Some of the earliest human remains known in Britain have been found in Kent. These Palaeolithic (or Old Stone Age) people used tools made of stone, usually flint. Many examples of their carefully made hand-axes have been found across Medway.

Medway’s Palaeolithic inhabitants lived in small nomadic groups. They would have followed the animals they depended on for food and hunted them with weapons of flint and wood. Many of the species they encountered are extinct today but bones have been found locally showing that the mammoth, woolly rhinoceros and reindeer were all roaming the landscape.

During the Neolithic period (the New Stone Age) very important changes began to take place. For the first time people began to live a settled existence. From about 4,000 BC, they began to use their stone tools to clear forests and create open land. Instead of roaming after game, migrating with the animals that they hunted, people started farms. They grew wheat and raised animals, such as sheep, pigs and cows.

Bronze, a mixture of copper and tin, first appeared in Britain about 2,000 BC. It could be cast into complex shapes, creating new tool types, ornaments and armour. When broken, it could also be recycled, simply being re-cast into new objects.

Bronze tools show a steady pattern of development throughout the period, which helps to date them. The numerous Medway finds show that this area was relatively well populated during the Bronze Age. This period would also have seen Medway’s inhabitants making contact with people elsewhere in Britain and the Continent, with goods being traded considerable distances.

It is likely that the Iron Age (from about 500 BC) saw the first Medway town established at Rochester. As well as pottery and domestic waste, moulds for casting Celtic gold coins have been recovered from archaeological excavations on the High Street.

Related pages

• Making prehistoric tools
• Prehistoric coins

Resources

In the Beginning in Chatham: the Story of a Dockyard Town and the Birthplace of the British Navy by James Presnail. The Corporation of Chatham, 1952 (pp9-20).

Prehistoric Medway
350,000 BC – 43AD

Roman Medway
43 – 410

Anglo-Saxon Medway
410 – 1066

Medieval Medway
1066 – 1485

Tudor Medway
1485 – 1603

Medway in the 17th century
1603 – 1700

Georgian Medway
1714 – 1830

Victorian Medway
1837 – 1901

Medway in the 20th century
1901 – 2000

Medway in the 21st century