![[Pictish stone, class one]](http://members.aol.com/Skyewrites/images/pictston.gif)
Prehistoric ScotlandArchaeologists think that the earliest hominids (ancestors of modern human beings) may have entered Britain overland from Europe more than half a million years ago. These hominids belonged to the Paleolithic (Old Stone Age) Period, which began over 2 million years ago and lasted until about 8000 B.C. Historians believe that the first people to live in Scotland came from what is now England about 7,000 to 7,500 B.C. These earliest inhabitants probably survived by gathering edible plants, hunting, and fishing. They probably moved around in search of food sources. Morton in Fife has the remains of a settlement from that time.
About 6,000 years ago, or about 4000 B.C., knowledge of agriculture was brought from the mainland of western Europe to Britain. During this period, settlers arrived in larger numbers. Archaeologists have discovered chambered stone mounds, called cairns, in which the people buried their dead. Pottery, bones, and grain found with these burials indicate that the people were farmers who had some social organization. In the late 1970's, archaeologists found in eastern Scotland a huge timber hall that they believe dates from this period. The Bronze Age. Between 3000 B.C. and 2500 B.C., people began using metal in Britain. Knowledge of metalworking spread from Spain and Portugal to Ireland and then to Britain and Scotland. It also came from the Rhineland, an area around the Rhine River in what is now western Germany, and from what is now the Netherlands. The first metals used were copper and gold. At nearly the same time, distinctive beaker-shaped pottery vessels appeared in Scotland. The beakers were often buried with the dead.
Scholars once thought that large numbers of immigrants, whom they called the Beaker Folk, brought metalworking and the new beaker pottery to Britain. But archaeologists have not found evidence of large migrations, and many now believe that small groups or individual traders and craftworkers probably spread the new skills and ideas.
Bronze Age
After 2000 B.C., people began making objects of bronze (copper hardened with tin). Collections of weapons that survive from the period after 1000 B.C. indicate that warriors ruled the Bronze Age society of Scotland.
Ancient site at Skara Brae
After about 700 B.C., people started using iron rather than bronze. Because iron rusts away, few objects from this period have survived. But archaeologists have identified many settlements from this period, notably forts.
The inhabitants of Scotland began about 600 B.C. to build hill forts with ramparts (wide banks of earth built around the fort to help defend it). Later, they built tower structures called brochs. People may have used these structures as both farmhouses and places of safety. Brochs date from about 200 B.C. to A.D. 200. The best-preserved broch is in Mousa in Shetland.
Roman Scotland
In A.D. 43, the Roman emperor Claudius ordered Roman armies to invade Britain. They conquered the British tribes as far north as Yorkshire by about 78. The Romans found British tribes south of the rivers Clyde and Forth. These tribespeople spoke a Celtic language related to Welsh and Cornish.
Picts, Scots, Angles, and Britons. In A.D. 80, the Roman general Gnaeus Julius Agricola led his force into Scotland past the River Forth. The Romans called the people there Picts (painted people) because they painted their bodies. The Picts' language resembled the Celtic spoken by the Britons to the south, but it also preserved elements of an earlier language not related to other European languages. Picts, were an ancient people of northern Scotland. The Picts were given this name by the Romans because they painted or tattooed their skin. The Latin word for painter is pictor. The first historical reference to the Picts occurs in a speech made by a Roman orator in A.D. 297. The Pictish tribes fought the Romans for many years. The Romans built two long walls to keep the Picts out of the province of Britain. Later, the Picts fought the Teutonic conquerors of Britain, the Angles and Saxons. They disappeared as a people about A.D. 900.
The Romans won a great victory over the Picts at Mons Graupius in A.D. 84, somewhere in northeastern Scotland. The Roman historian Cornelius Tacitus described the battle, but modern historians disagree over its exact location. Also in 84, the Roman emperor Domitian ordered Agricola to return to Rome, and the Romans withdrew southward from Scotland. As part of a defensive strategy, the Romans in A.D. 121 built Hadrian's Wall, which stretched between the River Tyne and the Solway Firth. It was named after the Roman emperor Hadrian. Around 141, the Romans added the Antonine Wall, a turf structure between the River Forth and the River Clyde. Under attack from local tribes, the Romans soon abandoned that area and withdrew farther south. Hadrian's Wall became their northern frontier. The Romans withdrew from all of Britain in the 400's.
About A.D. 500, a Celtic, Gaelic-speaking tribe called the Scots came from northern Ireland and settled on Scotland's west coast.
Originally, in the late 400s, Gaelic speaking settlers crossed from Antrim to the western district of Argyll. Legend says that they were led by a warrior prince called Fergus, son of Erc. These immigrants called their new kingdom Dalriada but they were known as 'scots' meaning raiders by their enemies.
The rock fortress of Dunadd, where the early Scots may have inaugurated their kings, was an important power-centre. Other early Scottish kingdoms were centred on Dunolly near Oban and Islay. After 700 the influence of the Scots shifted eastwards. By 850 they had carved out a realm in Central Scotland known as Alba.
Christianity
Christianity was practiced by the Romans who occupied Scotland in the early A.D. 100's and 200's. Around A.D. 500, Saint Ninian, a British bishop, came to Whithorn in what is now Dumfries and Galloway in southern Scotland. There he built a church and possibly a school. He sent missionaries out among the Picts. Saint Columba (also known as Colmcille) sailed to Iona from Ireland in 563 and spread Christianity among the Picts. Pictland was mostly Christian by A.D. 700.
After the late 600's, the Picts came to rule large parts of Scotland. The most powerful kings ruled at Fortriu, in the area of Scone. In 685, the Picts decisively defeated Angle invaders at the Battle of Nechtansmere, in what is now Angus. The Angles were one of the Germanic peoples who invaded Britain during the A.D. 400's and 500's. The Battle of Nechtansmere helped stop the northern spread of Anglian influence.
The Pictish monarchy absorbed many external influences, especially from the Scots of the west. The Picts often dominated the Scots in the 700's and early 800's. But a series of Viking raids in the 800's might have weakened Pictland. About 843, a Scottish king, Kenneth MacAlpin, took over the Pictish monarchy and began ruling both peoples from Pictland. He established Alba, the first united kingdom in Scotland. The Picts ceased to exist as a separate people about A.D. 900.
After the MacAlpin dynasty came to power, the Gaelic language spread to the whole of mainland Scotland north of the River Forth. The Pictish language disappeared.
The kingdom of Scotland
In the late 800's, the Vikings overran the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Northumbria, the most northerly of the early English kingdoms. By about 1018, the Scottish King Malcolm II had gained control of Lothian, the northern part of Northumbria. At the same time, he also gained Strathclyde, a British kingdom along the western coast that included Dumbarton and areas south of the Clyde River. Orkney and Shetland remained under the control of the Vikings, and the Scottish kings formally abandoned the Western Isles to Norway in 1098.
Violent struggles for the Scottish throne began in the late 900's. In 997, Kenneth III became king by killing Constantine III. In 1005, Malcolm II killed Kenneth III. Duncan I, who followed Malcolm II, was killed in battle by Macbeth, ruler of Moray (a kingdom north of Alba), in 1040. In 1057, Duncan's son, Malcolm III Canmore, killed Macbeth. The following year, he killed Macbeth's stepson Lulach. Malcolm III became king in 1058 and reigned for 35 years.
From the late 1000's onward, Scotland gradually lost its mainly Celtic character. It took on a mixture of Celtic and Anglian characteristics. Malcolm III founded a dynasty (royal line) whose members were particularly open to influences from England. He married Margaret, the granddaughter of the English king Edmund Ironside. Through Margaret's influence, Scotland came much more under the influence of England. After the Normans conquered England in 1066, Malcolm permitted people from England who opposed the Norman leader, William the Conqueror, to settle in Scotland. Margaret helped introduce reforms in the Scottish church that were similar to reforms carried out in Europe.
Margaret of Scotland, later, Saint Margaret(1046-1093), was a queen of Scotland who carried out social and religious reforms. A granddaughter of the English King Edmund Ironside, Margaret was born in Hungary, where her father was in exile. She was shipwrecked off the coast of Scotland in 1067, fleeing the Norman Conquest. There she married King Malcolm III of Scotland in 1070. She lived in great piety and performed many charitable actions, including the foundation of the Holy Trinity Abbey in Dunfermline. Margaret died on Nov. 16, 1093. She was canonized in 1249. Her feast day is June 10. She is somewhat controversial in nationalistic views in that she, with the compliance of her husband, Malcolm Can More, brought many Saxon customs to Scotland forever replacing the prior older Celtic customs. This was both good and bad for Scotland as it progressed in social aspects, bad in that it became a monarchy of Anglo-Saxon customs and idealogy, the Celtic customs eventually losing ground in most of Lowland Scotland.
Malcolm III's son David I, who ruled from 1124 to 1153, continued Malcolm's policy of allowing English settlers into Scotland. These settlers were nobles to whom David granted large pieces of land. They became powerful local lords and supplied knights to the king.
During this period, Scotland developed a new system of administration with locally based justices and sheriffs. David I created such new offices as chancellor, chamberlain, and steward to supervise the administration of the kingdom. He also chartered towns called burghs, which had markets and generated revenue for the state. David introduced the minting of coins in Scotland, which aided trade. He founded some abbeys and donated generously to others. The abbeys produced goods and services that benefited the economy.
Struggles with England. The English wanted to control the entire island of Great Britain, including Scotland. But the Scots were determined to remain independent. They frequently sided with France against the English when England and France came into conflict.
David I and his heirs also sought territory in England. David took advantage of a civil war in England to extend the Scottish border south to the River Tees. His marriage to Matilda (also known as Maud), daughter of the Earl of Huntingdon, gave him a claim to the earldom of Northumbria. David obtained the earldom for his son Henry, who ruled it from 1138 until 1152. But Henry's son Malcolm IV lost the earldom in 1157. Malcolm's brother William (later known as William the Lion) came to the throne in 1165 and tried to regain Northumbria. In 1173, Henry II of England was dealing with a rebellion. William marched on England but was defeated and captured at Alnwick in 1174. After William's defeat, Scotland became a vassal (dependent) kingdom of England until 1189. William's son Alexander II became involved in a rebellion in England from 1215 to 1217. In 1237, he gave up all claims to Northumbria.
Alexander II, after his unsuccessful conflict with England, made peace with King Henry III. Alexander married Henry's sister Joan in 1221. From 1217 to 1296, Scotland and England were at peace. During that time, the Scottish kingdom enjoyed economic stability and good government. Agriculture and trade flourished, and many roads and bridges were built. The Scots, especially the wealthy ones, began to develop a sense of community and even nationality. Scotland, although tied economically to England, began to think of itself as an independent state.
In 1263, the Scots fought off a Norwegian attack. As a result of the peace terms between Scotland and Norway, the Western Isles were restored to Scotland in 1266.
At the death of Alexander III in 1286, there were no more direct male heirs from the House of Malcolm Canmore. Alexander's only descendant was a 3-year-old child, his granddaughter Margaret, called the Maid of Norway. She took the throne, but six guardians, appointed by a group of Scots called the Community of the Realm, governed Scotland. They arranged a marriage between Margaret and the son of Edward I of England.
Margaret died under mysterious circumstances in 1290. Her death led to a crisis over succession to the throne. Thirteen contenders claimed a right to the throne. The Scots were so divided over the decision of who should become king that they turned to King Edward for a decision. Edward demanded that each of the contenders acknowledge him as overlord. In 1292, Edward's court chose John Balliol, a descendent of David I, as heir to the Scottish throne.
Edward insisted on his feudal rights in Scotland and limited Balliol's authority by overriding decisions made by Balliol's own court. In 1294, Edward went to war with France. He demanded the support of his lords and knights, including Balliol. Balliol refused to help Edward and instead made a treaty with France. Edward sent his troops to Scotland and defeated the Scots at Dunbar in 1296. Balliol resigned, and Edward occupied Scotland, appointing his own administration there. Edward also removed the Stone of Scone, the Scottish symbol of royal authority (see Scone, Stone of). Edward had the Coronation Chair in Westminster Abbey built to hold the stone.
In 1297, the angry Scots rebelled against Edward's authority. William Wallace, Scotland's first popular hero, decisively defeated the English at Stirling. For more on William Wallace and his battles, click here to visit historian, Robert M. Gunn's exceptional account. Edward, a year later, won a great victory at Falkirk in 1298, but did not reoccupy Scotland until 1304. In 1305, the English captured and executed Wallace when he was betrayed by English sympathizer John Mentieth. Wallace was brutally executed by Edward I by having him hanged, drawn and quartered and his dismembered body sent to the major cities of southern Scotland. Wallace's heroisn inspired the Scots and Edward's brutal treatment of the patriotic hero only fueled the Scots desire to resist. Edward had miscalculated and now a former ally of his, Robert the Bruce, would take up Wallace's cause and also attempt to make himself King of Scots.