First People - the last half a million years

During the last half a million years people first came to the Peterborough area. Some tools can be recognised as several tens of thousands of years old, but other tools may be even earlier. Many of these ancient Palaeolithic (old stone age) tools were found 100 years ago at gravel pits in the Woodston area. These early people were skilled "hunter-gatherers". They lived off the land without formal agriculture and moved around the countryside to follow migrating animals and gather seasonal plants for food.

 

At the end of the last Ice Age about 10,000 years ago, warming conditions allowed a greater range of trees, plants and animals to thrive. The river valleys of the Nene and Welland served both as good hunting grounds and corridors for travel through heavily wooded landscape.

 

About 6,000 years ago "Neolithic" (new stone age) people began to bring changes to the way of life in the Peterborough area. The trend towards a settled farming lifestyle spread gradually across Europe from the Near East. Families began to grow crops, rear animals, and to use new technology like firing clay to make pottery. Peterborough and Fengate lend their names to types of Neolithic pottery found widely across England.

 

At about the same time that Stonehenge was built in Wiltshire, similar monuments were being constructed in the Peterborough area. Henges made of wooden posts and earth banks, burial mounds, causewayed enclosures, and mysterious "cursus" monuments have all been found locally.