Main Alternate History Page

Britain was inhabited by human beings at least as early as 500,000 years BP—and probably earlier.  Apparently conditions got bad enough at the height of the various ice ages that humans couldn’t survive there with most of the island covered by ice and the rest desolate.  Humans may have flowed back in after the ice subsided in the early part of the ice age, but there was apparently a prolonged period (a hundred thousand years or more) when they didn’t make it back, probably because rising seas made Britain an island again without leaving an inhabitable path back to the island.  If all of this is right, what if there was refuge area extending southwest of the historic island—an area that stayed ice free and reasonably productive during the ice ages, and allowed human populations to flow back in during interglacials and thrive until the next ice age?

The original inhabitants would have probably been archaic humans of some kind, probably close to the ancestors of the Neanderthals.  For brevity lets call them Neanderthaloids.  To the best of my knowledge, no modern humans made it to Britain until around 14,000 BP, and they appear to have been chased out again by a cold snap for a few thousand years after that.

So, if you tweak the geography of Britain a little bit to give it a southern peninsula, maybe one that is only above water during the ice ages, you could end up with Neanderthal-like humans surviving in Britain until around 14,000 years ago.  That wouldn’t necessarily buy us anything more than some interesting fossils unless they could somehow survive longer.  What if the presence of Neanderthaloid competitors delayed modern human settlement of Britain long enough that when Britain became an island again after the last ice age it was still inhabited mainly if not entirely by Neanderthaloids?  That probably wouldn’t help too much, because modern humans would have developed boats capable of getting to Britain fairly early, probably by 7000 BP.  That puts us back to a situation where the situation just creates interesting fossils, unless the Neanderthaloids could somehow compete with modern humans.  That’s unlikely because even if there wasn’t a gap in intelligence or innate capacity between the two populations, modern humans would have access to a huge world of technical innovations, while the British Neanderthaloids would presumably still be in the old stone age—hundreds of thousands of years behind.

If an Old Stone Age population of Neanderthaloids on Britain faced a Neolithic farming and herding population of modern humans coming in on boats from the continent, the Neanderthaloids would lose, and probably disappear rather quickly.  So, how could we extend their survival time?  What if Neanderthaloids and modern humans both pushed north as the ice age started to subside 14,000 years ago?  They meet, fight over hunting grounds, and then are pushed back to their respective homelands by the resurgent ice.

Modern humans are back on the continent and Neanderthaloids back in their refuge, but the groups with most contact with the modern humans bring back a subset of their technology.  That technology spreads to the rest of the Neanderthal population over the next couple of thousand years, and when it becomes possible to push north again they are reasonably competitive with modern men in terms of technology.  Both populations push into the newly inhabited areas, but modern humans have little technological advantage.  When Britain becomes an island again, it is inhabited mostly if not entirely by ‘Neanderthals’, and those ‘Neanderthals’ have gotten another peek into the technology toolkit of modern humans.

That gets us to the point where the gap isn’t Old Stone Age versus Neolithic when the two populations meet again around 7000 years ago.   There is a problem with this so far though.  It is probably unlikely that the dividing line between the two populations would be exactly right to leave Neanderthaloids alone in Britain twice.

If there were modern humans in Britain when it became an island again, the scenario would face two issues that I’ve been avoiding.  First, would the two groups be able to interbreed?  That’s a controversial issue for real Neanderthals, and it is even more of an issue with these Neanderthaloids.  They would have been physically separated from any other humans for hundreds of thousands of years, with no gene flow at all.  Is that enough time to make interbreeding impossible?  I have no way of knowing, but I would guess that interbreeding would be possible but not simple.

In zoos animals as far apart as lions and tigers can and do interbreed.  Their descendants are sometimes fertile, though a lot of them aren’t.  In the wild, behavior and habitat differences tend to keep the species separate, and any hybrids would tend to be poor at dealing with the ecological niche of either of its parents.  I’m guessing that there would be a similar pattern with Neanderthaloids and modern humans.  Interbreeding could and would happen, but gene flow between the two populations would be very minor under normal circumstances.  If a few isolated groups of a few dozen modern humans each were scattered along the British coast, each surrounded by a much larger Neanderthal population, the gene flow into the modern human population would probably be higher than it would normally be simply because of the fact that suitable mates would be scarce.  Unless the smaller modern human population had an advantage of some kind and was able to expand, it would probably become more and more like the Neanderthaloid population until there was no longer a sharp boundary between the populations.  If there wasn’t gene flow between the populations, the modern humans would probably dwindle away from the diseases of inbreeding unless they were able to expand quickly and form a common breeding population.

That gets us into another very controversial issue: were modern humans enough smarter or better adapted to generating new technology that they would be able to take over the island, even from small pockets?  My guess is that they wouldn’t.  Assuming that our Neanderthaloids were smart enough imitate the original modern human toolkit, the rate of innovation among the little groups of modern humans would not be high enough to give them enough advantage to keep them from being genetically swamped by the Neanderthaloids around them, or held in their little pockets to dwindle away.  Neanderthals themselves were apparently able to imitate the modern human toolkit, though that wasn’t enough to keep them from losing out to modern humans.  The British Neanderthaloids would probably not be quite as advanced as true Neanderthals, but I don’t see any reason to believe that they wouldn’t be smart enough to adopt innovations that clearly made their lives easier.

So at this point we have Britain inhabited almost entirely by Neanderthaloids up to 7000 years ago.  There may or may not be little pockets of people that are genetically partly modern human along the coasts.  Technology in Britain is not too different than that of Europe of three thousand years before.  Neanderthaloids hunt and fight with spears, possibly spearthrowers, but not bows and arrows.  The general level of technology isn’t too different from that of Australian aborigines of around 1800, though population densities are higher because of the more fertile land.

On the other side of the channel, farming and herding are becoming more common.  Boats are becoming more and more sophisticated.  Populations are growing as hunter-gather settlements became villages and then small towns.  Bows and arrows are common hunting weapons.  The pace of technological innovation is accelerating, and Britain is about to be reintegrated into that changing world, as trading canoes going up or down the coast of France occasionally blow over to the British side of the channel, and eventually come there deliberately to trade or raid.

Where do we go from here?  Historically Britain was conquered any number of times during the last 7000 years.  Undoubtedly a Neanderthaloid Britain would be conquered numerous times too.  The key question is what would happen then.  Historically the invaders either absorbed the older inhabitants or were absorbed by them.  That wouldn’t happen anywhere near as easily if at all given the major differences between the two peoples.  Would the Neanderthaloids be exterminated?  Genetically swamped by invaders?  Be forced to adopt the language and customs of the invaders but remain genetically the main part of the British population?  What do you think?

Comments are very welcome.