Collins Primary History The Stone Age Sample

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3.1

3.1 First farmers

First farmers

8000 BC

6000 BC

4000 BC

2000 BC

800 BC

0

AD

2000

Neolithic period

Around 4000 BC, something unexpected happened: a series of immigrants from what is now France, Belgium and the Netherlands arrived. They arrived in hide-covered boats, bringing with them new animals and crops. They changed life in Britain dramatically – they were Britain’s first farmers. They cleared the woodland around their settlements to make fields.

A Neolithic revolution Farmers brought crops such as spelt, beans and barley with them. They also brought animals including cows, sheep and goats. They ate A drawing of a woman cooking meat and milk, as well as cereals. They used wool and in the Neolithic period leather to make clothes. They also caught fish – cod bones were found in their rubbish pits in large numbers. Historians still debate which was more important to the first farmers – was it livestock, or was it crops grown in fields around the village? Trees were coppiced (cut down to the ground and allowed to regrow with several new shoots) to produce wood for tools, arrows and building.

Saddle quern from around 1800 BC

Why were Neolithic women so strong? A recent scientific report suggested that Neolithic women were very strong – their arm muscles were as strong as female Olympic rowers, and about 33 per cent stronger than women today. This can only be because of their workload. Someone had to grind all that grain into fl our! One of the major innovations of the time was the saddle quern, and it took two to three hours every day to produce enough fl our for baking. Look at the image of a saddle quern. Can you fi gure out how they worked? Why would it be such hard work?

Tools

Think about it!

Flint axes, blades and scrapers were still widely used, although polished stone axes have also been found. Bone was used for needles, and we have discovered the first use of sickles to harvest the crops. Birch bark was still used to make containers, but pottery, made in kilns, became widespread. Wooden shovels have also been discovered.

1. Do you think there was a revolution in Britain around 4000 BC?

Key words

2. What part did immigrants play in the introduction of farming?

sickles kilns

Grime’s Graves Flint was in such demand it was no longer enough to collect it off the beach. Quarries, such as Grime’s Graves in Norfolk, were opened up. Over 400 pits were dug into the chalk. Each pit was over 13 metres deep, and 14

then galleries were dug into the rock, following the flint. Picks made from the antlers of red deer were used to dig out the flint, and the only means of lighting was by a primitive form of candles – animal fat burning in a hollowed-out lump of chalk. To keep the ground stable, already-worked seams were filled in with rubble and rubbish from new seams.

An artist’s impression of mining at Grime’s Graves

Let’s do it! 1. Which were the new tools introduced by the first farmers? 2. Find out about other flint quarries in Britain. Were they all as big as Grime’s Graves? What does the size of Grime’s Graves tell us about the importance of flint to Neolithic people? 3. How have our ideas about the first farmers changed in recent years?

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