Britain has not always been an island. It became one only after the end
of the last ice age. The temperature rose and the ice cap melted, flooding the
lower-lying land that is now under the North Sea and the English Channel.
The Ice Age was not just one long equally cold period. There were warmer
times when the ice cap retreated, and colder periods when the ice cap reached
as far south as the River Thames. Our first evidence of human life is a few
stone tools, dating from one of the warmer periods, about 250,000 BC These
simple objects show that there were two different kinds of inhabitant. The
earlier group made their tools from flakes of flint, similar in kind to stone
tools found across the north European plain as far as Russia. The other group
made tools from a central core of flint, probably the earliest method of human
tool making, which spread from Africa to Europe. Hand axes made in this way
have been found widely, as far north as Yorkshire and as far west as Wales.Читать всю статью
