A History of Britain 01. Beginnings (1 of 25)

A History of Britain

From its earliest days, Britain was an object of desire.
Tacitus declared it "pretium victoriae" - worth the conquest, the best compliment that could occur to a Roman.
He had never visited these shores but was nonetheless convinced that Britannia was rich in gold.
Silver was abundant too.
Apparently so were pearls, though Tacitus had heard they were grey, like the overcast, rain-heavy skies, and the natives only collected them when cast up on the shore.
As far as the Roman historians were concerned, Britannia may be off at the edge of the world, but it was off the edge of their world, not in a barbarian wilderness.
If those writers had been able to travel in time as well as space to the northernmost of our islands, the Orcades - our modern Orkney - they would have seen something much more astonishing than pearls: Signs of a civilisation thousands of years older than Rome.

There are remains of Stone Age life all over Britain and Ireland.
But nowhere as abundantly as Orkney, with its mounds, graves and its great circles of standing stones like here at Brodgar.
Vast, imposing and utterly unknowable.
Orkney has another Neolithic site, even more impressive than Brodgar, the last thing you would expect from the Stone Age, a shockingly familiar glimpse of ancient domestic life.
Perched on the western coast of Orkney's main island, a village called Skara Brae.
Beneath an area no bigger than the 18th green of a golf course lies Europe's most complete Neolithic community, preserved for 5,000 years under a blanket of sand and grass until uncovered in 1850 by a ferocious sea storm.