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Deep Time Human Presence
- Early human presence in England dates back nearly a million years, evidenced by 900,000-year-old footprints found in Norfolk.
- Archaeology reveals repeated waves of occupation driven by climate cycles, not continuous settlement.
Many Human Species Shaped Britain
- Multiple human species inhabited Britain across the Pleistocene, including potential Homo antecessor and Homo heidelbergensis before Neanderthals and Homo sapiens.
- Some earlier lineages may have contributed ancestry to later humans, while others went extinct entirely.
Climate Reset Human Populations
- Britain experienced repeated extinctions of resident humans during major ice ages.
- Archaeologists map roughly 11 separate occupations over 900,000 years with most failing to persist through glaciations.