history of england - England before the English - Britannia
: Main site: Prehistoric Britain, Iron Age Britain and Roman Britain

(Picture) Stonehenge, thought to have been erected c.2500-2000BC
Archaeological evidence indicates that what was southern old Britannia was colonised by humans long before the rest of the British Isles due to its more hospitable climate between and during the various ice ages of the distant past. The first historical mention of the region is from the Massaliote Periplus, a sailing manual for merchants thought to date to the 6th century BC, although cultural and trade links with the continent had existed for millennia prior to this. Pytheas of Massilia wrote of his trading journey to the island around 325 BC. Later writers such as Pliny the Elder (quoting Timaeus) and Diodorus Siculus (probably drawing on Poseidonius) mention the tin trade from southern Britain but there is little further historical detail of the people who lived there. Tacitus wrote that there was no great difference in language between the people of, what was southern Britannia and northern Gaul and noted that the various nations of Britons shared physical characteristics with their continental neighbours.'''
Julius Caesar visited southern Britain in 55 and 54 BC and wrote in De Bello Gallico that the population of southern Britannia was extremely large and shared much in common with the other highly civilised Celtic nations on the continent. Coin evidence and the work of later Roman historians have provided the names of some of the rulers of the disparate tribes and their machinations in what was Britannia.

From the Earliest Pre-history up until the Roman Conquest of Britain, Britain's British population was relatively stable. There is ongoing fierce academic debate about when and how that population began speaking Celtic languages (see the article on Celts for a much more in depth discussion), but at least by the time of Julius Ceaser's invasion, the British population of what was old Britain was speaking a Celtic language generally thought to be the forerunner of the modern Gaelic languages. The Romans set up a series of colonies in what was old Britannia and - despite several notable rebellions - held onto the southern part of the island until about 410. The Northern boundaries of Roman control are the precursors of the modern boundaries between modern England and its Celtic neighbours - Scotland, Wales, and Cornwall.

Surprisingly few historical sources describe Roman Britain. For example, we have only one sentence describing the reasons for the construction of Hadrian's Wall. The Claudian invasion itself is well attested and Tacitus included the uprising of Boudica, or "Boadicea", in 61 AD in his history. Following the end of the 1st century, however, Roman historians only mention fragments of information from the distant province. The Roman presence strengthened and weakened over the centuries, but by the 5th century Roman influence had all but disappeared, opening the way for new power struggles between "Romanised" Britons, the Gaelic and Welsh speaking populations that had remained outside the areas of Roman control, and new waves of Germanic invaders from Germany.

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