The Mesolithic past
The Mesolithic, or Middle Stone Age, can seem a very remote and 'mysterious' time. It started in about 10,000BC, as the last Ice Age ended. Imagine northern Britain and everything north of this lying under vast ice sheets, with so much water locked up in the ice that sea levels could be 50m (160ft) below those of today.
'Animals returned to graze, and with the animals came people.'
What we now know as Britain was part of the European landmass in the Mesolithic Age, and was joined to France and Denmark. And the shallow fishing grounds in the North Sea that are now known as the Dogger Bank were then a huge island.
But as the ice melted and retreated northwards, the seas rose, just as they are doing today, and the newly shaped lands became covered first in arctic tundra and then in dense mixed forests. Animals returned to graze, and with the animals came people.
'It is thought that they must have been constantly on the move in order to survive...'
The people that returned to these newly habitable lands were not settled farmers, but were hunters and gatherers. It is thought that they must have been constantly on the move in order to survive, searching for wild foods such as nuts and berries, and tracking wild animals for meat and skins. We assume that since they were so mobile, they lived in temporary structures that were light, easily dismantled and portable.
Unfortunately, if this is the case, there are unlikely to be many physical traces for archaeologists to find. So, even though there are a few exceptions in Britain and Scandinavia where dwellings of some sort have been found, all that can usually be expected of a site where Mesolithic people lived is a scatter of finely worked and very distinctive stone tools.
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