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Roman roads in Britannia were initially designed for military use, created by the Roman army during the nearly four centuries (AD43–410) that Britannia was a province of the Roman Empire. Bramanti B, Thomas MG, Haak W, etal. (October 2009). "Genetic discontinuity between local hunter-gatherers and central Europe's first farmers". Science. 326 (5949): 137–40. Bibcode: 2009Sci...326..137B. doi: 10.1126/science.1176869. PMID 19729620. S2CID 206521424. Fossils of very early Neanderthals dating to around 400,000 years ago have been found at Swanscombe in Kent, and of classic Neanderthals about 225,000 years old at Pontnewydd in Wales. Britain was unoccupied by humans between 180,000 and 60,000 years ago, when Neanderthals returned. By 40,000 years ago they had become extinct and modern humans had reached Britain. But even their occupations were brief and intermittent due to a climate which swung between low temperatures with a tundra habitat and severe ice ages which made Britain uninhabitable for long periods. The last of these, the Younger Dryas, ended around 11,700 years ago, and since then Britain has been continuously occupied. Their coins and other archaeological evidence shows that the tribe's territory was in the modern counties of Norfolk and parts of Suffolk and Cambridgeshire. This is an exciting moment in the 5,000-year history of this special estate,” says archaeologist Mark Newman in a National Trust statement. “... All these discoveries will be investigated further to ensure none are impacted by the upcoming planting plans and to preserve their archaeology for future study.”

Centred in Dorset, this people were also found in southern parts of Wiltshire and Somerset and western Dorset. Donated to the Bodlian Library in the 19th century, the Gough map is the earliest known map of Britain to give a detailed representation of the country’s roads. 4. Portolan Chart by Pietro Visconte – c. 1325 Gibbard, Phil (2007). "How Britain Became An Island: The report". Nature Precedings. doi: 10.1038/npre.2007.1205.1. This huge area was very varied. As well as people living in the Dales and hills, many people farmed the fertile land in Durham, Tyneside and Teeside. Early in the 2nd millennium or perhaps even earlier, from about 2300 bce, changes were introduced by the Beaker folk from the Low Countries and the middle Rhine. These people buried their dead in individual graves, often with the drinking vessel that gives their culture its name. The earliest of them still used flint; later groups, however, brought a knowledge of metallurgy and were responsible for the exploitation of gold and copper deposits in Britain and Ireland. They may also have introduced an Indo-European language. Trade was dominated by the chieftains of Wessex, whose rich graves testify to their success. Commerce was far-flung, in one direction to Ireland and Cornwall and in the other to central Europe and the Baltic, whence amber was imported. Amber bead spacers from Wessex have been found in the shaft graves at Mycenae in Greece. It was, perhaps, this prosperity that enabled the Wessex chieftains to construct the remarkable monument of shaped sarsens (large sandstones) known as Stonehenge III. Originally a late Neolithic henge, Stonehenge was uniquely transformed in Beaker times with a circle of large bluestone monoliths transported from southwest Wales.Cunliffe, Karl, Guerra, McEvoy, Bradley; Oppenheimer, Rrvik, Isaac, Parsons, Koch, Freeman and Wodtko (2010). Celtic from the West: Alternative Perspectives from Archaeology, Genetics, Language and Literature. Oxbow Books and Celtic Studies Publications. p.384. ISBN 978-1-84217-410-4. Archived from the original on 12 June 2010. {{ cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list ( link) Koch, John. "New research suggests Welsh Celtic roots lie in Spain and Portugal" . Retrieved 10 May 2010. The oldest people in Wales– Neanderthal teeth from Pontnewydd Cave". National Museum of Wales. 2007. Archived from the original on 13 June 2013.

They were a small, but distinctive group of people who farmed the chalk hills of the Yorkshire Wolds. The climate had been warming since the later Mesolithic and continued to improve, replacing the earlier pine forests with woodland. The Dumnonii were the British tribe that occupied the whole of the South West peninsula and parts of Southern Somerset. From about 15 BC, the Atrebates seem to have established friendly relations with Rome, and it was an appeal for help from the last Atrebatic king, Verica, which provided Claudius with the pretext for the invasion on Britain in AD 43. After the Roman Conquest, the territory of the Atrebates was divided up, with Silchester (Calleva Atrebatum) becoming the capital of a Roman civitas that administered the area of modern Berkshire, Oxfordshire, Surrey and north Hampshire.The Catuvellauni existed as a tribe at the time of Julius Caesar, but in the following years became an extremely powerful group. It stretched from the North Sea to the Irish Sea. We know the names of some of the smaller tribes they made up the Brigantes at the time of the Roman Conquest. McIntosh, Jane Handbook of Prehistoric Europe Oxford University Press, USA (Jun 2009) ISBN 978-0-19-538476-5 p.24