The History of Doggerisle
c10,000 BC
An upwelling beneath the lands between what will become Britain and what will become Denmark, as the glaciers begin their retreat at the end of the Devensian (Wisconsin, or Würm) era, proceeds a bit farther than might have been imagined.
c 4000 BC
There is now an island in the sea, severed from the land to its west as that land is severed from the continent, off the coast of what will become Yorkshire. The bones of many great animals lie beneath its fens, within its peat marshes, for man has roved the island ever since the ice crept back and exposed it. A few settlements of men still remain, for the island is fertile, if wet.
c 1000 BC
Bronze has come to the island. Traders venture out into the stormy seas bringing tin, leaving with salt and hides. Like the inhabitants of the island to the west, the inhabitants of the place are interred with beakers next to their bodies.
c400 BC
Iron has come to the island, at first from the amorphous masses found in bogs, later from clumps dug up from the ground. The language the inhabitants speak can be understood in the lands to the west and south. Later generations will style them the “Celts.”
The hills are topped by rings of berms with log stockades within. There, a chieftain commands the loyalty and authority of the people over to about halfway to the next hill. They trade for gold; the ones near the coast dispatch boats to get fish, or to trade.
325 BC
The first known reference to the island is made in written records. Pytheas of Massilia, a Hellene from the far south, sailing to the island of the Prettanike, and around it, says, “The island of the Skyloi lies between the land of the Prettanike and that of the Guttones. In culture and arts they are more akin to the Prettanike. Their island is some thousand stadia in length, and contains many fens and bogs.” While his work is lost, this passage is quoted by Strabo with the comment that he may have heard it from a Gallic trader.
53 AD
A force led by the proconsul Cn. Hosidius Geta sails from Colchester to the island of Scylia, or as the Romans render it, Cania. It is built around a detachment of
legio IX Hispania and includes Batavian auxiliaries.
55 AD
The last fortress of Cania submits. Already, a new settlement is going up on the western end of the island, orginally named Claudia Castra, but changed hurriedly to Neronis Castra when news of the new reign arrived.
60 AD
The Caniai do not rise in parallel with Boudica.
Map of Doggerisle below
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