Who were the first humans to reach the British Isles?

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When we think about difficult places for people to live, our thoughts tend to turn to the most extreme places: the Sahara, the high Arctic, the peaks of the Himalayas. The British Isles are not as inhospitable as these places, but they still presented a serious challenge to ancient people.

I realized this when I came across a September study of some of the earliest evidence of hominins living in Britain. The occupation it documents is truly ancient, dating back over 700,000 years. But this is a relatively recent development, considering how early hominids emerged from Africa. These early explorers quickly traveled to Indonesia, for example, and were slow to travel to Britain.

Let's give specific numbers. Was hominins living in Africa already at 6 or 7 million years ago. However, the oldest widely accepted evidence of hominins outside Africa dates back to 1.8 million years ago. Georgia on horsebackwhere are the bones Alert man were found. These early members of our genus appear to have been the first to travel more widely, eventually reaching the island of Java in Indonesia.

However, all evidence of hominins in Britain dates back to the last million years. This is a delay of hundreds of thousands of years.

In fact, the delay may be even longer, since there are researchers who believe that hominins lived outside of Africa much earlier. At Xihudu in China, stone tools were found in river gravel, dated 2.43 million years ago. Artifacts at Shangchen, on the Chinese plateau, have been dated 2.12 million years ago. Over the past five years, I have written about stone tools from Jordan that may be more than 2 million years oldand artifacts from India that would seem 2.6 million years. All these questions are controversial, the main question is whether these objects are really man made tools or just stones that look like them after they were beaten by animals or carried away by a fast river. But there are more and more examples, and I would not be surprised if something more definitive appears in the near future.

In any case, it seems that it took some time for our ancient relatives to settle in Britain.

Goodbye blue sky

Or maybe they came here very early, took one look and turned around, leaving no trace. Britain's climate may be mild in the sense that it rarely experiences extreme temperatures or cold, but the gloom and frequent rain are a particular problem.

I well remember discussing the British climate with Nina Jablonski from Pennsylvania State University, who told me that in Britain “punitively low and very seasonal UV radiation regimeIn other words, it's incredibly cloudy here. Unless you're traveling to the far polar regions, where the sun doesn't rise for months, it's hard to find a place with less sunlight.

And this is in today's conditions. There were times when it was colder. Since the beginning of the Pleistocene Epoch 2.58 million years ago, the climate has fluctuated up and down, alternating between cold ice ages and warmer interglacials. We've been in an interglacial period for 11,700 years, but during the ice ages the polar ice sheets expanded south and covered much of Britain.

Our evidence of early humans in Britain comes mostly from warmer interglacial periods, but recent research is changing that.

The focus is on excavations in the Old Park, near the city of Canterbury in southeast England. In the 1920s, Old Park was home to a quarry called Fordwich Pit, where hundreds of stone tools were excavated. From 2020, Alastair Key at the University of Cambridge led excavations in the area.

In 2022, Key and his team published their initial findingsdescribing 112 artifacts discovered at levels known to be at least 513,000–570,000 years old. My colleague Jason Arunn Murugesu wrote about this at the time, noting that the artifacts were “oldest of its kind known from Britain and one of the earliest known in Europe“

Three years later, Key's team expanded the excavation and discovered even older deposits containing stone artifacts. Hominins appear to have lived here between 773,000 and 607,000 years ago.

For context, there was a warm interglacial between the ice ages. about 715,000 and 675,000 years ago. Before and after this the climate has become cold.

The team also discovered two later layers containing artifacts they dated to 542,000 and 437,000 years ago. Both fall into cold glaciers.

It is implied that hominins occupied and re-inhabited the Old Park on several occasions, including during the Ice Ages when the British climate was at its harshest.

North

Let's put this into broader context. The old park is not the oldest evidence hominins in the British Islesalthough it's close. And the oldest known evidence is actually gone.

In 2013, researchers walking along the beach at Happisburgh in eastern England came across 49 footprints. They were preserved in layers of siltwhich was discovered as a result of severe erosion. The tracks were washed away within a few weeks, but archaeologists were able to document them and prove that they were footprints. 850,000 to 950,000 years.

Heppisburgh also lost stone tools over 780,000 years agoand at the nearby Pakefield site there were stone tools which about 700,000 years. However, the oldest known hominin bones – as opposed to artifacts – come from Boxgrove in southeast England, they are only 500,000 years old.

Of course, these sites are only a sample, since the archaeological data is incomplete. Key and colleague Nick Ashton estimate that in 2023, based on the fragmentary nature of records, hominins could be living in northern Europe. as early as 1.16 million years ago. Given the new evidence from Old Park, perhaps this date could be pushed back a little further.

And here the mystery arises: who were these ancient people who managed to survive in the often bleak climate of Britain?

Given that Alert man seem to have been the first hominins to leave Africa, we can assume that it was them. But in Europe there are almost none. Eat stone tools from Korolevo in Ukraine 1.4 million years ago, but no hominin bones. Likewise, in March I reported the discovery of some fragmented facial bones from a cave in Northern Spain dating back to 1.1-1.4 million years ago. Their discoverers tentatively named them “Homo af. erectus” – which means they can be H. erectus, but it is impossible to be sure.

Northern Spain was also home to another species called homo predecessor. They are known from one caveand it seems they were close between 772,000 and 949,000 years ago.

Meanwhile, the Boxgrove hominids may have belonged to another species called Man of Heidelberg. Their status is a bit complicated: they appear to have lived in Europe several hundred thousand years ago, but there are not many remains clearly assigned to this species.

How related are these species to each other? both to us and to other later groups such as NeanderthalsThis is honestly just a guess. As a result, the earliest Britons are still hidden from us behind a thick veil of fog. Whatever seems appropriate.

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