british-history

The history of the British Isles began with its sporadic human habitation during the Palaeolithic from around 900,000 years ago. The British Isles has been continually occupied since the early Holocene, the current geological epoch, which started around 11,700 years ago. Mesolithic hunter-gatherers migrated from the Continent soon afterwards at a time when there was no sea barrier between Britain and Europe, but there was between Britain and Ireland. There were almost complete population replacements by migrations from the Continent at the start of the Neolithic around 4,100 BC and the Bronze Age around 2,500 BC. Later migrations contributed to the political and cultural fabric of the islands and the transition from tribal societies to feudal ones at different times in different regions.
England and Scotland were sovereign kingdoms until 1603, and then legally separate under one monarch until 1707, when they united as one kingdom. Wales and Ireland were composed of several independent kingdoms with shifting boundaries until the medieval period.
The British monarch was head of state of all of the countries of the British Isles from the Union of the Crowns in 1603 until the enactment of the Republic of Ireland Act in 1949.

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