bed breakfast blair atholl killiecrankie holiday accommodation guest house perthshire, scotland, tourist short breaks, booking uk, reservation lodgings, bed breakfast blair atholl, hospitality, comfort, peaceful, country, views, visit, residence, quality, beauty, countryside, cycling, walking, riding, fishing, activity, bird watching pitlochry, bed breakfast blair atholl

There is evidence of human settlement in parts of present day Scotland that dates back to 6,000 BC. The inhabitants were hunters and fishermen. About two thousand years later, a second group arrived -- the Neolithic people. Some of their stone houses remain in Orkney; the well-preserved stone-built village, Skara Brae, attests to the wealth and stability of its builders. On the mainland, chambered tombs also show the sophisticated engineering of a settled, cooperative community. Then came the Beaker folk, named after the shape of their pottery. It is to these people that we owe the mysterious groups of huge stone circles and standing stones dotted hither and yon across the landscape.

The Bronze Age, or rather, the early and late Bronze Ages, from about 2,000 to 600 BC, introduced swords, knives, chisels, buckles, cauldrons and buckets, all evidence of a high level of civilization and creature comfort that was enhanced by the metal craft learned in the so-called subsequent Iron Age. Such objects were used by the indigenous Picts, who lived in the region north of the Firth of Forth, and the Celts, who had come to live in regions of Britain and Ireland further south.

It is to the invading Romans that we owe our written history of Britain; before their arrival, it simply wasn't the Celtic custom to entrust their history to anyone but the holy men and it was not to be written. The Romans, however, were always anxious to set down their military triumphs in writing, and from their historians a picture of Britain and its inhabitants began to emerge. In the fourth century, a Latin poem describes the people of Tartessos on the Atlantic coast of Iberia trading with the inhabitants of two large islands, Ierne and Albion (Ireland and Scotland), people who spoke a Celtic language.

Ptolemy's geography (written about 150 AD includes a group of five islands lying between Scotland and Ireland. On them was built, a new structural form, the broch (a fortified dwelling), an immense round stone tower. The best preserved is found on Mousa in Shetland. Because they are perched on hills and headlands, the brochs seem to have been built by resident lords to protect their settlements from sea-borne raiders.

In 55 and 54 BC following his success in subduing most of Gaul, Caesar turned his attention to the islands of Britain. However, for a few years afterwards, the Roman armies were fully occupied in suppressing the revolt of the Gauls on the continent under Vercingetorix, and so Britain was more-or-less left on its own, apart from its trading links with the Continent.

Under the Emperor Claudius, Rome again began to look westwards to the misty lands over the sea, to a land full of legendary mineral wealth as well as good grain-growing pastures. Overcoming what amounted to only token resistance in the southeast, the Romans set up the frontier, the Fosse Way, running from Lincoln in the north to Essex in the southwest. Their prosperous villas attest to settled, peaceful conditions in the agricultural lands to the southeast. It was in the more mountainous areas west of the line, however, that the much sought-after minerals lay. And it was there that resistance was fiercest.