isles.

About this result

This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.

Related publications (1)

Related concepts (8)

Scotland in the Early Middle Ages

Scotland was divided into a series of kingdoms in the early Middle Ages, i.e. between the end of Roman authority in southern and central Britain from around 400 CE and the rise of the kingdom of Alba in 900 CE. Of these, the four most important to emerge were the Picts, the Gaels of Dál Riata, the Britons of Alt Clut, and the Anglian kingdom of Bernicia. After the arrival of the Vikings in the late 8th century, Scandinavian rulers and colonies were established on the islands and along parts of the coasts.

History of Ireland

The first evidence of human presence in Ireland dates to around 33,000 years ago, with further findings dating the presence of homo sapiens to around 10,500 to 7,000 BC. The receding of the ice after the Younger Dryas cold phase of the Quaternary around 9700 BC, heralds the beginning of Prehistoric Ireland, which includes the archaeological periods known as the Mesolithic, the Neolithic from about 4000 BC and the Copper Age beginning around 2500 BC with the arrival of the Beaker Culture.

History of England

England became inhabited more than 800,000 years ago, as the discovery of stone tools and footprints at Happisburgh in Norfolk have indicated. The earliest evidence for early modern humans in Northwestern Europe, a jawbone discovered in Devon at Kents Cavern in 1927, was re-dated in 2011 to between 41,000 and 44,000 years old. Continuous human habitation in England dates to around 13,000 years ago (see Creswellian), at the end of the Last Glacial Period.

Red squirrels in the British Isles are infected with leprosy bacilli

Stewart Cole, Andrej Benjak, Charlotte Avanzi, Philippe Busso, Jérémie Piton, Chloé Marie Loiseau

Leprosy, caused by infection with Mycobacterium leprae or the recently discovered Mycobacterium lepromatosis, was once endemic in humans in the British Isles. Red squirrels in Great Britain (Sciurus vulgaris) have increasingly been observed with leprosy-li ...

American Association for the Advancement of Science2016