The word Celts refers to people who were native British and whose ancestors had been in Britain for many, many generations at the time when the Romans and then the Anglo-Saxons arrived. Another word would be 'British'.
The people who first arrived are called 'Stone Age' because they made and used only stone, wood and bone tools. They knew nothing of metals. However, this does not mean that they were stupid. Far from it. They painted in caves, made burial sites of great complexity and so on.
The earliest people (who belong to the time called the Palaeolithic and the Mesolithic) numbered probably no more than a few thousand over the whole of Britain, so they could get their food by hunting and gathering. But then something began to change.
What happened next was that the population began to grow until there was not enough food to be got simply by hunting. This happened in a time called the Neolithic, and it caused the first big change in how we live. People started to band together in clans, and to set out their own territories.
The only way they could get enough food now was to rear it or grow it. This is why farming started in Britain (and elsewhere).
In recent years scientists have been able to show that, on average, two thirds of the genes that are the blueprints for our bodies, are directly inherited from our Stone Age ancestors.
All of the people who invaded later‚ including the Anglo-Saxons and Vikings, did not wipe us out. Indeed, they have had a tiny effect.
We are still basically the same people we have always been.
The Iron Age is named after a time when iron metal was first used. But many other new ideas were being adopted, too. In fact the Iron Age was a time of a revolution in how people lived. For example, people dyed wool and made clothes that were better fitting. They also divided up the land into clans and kingdoms. It was, altogether, getting a more crowded and lived-in landscape.
By the Iron Age, people were farming the land all over the country, although there were still large areas of woodland, especially in valleys.
Nearly everyone was a farmer, with just a few craftsmen who made pottery, woodwares or things of iron. There were also a small number of warriors and nobles.
Many people farmed slopes around hillforts and the way they farmed – along the contour – meant that, over the centuries, the hillsides became a series of benches.
Briton was rich in minerals and had surplus wool and even some surplus grain to trade with.
Trade across the sea became common and many Britons used the same language as others in Europe. We now call this the Celtic language after the tribes who lived in what is now France. But Britons also picked up ideas from the Romans, as we can see by looking at British Iron Age coins. The only difference was that Britons mainly used them as offerings to their gods, not usually as money.
Iron Age Britain was a land of kingdoms and tribes. People traded with Europe and were known to the Romans.
Britons were good at making crafts, but they were still country folk by and large and did not have an organised army like the Romans. This is why, when the Romans invaded, the British were conquered and why Iron Age times came to an end – at least in England and Wales.
