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There is evidence of human settlement in parts of present-day Scotland that dates back to 6,000 B.C. The inhabitants were hunters and
fishermen. About two thousand years later, a second group arrived -- the Neolithic people. Some of their stone houses remain in Orkney; the well-preserved stone-built village, Skara Brae, attests to the wealth and
stability of its builders. On the mainland, chambered tombs also show the sophisticated engineering of a settled, cooperative community. Then came the Beaker folk, named after the shape of their pottery. It is to these
people that we owe the mysterious groups of huge stone circles and standing stones dotted hither and yon across the landscape. The Bronze Age, or rather, the early and late Bronze Ages, from about 2,000 to 600 B.C.,
introduced swords, knives, chisels, buckles, cauldrons and buckets, all evidence of a high level of civilization and creature comfort that was enhanced by the metal craft learned in the so-called subsequent Iron Age.
Such objects were used by the indigenous Picts, who lived in the region north of the Firth of Forth, and the Celts, who had come to live in regions of Britain and Ireland further south. It is to the invading Romans
that we owe our written history of Britain; before their arrival, it simply wasn't the Celtic custom to entrust their history to anyone but the holy men and it was not to be written. The Romans, however, were always
anxious to set down their military triumphs in writing, and from their historians a picture of Britain and its inhabitants began to emerge. In the fourth century A.D., a Latin poem describes the people of Tartessos on
the Atlantic coast of Iberia trading with the inhabitants of two large islands, Ierne and Albion
(Ireland and Scotland), people who spoke a Celtic language. Ptolemy's geography (written about 150 A.D.) includes a group of five islands lying between Scotland and Ireland. On them was built, a new structural form, the
broch
(a fortified dwelling), an immense round stone tower. The best preserved is found on Mousa in Shetland. Because they are perched on hills and headlands, the brochs seem to have been built by resident lords to protect their settlements from sea-borne raiders.
In 55 and 54 B.C. following his success in subduing most of Gaul, Caesar turned his attention to the islands of Britain. However, for a few years afterwards, the Roman armies were fully occupied in suppressing the
revolt of the Gauls on the continent under Vercingetorix, and so Britain was more-or-less left on its own, apart from its trading links with the Continent. Under the Emperor Claudius, Rome again began to look westwards
to the misty lands over the sea, to a land full of legendary mineral wealth as well as good grain-growing pastures. Overcoming what amounted to only token resistance in the southeast, the Romans set up the frontier, the
Fosse Way, running from Lincoln in the north to Essex in the southwest. Their prosperous villas attest to settled, peaceful conditions in the agricultural lands to the southeast. It was in the more mountainous areas
west of the line, however, that the much sought-after minerals lay. And it was there that resistance was fiercest. The accounts given by Tacitus (written approximately half a century after those of Ptolemy) are
particularly important, for his father-in-law was Agricola, appointed Governor of the Roman province of Britain. Agricola invaded what is now southern Scotland in 81 A.D. Before that, Roman garrisons had been
established at Caerwent (near present-day Chepstow) in the south and Deva (Chester) in the north to keep a close eye on the Celtic tribesmen to the west, where the Romans found it necessary to destroy the Druid center
of Wales on the Menai Straits. 84 A.D. Mons Graupius
Farther north, under Agricola, the Roman armies vanquished one tribe after another until a final, decisive battle against Calgacus "the swordsman" at Mons Graupius in 84 A.D. This ended effective resistance
(the Western Isles and the Highlands were left alone and up until the Clearances of the 18th century remained very much Celtic countries in language and culture). Though Agricola may have wished to add Ireland to his
conquests, no Roman expedition was ever taken across the Celtic Sea to that large, relatively unknown western island.The Romans gave the country north of present-day Stirlingshire the name Caledonia. Much of
the terrain is rugged and mountainous. In fact, three fifths of Scotland are mountain, hill and wind-swept moorland, unsuitable for agriculture and therefore not interesting to the Romans. In the Welsh language, widely
spoken throughout the area when the Romans arrived, it was known as Coed Celyddon (the Caledonian Forest), inhabited by spectres and madmen, including Myrddyn Wyllt
(Mad Merlin). Tacitus refers to the inhabitants of the region as Britanni. It was not only the nature of the terrain that caused the Romans to abandon their attempts at conquest but the unimagined terrors of
this Celtic world. After the Roman armies had been recalled to Rome, following Mons Graupius, their strategy towards Scotland was mainly a defensive one. In 121 A.D., upon a visit to Britain, the Emperor Hadrian had
this still-impressive wall built from Solway in the West Coast to Tyne in the east.  |
