History of Scotland
The recorded history of Scotland begins with the arrival of the Roman Empire in the 1st century, when the province of Britannia reached as far north as the Antonine Wall. North of this was Caledonia, inhabited by the Picti, whose uprisings forced Rome's legions back to Hadrian's Wall. As Rome finally withdrew from Britain, a Gaelic tribe from Ireland called the Scoti began colonising Western Scotland and Wales. Before Roman times, prehistoric Scotland entered the Neolithic Era about 4000 BC, the Bronze Age about 2000 BC, and the Iron Age around 700 BC.
The Gaelic kingdom of Dál Riata was founded on the west coast of Scotland in the 6th century. In the following century, Irish missionaries introduced the previously pagan Picts to Celtic Christianity. Following England's Gregorian mission, the Pictish king Nechtan chose to abolish most Celtic practices in favour of the Roman rite, restricting Gaelic influence on his kingdom and avoiding war with Anglian Northumbria. Towards the end of the 8th century, the Viking invasions began, forcing the Picts and Gaels to cease their historic hostility to each other and to unite in the 9th century, forming the Kingdom of Scotland.
The Kingdom of Scotland was united under the House of Alpin, whose members fought among each other during frequent disputed successions. The last Alpin king, Malcolm II, died without a male issue in the early 11th century and the kingdom passed through his daughter's son to the House of Dunkeld or Canmore. The last Dunkeld king, Alexander III, died in 1286. He left only his infant granddaughter, Margaret, as heir, who died herself four years later. England, under Edward I, would take advantage of this questioned succession to launch a series of conquests, resulting in the Wars of Scottish Independence, as Scotland passed back and forth between the House of Balliol and the House of Bruce through the late Middle Ages. Scotland's ultimate victory confirmed Scotland as a fully independent and sovereign kingdom.
In 1707, the Kingdom of Scotland united with the Kingdom of England to create the new state of the Kingdom of Great Britain under the terms of the Treaty of Union. The Parliament of Scotland was subsumed into the newly created Parliament of Great Britain which was located in London, with 45 Members of Parliament representing Scottish affairs in the newly created parliament.
In 1999, a Scottish Parliament was reconvened and a Scottish Government re–established under the terms of the Scotland Act 1998, with Donald Dewar leading the first Scottish Government since 1707, until his death in 2000. In 2007, the Scottish National Party were elected to government following the 2007 election, with first minister Alex Salmond holding a referendum on Scotland regaining its independence from the United Kingdom. Held on 18 September 2014, 55% of the electorate voted to remain a country of the United Kingdom, with 45% voting for independence.
During the Scottish Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution, Scotland became one of the commercial, intellectual and industrial powerhouses of Europe. Later, its industrial decline following the Second World War was particularly acute. Today, 5,490,100 people live in Scotland, the majority of which are located in the central belt of the country in towns and cities such as Ayr, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Paisley and Kilmarnock, and cities such as Aberdeen, Dundee and Inverness to the north of the country. The economy has shifted from a heavy industry driven economy to be become one which is services and skills based, with Scottish Gross Domestic Product estimated to be worth £218 billion in 2023, including offshore activity such as North Sea oil extraction.
Pre-history
Although there have been claims of Lower Paleolithic finds in Scotland, none stand up to close scrutiny. The earliest known human presence in Scotland are those of Upper Paleolithic hunter gathers, dating to the Bølling–Allerød Interstadial warm period at the end of the last ice age, around 14,670 to c. 12,900 years Before Present shortly following the retreat of the ice sheet that had previously covered Scotland. The earliest known site of human presence is the Howburn Farm encampment near Biggar, South Lanarkshire, which is dated to around 14,500 to 14,000 years ago, and is associated with the reindeer hunting Hamburgian culture. Several other waves of late Upper Paleolithic peoples are known to have inhabited Scotland, including the Federmesser and Ahrensburgian cultures. Other sites found around Scotland build up a picture of highly mobile boat-using people making tools from bone, stone and antlers. The oldest house for which there is evidence in Britain is the oval structure of wooden posts found at South Queensferry near the Firth of Forth, dating from the Mesolithic period, about 8240 BC. The earliest stone structures are probably the three hearths found at Jura, dated to about 6000 BC.Neolithic farming brought permanent settlements. Evidence of these includes the well-preserved stone house at Knap of Howar on Papa Westray, dating from around 3500 BC and the village of similar houses at Skara Brae on West Mainland, Orkney from about 500 years later. The settlers introduced chambered cairn tombs from around 3500 BC, as at Maeshowe, and from about 3000 BC the many standing stones and circles such as those at Stenness on the mainland of Orkney, which date from about 3100 BC, of four stones, the tallest of which is in height. These were part of a pattern that developed in many regions across Europe at about the same time.
The creation of cairns and Megalithic monuments continued into the Bronze Age, which began in Scotland about 2000 BC. As elsewhere in Europe, hill forts were first introduced in this period, including the occupation of Eildon Hill near Melrose in the Scottish Borders, from around 1000 BC, which accommodated several hundred houses on a fortified hilltop. From the Early and Middle Bronze Age there is evidence of cellular round houses of stone, as at Jarlshof and Sumburgh in Shetland. There is also evidence of the occupation of crannogs, roundhouses partially or entirely built on artificial islands, usually in lakes, rivers and estuarine waters.
In the early Iron Age, from the seventh century BC, cellular houses began to be replaced on the northern isles by simple Atlantic roundhouses, substantial circular buildings with a dry stone construction. From about 400 BC, more complex Atlantic roundhouses began to be built, as at Howe, Orkney and Crosskirk, Caithness. The most massive constructions that date from this era are the circular broch towers, probably dating from about 200 BC. This period also saw the first wheelhouses, a roundhouse with a characteristic outer wall, within which was a circle of stone piers, but these would flourish most in the era of Roman occupation. There is evidence for about 1,000 Iron Age hill forts in Scotland, most located below the Clyde-Forth line, which have suggested to some archaeologists the emergence of a society of petty rulers and warrior elites recognisable from Roman accounts.
Roman invasion
Of the surviving pre-Roman accounts of Scotland, the first written reference to Scotland was the Greek Pytheas of Massalia, who may have circumnavigated the British Isles of Albion and Ierne sometime around 325 BC. The most northerly point of Britain was called Orcas. By the time of Pliny the Elder, who died in AD 79, Roman knowledge of the geography of Scotland had extended to the Hebudes, Dumna, the Caledonian Forest and the people of the Caledonii, from whom the Romans named the region north of their control Caledonia. Ptolemy, possibly drawing on earlier sources of information as well as more contemporary accounts from the Agricolan invasion, identified 18 tribes in Scotland in his Geography, but many of the names are obscure and the geography becomes less reliable in the north and west, suggesting early Roman knowledge of these areas was confined to observations from the sea.The Roman invasion of Britain began in earnest in AD 43, leading to the establishment of the Roman province of Britannia in the south. By the year 71, the Roman governor Quintus Petillius Cerialis had launched an invasion of what is now Scotland. In the year 78, Gnaeus Julius Agricola arrived in Britain to take up his appointment as the new governor and began a series of major incursions. He is said to have pushed his armies to the estuary of the "River Taus" and established forts there, including a legionary fortress at Inchtuthil. After his victory over the northern tribes at Mons Graupius in 84, a series of forts and towers were established along the Gask Ridge, which marked the boundary between the Lowland and Highland zones, probably forming the first Roman limes or frontier in Scotland. Agricola's successors were unable or unwilling to further subdue the far north. By the year 87, the occupation was limited to the Southern Uplands and by the end of the first century the northern limit of Roman expansion was a line drawn between the Tyne and Solway Firth. The Romans eventually withdrew to a line in what is now northern England, building the fortification known as Hadrian's Wall from coast to coast.
Around 141, the Romans undertook a reoccupation of southern Scotland, moving up to construct a new limes between the Firth of Forth and the Firth of Clyde, which became the Antonine Wall. The largest Roman construction inside Scotland, it is a sward-covered wall made of turf around high, with nineteen forts. It extended for. Having taken twelve years to build, the wall was overrun and abandoned soon after 160. The Romans retreated to the line of Hadrian's Wall. Roman troops penetrated far into the north of modern Scotland several more times, with at least four major campaigns. The most notable invasion was in 209 when the emperor Septimius Severus led a major force north. After the death of Severus in 210 they withdrew south to Hadrian's Wall, which would be Roman frontier until it collapsed in the 5th century.
The Great Conspiracy constituted a seemingly coordinated invasion against Roman rule in Britain in the later 4th century, which included the participation of the Gaelic Scoti and the Caledonians, who were then known as Picts by the Romans. This was defeated by the comes Theodosius, however, Roman military government was withdrawn from the island altogether by the early 5th century, resulting in the Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain and the immigration of the Saxons to southeastern Scotland and the rest of eastern Great Britain.
By the close of the Roman occupation of southern and central Britain in the 5th century, the Picts had emerged as the dominant force in northern Scotland, with the various Brythonic tribes the Romans had first encountered there occupying the southern half of the country. Roman influence on Scottish culture and history was not enduring.