For the time of about the middle of the first century B.C., we again see traces of frantic hill-fort construction. This simple military architecture now took some new forms. Its multiple ramparts must reflect the use of slings as missiles, rather than spears. We probably know the reason. In 56 B.C., Julius Caesar chastised the Veneti of Brittany for outraging the dignity of Roman ambassadors. The Veneti were famous slingers, and doubtless the reverberations of escaping Veneti were felt across the Channel. The military architecture suggests that some Veneti did escape to Britain. Also, through Caesar, we learn the names of newcomers who arrived in two waves, about 75 B.C. and about 50 B.C. These were the Belgae. Now, at last, we can even begin to speak of dynasties and individuals. Some time before 55 B.C., the Catuvellauni, originally from the Marne district in France, had possessed themselves of a large part of southeastern England. They evidently sailed up the Thames and built a town of over a hundred acres in area. Here ruled Cassivellaunus, “the first man in England whose name we know,” and whose town Caesar sacked. The town sprang up elsewhere again, however. THE END OF PREHISTORY Prehistory, strictly speaking, is now over in southern Britain. Claudius’ effective invasion took place in 43 A.D.; by 83 A.D., a raid had been made as far north as Aberdeen in Scotland. But by 127 A.D., Hadrian had completed his wall from the Solway to the Tyne, and the Romans settled behind it. In Scotland, Romanization can have affected the countryside very little. Professor Piggott adds that “... it is when the pressure of Romanization is relaxed by the break-up of the Dark Ages that we see again the Celtic metal-smiths handling their material with the same consummate skill as they had before the Roman Conquest, and with traditional styles that had not even then forgotten their Marnian and Belgic heritage.” In fact, many centuries go by, in Britain as well as in the rest of Europe, before the archeologist’s task is complete and the historian on his own is able to describe the ways of men in the past. BRITAIN AS A SAMPLE OF THE GENERAL COURSE OF PREHISTORY IN EUROPE In giving this very brief outline of the later prehistory of Britain, you will have noticed how often I had to refer to the European continent itself. Britain, beyond the English Channel for all of her later prehistory, had a much simpler course of events than did most of the rest of Europe in later prehistoric times. This holds, in spite of all the “invasions” and “reverberations” from the continent. Most of Europe was the scene of an even more complicated ebb and flow of cultural change, save in some of its more remote mountain valleys and peninsulas.