Britain? Modern humans first reached Britain around 42,000 years ago, but during the last glacial maximum between 25,000 and 15,000 years ago, the island is generally believed to have been unoccupied again. People may have begun occupying the island immediately after the last glacial maximum, but by 9600 BC there was certainly an established population. To give these people some context, some Mesolithic postholes were dug in the Stonehenge area around 8000 BC, so ritual activity had certainly begun.
Over the years prior to the Britons, the cultural changes are generally believed to have happened within a more or less consistent population. For example, 4000 BC brought the Neolithic culture, and the Bronze Age culture arrived about 2300 BC. By 800 BC, the Briton Iron Age had begun inIron Age Britons may have been the first to call themselves British, or Pretanoi. The Greek Pytheas "discovered" Britain in c. 325 BC. This event marked the beginning of the expansion of the Greco-Roman world northward in Europe. Between 200 BC and AD 43, the Germanic-Celtic refugees from Gaul began migrating to Britain, as the Romans expanded into Gaul. The southern tribes started to become more Romanized, and it is this influence of Germanic and Roman culture which began the transition of the Britons into the English.
By AD 40, the Roman Empire had conquered southern Britain, and the period known as Roman Britain began. It is the Romano-British culture which gave rise to the early legends which would later be transformed into the Arthur myth. After the Romans