Scotland the Brief

Part 1: The Community of the Realm
1 Fireball to Roman Wall

In the eighteenth century there was a great debate over the origins of the earth. Did it evolve from a fireball or a mudball? The first group, the Vulcanists, was headed by the Scot, James Hutton, the second, the Neptunians, by the German Abram Werner. The prize went to the Vulcanists, and the earth was seen as beginning in a fiery mass which, over thousands of millions of years, cooled, generated moisture and ultimately sustained life.

In this process Huttons homeland was where the plates of consolidated magma drove into one another, forcing themselves into a contorted, complex geology, one of the oldest parts of the earth. Much of the countrys subsequent history depended on it, and the minerals and workable stone forced to the surface. The ice incised the ravaged coast of the west, eroded sands from volcanic rock, whose deposits were progressively compressed and eroded again. Glaciers gouged valleys, and crushed the rotted remains of plants and trees, shells and early animals into limestone and coal.

Men turned up in the British peninsula about 30,000 years ago, crossing a land-bridge from Europe in the intervals of ice ages in which the land froze under miles of ice, thawed for a time, then froze again. Human beings in Scotland date back to about 10,000 BC, when hunter-gatherers moved north in search of animals for food and furs, and built small, seasonal settlements. Then they gradually herded and fished rather than hunted, and built more permanent wood and stone dwellings. Fairly early on, they cleared much of the forest that extended over the land after the ice retreated the Great Caledonian Forest was always a bit of a myth, though a useful one (see xx) and their politics seem to have been of rather aristocratic or priestly grandeur, with ritual sites and temples of great leaders, such as Callanish stone circle in Harris and the tomb of Maes Howe in Orkney.

These people were no less intelligent than we are today, though checked by lack of mobility and information about sophisticated technology. The Skara Brae settlement on Orkney (2000 BC) shows the locals making use of stone panels as ingenious as anything in an Ikea flat-pack, constructing shelves, stores, fishponds, lockable doors. Callanish or Maes Howe suggest sophisticated elites creating works which enabled them to keep the seasons for fishing and stock-breeding. With the 'agricultural revolution', after about 4500 BC from herding beasts to tilling the soil this grandeur later seems to have given way to independent farms and villages, while in the bronze and iron ages (which made weapon-making easier) defensive fortresses and enclosures developed.

Again, our images are filtered through national myths and the ingenious arguments of the eighteenth century. Adam Smith saw in The Wealth of Nations, the origins of international trade in the eastern Mediterranean. This could coexist with the Scots self-image of a folk who had wandered from Scythia in Asia Minor. The reality was a westward migration of the Celtic tribes of Hallstatt and La Tene (named after great hoards in Austria and Switzerland) about 800-500 BC. Only during the period of Greek dominance (500-100 BC) did recorders from outside come, with the geographer Ptolemy of Alexandrias map of 150 BC, the result of a circumnavigation of the archipelago that the Romans, its first European conquerors, would know as Britannia.

The Roman invasions from 43 AD pushed deep into Scotland and then stabilised themselves on the fortified wall of Hadrian between Tyne and Solway, built in 121 AD. Northward of this were not barbarians but the Foederati, the Treaty people, a mix of Celtic tribes: Welsh (British) in the south-west, Scottish (Irish) in the west, and north of the Forth the Picti, the least accessible by sea and consequently the most mysterious.

As early as this, some enduring qualities of the place and its people were being made clear. Scotland was easy to invade, as long as sea-power was secured. The west coast was a better bet than the east; it had plenty of landmarks and sheltered waters. But there the easy part ended, particularly for a great land power like Rome. The sea was unreliable, but the land was often impassable because of undergrowth and marshes. Some of the locals were farmers, friendly and biddable, up for villas and wine and a quiet life near Roman roads, forts and ports; but others were herdsmen and fishermen, given a chance rustlers and pirates, and a pest. For nearly three hundred years (about the same stretch as the 1707-1997 Union), the goodwill of the first wasnt worth the burden of dealing with the second. The last of the free as their commander Calgacus called his Caledonii at the Battle of Mons Graupius in 87 AD were contained, subjected to periodic invasions and one longish occupation as far as the Forth-Clyde Antonine Wall (142-3 AD) but largely left alone.

The Roman Empire was essentially land-based, founded on roads, camps and a well-organised army. In 314-24 it was supposedly Christianised by the Emperor Constantine, who also shifted its centre to Constantinople (now Istanbul). But it was also increasingly subject to the movements of peoples. Enter another factor, as significant as geology: the weather. A little ice age ended around 300 AD and in the Baltic the sea levels rose, forcing Saxon peoples westwards. In Britannia they found suspicion but also a welcome and were in places incorporated into the Roman system and army. The latter, however, grew more and more troublesome as central control deteriorated. Revolts brought minor officers to power, the gentry in their villas tired of the upstarts, and the departure of the legions from Britannia in 410 AD was therefore not seen at the time as a disaster, until the whole centralised system fell apart.