800,000 BC to around 8000 BC
Long flint blades, dating to c.9000 BC
were found at Church Lammas, Staines
before development. Image: SCAU
The Palaeolithic (Old Stone Age) period was the time of the first people and the making of the first stone tools. The first people were here 400,000 years ago. Modern people, like ourselves, probably arrived in England about 40,000 years ago. The Ice Age climate varied between cold (glacial) periods and warm (interglacial) periods. In Britain today we are in a warm period which started about 12,000 years ago.The climate was still very cold at first, with a bleak landscape covered by shrubs, herbs and sedges.
People
Palaeolithic people lived a hunter gatherer lifestyle, often moving long distances in family groups. They took food, firewood and materials for tools, clothes and shelter from the land they travelled. Animals included wild horse, red deer, arctic hare, reindeer, wild cattle, lynx, and red fox. They used as much as they could from the animal, including its meat for food, skin for clothes, and bones for marrow and glue. They mainly ate animal meat, fruits and plants. They discovered how to make fire, which kept them warm, cooked their food and frightened away dangerous animals.Places
They set up camps on open ground, near rivers on the gravel soil and sometimes in caves. They would always be close to drinking water, raw materials for making what they needed, or small herds of animals. Some camps were used specially in the summer months and some in the winter, for animal processing or flint tool making. A main tool was the hand axe which was used to kill animals, cut meat, clean skins, dig up roots and shape wood. Microliths (flint points) set in wood handles were used as knives and for piercing and cutting. They also made needles from bone.Times
We don't know very much about their society, but some things which have been found give us some ideas about their lives. Drawings of horses, cows, and pigs were made in caves. Delicate engravings were made on stones, bones and ivory. Clothes were made from animal skins, and necklaces from shells and animal teeth. The dead were left in small groups in caves or put into the middens (rubbish dumps).Palaeolithic Surrey
- A large flint axe, 400,000 years old, was found in a gravel terrace formed by the River Wey at Farnham. Modern experiments have confirmed how effective such tools were for butchering animal carcasses.
- A hand axe was found during excavations at Farnham Quarry, probably related to the period around 30,000 BC when the Wey flowed along the Blackwater Valley. Finds of mammoth tusks from the pit are from this time, and date to a period when Neanderthal people were living.
- At Wey Manor Farm, near Addlestone, a Late Upper Palaeolithic flint scatter was recorded during excavations of the site.
- Evidence for a temporary camp was found during an excavation at Church Lammas, Staines. Beautifully worked long flint blades, made around 9000 BC, were also found.
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