The Old Stone Age (Palaeolithic)

The Old Stone Age is the period that is often described as "cave people". It is the final period within the Ice Age. It runs from the first arrival of modern humans in England (probably around 40,000BC) until the end of the Ice Age in the years leading up to 10,000BC.

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Fully modern humans and large animals colonised England but were driven out by inhospitable conditions several times during the Old Stone Age. Eventually, the warming climate ended the repeated glacial periods of impenetrable snow and ice meaning that groups of modern humans could finally stay and begin an uninterrupted period of human habitation lasting until the present day.

Very recent DNA research suggests that these first settlers would have had dark skin and hair but blue eyes, as modern humans moved north from Africa and west from Asia to fill Europe after the loss of the Neanderthals. The weather was cold, so people would have covered up with warm clothes, hats, mittens and shoes sewn from animal skin.

With a lot of water locked up in ice, sea-levels were lower than today, and it was possible to walk from mainland Europe to England and then on to Ireland without seeing the sea. The land was open tundra with large, cold-adapted animals like woolly mammoths, woolly rhinos, reindeer and wild horses. (There were never any smilodon 'sabre-toothed-tigers' as these only lived in America).

At this time the wolf (dog) was the only domesticated animal. Fire was used for light, heat, cooking and defence,

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A snap-shot of this very long period taken near the end, at around 12,000BC shows groups of sophisticated hunter-gatherers leading a nomadic lifestyle to follow the herds which they relied on for food and materials such as bone, antler/ivory and skins.   

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A complex spoken language would have been necessary to achieve all this, but there was no writing and so no record of it survives. 

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