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Stone Age and Iron Age Britain

From the first hunter-gatherers and Stonehenge to the Celtic tribes the Romans encountered.

People have lived in what is now Britain for at least 10,000 years. The first inhabitants were Stone Age hunter-gatherers who arrived after the last Ice Age. About 6,000 years ago Neolithic farmers began clearing forests, raising livestock and building monuments — the most famous of which is Stonehenge in Wiltshire, constructed in stages from around 3000 BC.

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During the Bronze Age and the Iron Age, society organised itself into tribes ruled by chieftains. The people of these islands were mainly Celtic-speaking; their priests were the druids. Skara Brae in Orkney is a remarkably preserved Stone Age village, and hill-fort earthworks across the country date from the late Iron Age.

You may be asked which monument was built about 3000 BC (Stonehenge), or what the people of Iron Age Britain were called (Celts or Britons).

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