![]() At Trevose Head, on the north coast, archaeologists have identified one of the county’s most important and productive Mesolithic sites which yielded evidence of perhaps 6,000 years of prehistoric activity. Indeed, the pattern of human activity only begins to clear after about 7000 B.C., when we can envisage a Mesolithic population of hunter-gatherers moving from place to place in search of migratory animals like red deer and wild pigs and in spring and autumn exploiting the resources of the sea as shellfish and whitefish made their seasonal incursions into coastal waters. It was at this time, during the Palaeolithic period, that the first inhabitants began to arrive, although we know very little about these very early pioneers in Cornwall. A severe climate, near-arctic conditions and a landscape resembling a polar desert would have made vegetation growth impossible, and another 3,000 years had to pass before the gradual rise in temperature allowed the slow advance of first scrubland and then forest. ![]() ![]() ![]() A History of Cornwall Prehistoric Cornwall Relief map of CornwallĪbout 13,000 years ago, when the last ice age was in full retreat and Britain was still joined to mainland Europe, the peninsula which we now know as Cornwall would have been one of the most inhospitable regions of the western world. ![]()
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