The first inhabitants of Scotland were probably living there
before the last Ice Age. However, no trace has been found of any Scots who were
quite that early although remains of humans from that time have been discovered
elsewhere in the British Isles. It is probable that, as the ice receded, humans
would have moved in from the south, in pursuit of the animals that had preceded
them.
The earliest trace of human habitation that has been found
so far is around 11,000 years old and is a stone arrowhead. This was found on
the island of Islay
On Rum, which is about 85 miles north of Islay, there is
evidence of early industry in the shape of tool-making based on local supplies
of bloodstone that could be fashioned into small blades. This work was being
done around 9,000 years ago.
Other traces have been found of hunter-gatherer communities
all round the Scottish coast and on the islands. Even older than the site on
Rum are the archaeological remains of settlements near Dunbar and at Cramond,
both on the Scottish mainland near Edinburgh .
The very first people of Scotland were therefore nomads,
moving on as the herds of reindeer moved, building structures only when they
settled in a place for more than a few weeks or months. These structures would
have been little more than tents made from animal skins stretched between posts
hammered into the ground. At other places, natural shelters such as caves would
have been used.
Agriculture arrived in Scotland
some five and a half thousand years after it was first practiced in the Fertile
Crescent of the Middle East, and it may have been as recently as 2000 BC before
most inhabitants of Scotland
were farmers who lived in settled communities. Scotland has never been an easy
country to farm, due to the thin soils and often adverse weather, and these
problems were made worse by the increasing deposits of peat that built up,
making the land boggy and unsuitable for growing crops. Many early Scots may
therefore have continued as hunter-gatherers long after others had become more
settled.
Evidence of two remarkable communities has been discovered
in the Orkney Islands , at Knap of Howar and Skara
Brae. The latter site, which dates from around 3000 BC, was probably occupied for about 500 years which means that
many generations of Orcadians lived and died there. A group of small stone
houses were linked together by passageways such that maximum protection was
offered against winter storms.
These people were the “Picts” whom the Romans encountered
when they sought to extend their empire northwards in the 80s AD. These scattered tribes, living in habitable
corners across mainland Scotland
and the Isles, proved not to be worth conquering, hence the decision in 122 AD
by Emperor Hadrian to build his wall from the Tyne
to the Solway, thus marking the northern limit of the Empire.
The Picts had developed a civilization of their own, with
bronze and later iron working, religious practices that included sacrifices to
their gods of some of the products of their metal foundries, and trade with
their neighbours to the south. They were skilled boatbuilders and navigators
and were far from being ignorant savages. Pictish culture was well developed,
with social structures that included a hierarchy from kings and nobles down to
farmers and workers. Items have been found that show advanced craftsmanship in
stone, metals and jewels.
As well as the Picts, who were the direct descendants of the
original hunter-gatherers, the area that now comprises Scotland was, in the
years following the withdrawal of the Romans in the 5th century AD,
also occupied to the south by Britons who had become Romanized and Gaels who probably
come from Ireland (although this is not absolutely certain).
These Gaels settled on the western coasts and islands and
lived in an uneasy relationship with the Picts. Confusingly, the Gaels were
also known in Latin as “Scoti”, from which the name Scotland clearly derives. However,
the original “Scottish” people were Picts, not Scots!
The other major component of the early ethnic mix of the
people of Scotland was
provided by Vikings from Norway ,
who came first to plunder and then to settle. The Viking invasions began in the
8th century and continued into the 9th. Wars between
Vikings, Picts and Gaels continued for many years, at the end of which the
Gaels had usurped the Picts on mainland Scotland , and the Vikings had taken
firm control of the northern islands of Orkney and Shetland.
In the northern isles a form of ethnic cleansing took place,
with the men being killed or driven off and the women being seized as wives.
The DNA of the modern population shows strong Norwegian origins in male DNA but
Pictish traces in that of the women. It was only in 1472 that the islands
became part of the Kingdom
of Scotland
The first people of Scotland were therefore a mixture
of Picts, Gaels, Britons and Vikings. However, with the exception of the
northern isles, none of the later invaders were so numerous that they were able
to overwhelm the original bloodline that stretched back to the first post-Ice
Age hunter-gatherers. Although the Picts lost out politically to the Gaels,
which is why the country is called Scotland and not Pictland, the descendants
of the people whom the Romans contained by building a wall are still very much
in evidence today.
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