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250,000
BC |
At this time Britain was joined
to Europe by a strip of marshy land about 50 miles wide which covered
the Straits of Dover. An incomplete skull of the first known Englishman
was discovered at Swanscombe, near Gravesend in Kent. Handaxes have been
found at Swanscombe, Reculver and Orpington. As the years went by,
handaxes gave way to new and more specialised tools - sharp points,
scrapers, etc. Human occupation of the country was not continuous, for
the climate changed with the advances and withdrawals of the ice caps.
During the warm period many animals lived in Kent which are strangers to
the county now - remains have been found of bears, rhinoceros, bison and
straight-tusked elephants. As far as is known, tthe early people settled
near the shores of Thanet and on the downland slopes above Minster,
Monkton and Cliffsend. These early people seem to have existed in small,
probably tribal groups. Human settlements probably disappeared during
the long centuries of cold, but returned with the warmer climate. |
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6000 BC |
The sea broke through and
separated Kent from France, and it was about this time that Thanet
became an island. The inhabitants lived in small groups - hunting,
fishing, collecting nuts and berries, wild fruit and shellfish, eggs and
insects. They wandered over the county camping mainly by rivers and
sheltering in caves and rock shelters. As generation succeeded
generation, new methods of hunting were developed - wooden arrows were
tipped with sharp flints and axes and axes were developed to fell trees
and build dugout canoes. |
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3000-2000
BC |
There is evidence of human
activity in Thanet during the later part of the Neolithic period. Flint
tools can be found in fields throughout the island. As yet only two
settlement sites have been found, but it is likely that there are many
more yet to be uncovered. |
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2000-1400
BC |
In the early Bronze Age Thanet
seems to have been a populous and perhaps important place. Hundreds of
round barrows (burial mounds) were constructed here, and although they
are now gone, the sites can still be seen from the air. An exciting find
made at St Mildred's Bay in Westgate in 1989 dates from this period. An
ancient stream bed runs down the beach to the sea, and its course is
still marked by springs bubbling up through the chalk and patches of
black mud. Preserved in the mud, archaeologists discovered boughs and
trunks from the birch thickets that once lined the bank of the stream
thousands of years ago. Right out towards the low water mark they found
fragments of a log which had been split and hollowed - it was a dugout
canoe.
Although Thanet represents just 7.25 per cent of the land area of
Kent, it contains nearly HALF the county's ancient sites as
detected from the air. Kent has an ancient sites density of 0.68 sites
per square mile. Thanet has a density of 23.5 sites per square mile.
This shows what an important area it was.
Five major defended settlements have been found in Thanet dating from
this period. At Kingsgate the whole of the North Foreland hilltop on
which the lighthouse stands appears to be enclosed by a double parallel
ditch - about 50 acres are enclosed. Similar ones discovered at Dumpton
in Broadstairs, on high ground east of Sarre, on farmland at Monkton and
Shottendane Valley in Margate.
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1400-600
BC |
Settlement sites from the periods
of the Middle and Later Bronze Age and the Iron Age are being discovered
all over the Island. From the evidence and the vast hoards of tools and
weapons found here, it looks as if the Isle of Thanet was a populous and
wealthy place throughout this time. |
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600 BC |
The use of iron came to Thanet
around this time, when like most of Britain it was probably inhabited by
Celtic tribes, linguistic ancestors of modern Welsh, Irish and Scots
Gaelic speakers. A small field pattern is clearly shown in the Iron Age
Village at Dumpton Gap and South Cliff Parade, Broadstairs. Other Celtic
fields have been seen from crop marks at Bartlett's near St Nicholas and
Gore End Farm, Birchington. |
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500 BC |
The oldest known plough marks in
Thanet date from this time in the Belgic Iron Age at a site at Lord of
the Manor above Pegwell Bay. An Iron Age pot found in Cliftonville
contained rye seeds and one grain of wheat, showing that cereal crops
were under cultivation on the island. |
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400 BC |
Until this time Thanet's central
plateau was probably heavily wooded, but clearing now began due to the
availability of iron axe heads. |
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325 BC |
The first account we have of
Thanet is by Pytheas, an astronomer and geographer from the Greek colony
of Massilia (Marseilles), who sailed around Britain around this time. He
described 'Albion' (Britain) as 'mostly flat, overgrown with
forests, thickly populated, the people tall and not so yellow haired as
the Celts on the continent'. They lived in humble houses of wood,
thatched with reeds, grew corn and stored thew ears in roofed granges
and used chariots. Pytheas reported rounding "Kantion corner"
(the Kent promontory - or the Isle of Thanet) from where the Continent
was visible. This is the first reference to the name of a people from
which derive the names of both Kent and Canterbury. These few sentences
about Britain are the nearest we are likely to get to an eyewitness
description of Thanet before the Romans. |
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55 BC |
Invasion of Caesar's
Legions.
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NEXT
SECTION II - Roman Britain to 1683 AD
FINALLY
SECTION III - 1700 AD to 1999 AD
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See our Famous
Residents & Visitors page for details of these, and the Thanet
Tour Introduction for a further overview of Thanet's remarkable
heritage.
Contents
Page
Time
Line | Famous
Residents & Visitors
| A
guided tour of Thanet
Index
of all pages
Site
designed, produced & maintained by Compuart
© 1998. All rights
reserved
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