History of Cardiff - Origins

Origins

See also: Neolithic, British Iron Age, and Silures

Wales had become free of glaciers by about 10,250 BP (Before Present). Mesolithic hunter-gatherers from Central Europe began to migrate to Great Britain from the end of the last ice age (between 12,000 and 10,000 BP). People would have been able to walk between Great Britain and Continental Europe on dry land until between c. 7000 and c. 6000 BP, when the post glacial rise in sea level caused the Irish Sea to form, separating Wales and Ireland, and Great Britain to become an island. John Davies has theorised that the story of Cantre'r Gwaelod's drowning and tales in the Mabinogion, of the waters between Wales and Ireland being narrower and shallower, may be distant folk memories of this time.

As Great Britain became heavily wooded, movement between different areas was restricted, and travel between what was to become known as Wales and continental Europe became easier by sea, rather than by land. People came to Wales by boat from the Iberian Peninsula. These Neolithic colonists integrated with the indigenous people, gradually changing their lifestyles from a nomadic life of hunting and gathering, to become farmers, some of whom settled in the area that would become Glamorgan. They cleared the forests to establish pasture and to cultivate the land, developed new technologies such as ceramics and textile production, and they brought a tradition of long barrow construction that began in continental Europe during the 7th millennium BP.

Archaeological evidence from sites in and around Cardiff—the St Lythans burial chamber, near Wenvoe (about 4 mi (6.4 km) west, southwest of Cardiff City Centre), the Tinkinswood burial chamber, near St. Nicholas, Vale of Glamorgan (about 6 mi (9.7 km) west of Cardiff City Centre), the Cae'rarfau Chambered Tomb, Creigiau (about 6 mi (9.7 km) northwest of Cardiff City Centre) and the Gwern y Cleppa Long Barrow, near Coedkernew, Newport (about 8.25 mi (13.28 km) northeast of Cardiff City Centre)—shows that these Neolithic people had settled in the area around Cardiff from at least around 6,000 BP, about 1500 years before either Stonehenge or The Egyptian Great Pyramid of Giza was completed.

In common with the people living all over Great Britain, over the following centuries the people living around what is now known as Cardiff assimilated new immigrants and exchanged ideas of the Bronze Age and Iron Age Celtic cultures. Together with the approximate areas now known as Breconshire, Monmouthshire and the rest of Glamorgan, the area that would become known as Cardiff was settled by a Celtic British tribe called the Silures. There is a group of five tumuli at the top of Mynydd y Garth—near the City and County of Cardiff's northern boundary—thought to be Bronze Age, one of which supports a trig. pillar on its flat top. Several Iron Age sites have been found in the City and County of Cardiff. They are: the Castle Field Camp, east of Graig Llywn, Pontprennau; Craig y Parc enclosure, Pentyrch; Llwynda Ddu Hillfort, Pentyrch; and Caerau Hillfort—an enclosed area of 5.1 ha (13 acres).

The Roman army invaded Great Britain in May 43 CE. The area to the south east of the Fosse Way—between modern day Lincoln and Exeter—was under Roman control by 47 CE. British tribes from beyond this new frontier of the Roman Empire resisted the Roman advance and the Silures, along with Caratacus (Welsh: Caradoc), attacked the Romans in 47 and 48 CE. A Roman legion (thought to be the Twentieth) was defeated in 52 CE by the Silures. Archaeological evidence shows that a settlement had been established by the Silures in central Cardiff in the 50s CE, probably during the period following their victory over the Roman army. The settlement included several large timber framed buildings of up to 45 m (148 ft) by 25 m (82 ft). The extent of the settlement is not known. Until the Romans established their fort, which they built on the earlier Silures settlement, the area that would become known as Cardiff remained outside the control of the Roman province of Britannia.