Introduction
As the climate warmed up after the end of the last Ice Age, Britain became thickly wooded. For the first time in many thousands of years, people were able to colonise the land, which at this time was an isolated peninsula of north-west Europe, lying between the River Rhine and the River Seine. These first settlers were the earliest ancestors of the British. As the climate became warmer and more of the polar ice caps melted, so the sea levels rose; by about 6,700 BC, Britain had become an island.
The people living here had to learn how to hunt the new types of animals that lived in the forest and to gather food from the woodland plants. They developed a greater variety of tools to help with these tasks. Several of these have been found around Weston, at Letchworth and near Hitchin.
The forest animals included red and roe deer, elk, wild boar and wild ox and a variety of woodland birds. To hunt these animals, the people used bows and arrows, a new invention. The arrows were made from tiny flint points and barbs called microliths. This was a much more efficient way of using stone than earlier technologies. Because the flints were standard sizes and shapes, broken parts of tools could be replaced and the whole tool was not then wasted.
Sharp flint axes fitted to wooden handles were used to cut down trees and scrub to make clearings that attracted grazing animals. In this way, people brought the animals to them instead of having to follow the herds as they moved around from season to season. Food plants such as hazels and blackberries also grow better on the edges of such clearings and it is possible that the Mesolithic people sometimes deliberately planted them. Bone harpoons and bone hooks on fishing lines were used to catch fish in rivers and ponds. Water birds such as ducks and geese were also caught. By the end of the fifth millennium BC, life had become much more settled, even though people were still partly nomadic.
Local evidence
Several sites of this period have been excavated in East Hertfordshire. At Stanstead Abbots, traces were found of a seasonal camp where people had lived, including the remains of a brushwood shelter. In North Hertfordshire, though, only flint tools have so far been found. No doubt occupation sites will eventually be located.