Ghosts of History: Prehistoric Britain

Reconstructed house interior at Skara Brae

It's 6501 BCE. You're the first 'British' Person.

You pull your part of meat from your hunted mammoth carcass across the stretch, not realizing you've passed through history.  Over the span of maybe a foot, you've gone onto the East coast of the British mainland, and left your walk off Doggerland, a long stretch of land across from Western Norway, West Denmark, North East France. 

You take the meat over ready to cook it to eat, sitting with the other hunters to just focus on cooking and eating it. That's all you need to do tonight. You sit and watch waves crash against and slop over the green ground, a lot of it muddy and sinking back with the tide. Even though the tide does seem high more often than not, you aren't worried. You'll just stay here for the night and tomorrow go back to your friends sitting on the Doggerland stretch. Maybe head back to Germany in a few weeks. They're just waves. They come and go. …right?

---

It's 401 BC. You're a Celt.

You toss and turn on the boat from the storm, peering and getting blood hot, rushing through your system to spot it. Land. You were told there'd be land here by the older people who'd apparently been (which you know what actually makes a lot of sense given they left for a while and came back without starving on the long boat journey). You hear the men roar something in the storm and eventually slow the rowing. After passing the white cliffs you get to the coast of gently sinking land - and see people already there.

They look... Like you. Maybe a little paler. You hop off the boat and go up, not saying anything as your friends, the ones who've been here before do the talking. They have some common language but you can't really make it out. One of them explains to you that the people here don't speak full celtic, you shrug and say okay... in celtic. (You don't speak whatever it is the 'britons' do). 

You sit, eat, and talk, seeing friends farming, cutting wheat and then laying down from a long half hour of cutting wheat and putting it into a pile for someone else to pick up and walk off with. You don't like the idea of staying here without knowing a bit, so maybe you'll learn a little of the language, but you'll talk celtic with your mates. Hell, (whatever that is) maybe they'll hear you talking and want to learn celtic themselves.

And when another boat comes in you perk up, given how quickly it came and that people are cheering. When they land, they tell you about this story of where they went. South into some town where the people there didn’t have enough to fight back and no horses where they went in and sieged them, took all their silver back, showing you some. The warriors reassure you they were easily besieged, weak, few in number and it’s all done now, but you can’t help the cold shiver running down your spine…