Back to the Iron Age calendar
England had, by now, become a materialistic
society. In other words possessions mattered. Land and grain replaced bronze as an indicator of a person’s position in life. Of course the more land you had, the
more wealth you had, the more power you had. As chiefs were seen to have this power, more ordinary people came to your tribe, your area, because it was safer.
Small communities didn't survive for long as these powerful rulers took their land.
The more people who came, the more land you needed. Hence you would have to capture some other, weaker, tribes’ land, giving you yet more power, a
better status and killing off a good few people on the way. I would like to think that over the last 2,000 years we had learnt that killing others, those weaker
than you perhaps, isn’t a good way to show how powerful you are. I think it just shows how stupid you are. But it still happens. As Pete Seeger (look him up)
wrote in a very famous song “when will we ever learn.”
The great tribal leaders would build hill forts that were well protected. Not only did they often have a ditch or two around the outside as you can
see from the picture, but the chiefs would sometimes build a platform on the left hand side of the walkway leading from the fort. Attackers, when they came along
this walkway, would find the fort’s defenders on this platform, which would be on the right hand side for the attackers. Most warriors carried their sword in
their right hand and their shield in the left so the right side was unprotected. This was the side which would be nearest to the defenders. Left handed people
may have lived longer and anyone deciding to attack backwards might have stood a better chance too.
Forward to 100BC
