History of Wales
The history of what is now Wales begins with evidence of a Neanderthal presence from at least 230,000 years ago, while Homo sapiens arrived by about 31,000 BC. However, continuous habitation by modern humans dates from the period after the end of the last ice age around 9000 BC, and Wales has many remains from the Mesolithic, Neolithic, and Bronze Age. During the Iron Age, as in all of Britain south of the Firth of Forth, the culture had become Celtic, with a common Brittonic language. The Romans, who began their conquest of Britain in AD 43, first campaigned in what is now northeast Wales in 48 against the Deceangli, and gained total control of the region with their defeat of the Ordovices in 79. The Romans departed from Britain in the 5th century, opening the door for the Anglo-Saxon settlement. Thereafter, the culture began to splinter into a number of kingdoms. The Welsh people formed with English encroachment that effectively separated them from the other surviving Brittonic-speaking peoples in the early middle ages.
In the post-Roman period, a number of Welsh kingdoms formed in present-day Wales, including Gwynedd, Powys, Ceredigion, Dyfed, Brycheiniog, Ergyng, Morgannwg, and Gwent. While some rulers extended their control over other Welsh territories and into western England, none were able to unite Wales for long. Internecine struggles and external pressure from the English, and later the Norman conquerors of England, led to the Welsh kingdoms coming gradually under the sway of the English crown. In 1282, the death of Llywelyn ap Gruffudd led to the conquest of the Principality of Wales by King Edward I of England; since then, the heir apparent to the English monarch has borne the title "Prince of Wales". The Welsh launched several revolts against English rule, the last significant one being that led by Owain Glyndŵr in the early 15th century. In the 16th century Henry VIII, himself of Welsh extraction as a great-grandson of Owen Tudor, passed the Laws in Wales Acts aiming to fully incorporate Wales into the Kingdom of England.
Wales became part of the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707 and then the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in 1801. Yet, the Welsh retained their language and culture despite heavy English dominance. The publication of the extremely significant first complete Welsh translation of the Bible by William Morgan in 1588 greatly advanced the position of Welsh as a literary language. The 18th century saw the beginnings of two changes that would greatly affect Wales: the Welsh Methodist revival, which led the country to turn increasingly nonconformist in religion, and the Industrial Revolution. During the rise of the British Empire, 19th century Southeast Wales in particular experienced rapid industrialisation and a dramatic rise in population as a result of the explosion of the coal and iron industries. Wales played a full and willing role in the First World War. The industries of the Empire in Wales declined in the 20th century with the end of the British Empire following the Second World War, while nationalist sentiment and interest in self-determination rose. The Labour Party replaced the Liberal Party as the dominant political force in the 1920s. Wales played a considerable role during the Second World War, along with the rest of the United Kingdom and its allies, and its cities were bombed extensively during the Blitz. The nationalist party Plaid Cymru gained momentum from the 1960s. In a 1997 referendum, Welsh voters approved the devolution of governmental responsibility to a National Assembly for Wales which first met in 1999, and was renamed as the Welsh Parliament in English and Senedd Cymru in Welsh in May 2020.
Prehistoric era
Paleolithic
The earliest known item of human remains discovered in modern-day Wales is a Neanderthal jawbone, found at the Bontnewydd Palaeolithic site in the valley of the River Elwy in North Wales; it dates from about 230,000 years before present in the Lower Palaeolithic period, and from then, there have been skeletal remains found of the Paleolithic Age man in multiple regions of Wales, including South Pembrokeshire and Gower. It is known that Britain was visited over a long period during interglacial periods, perhaps as far back as far as an interstadial period of the Mindel glaciation, some 300,000 years ago, but in the last Glacial Maximum, 26,000-20,000 BP, most of Wales was covered in an ice sheet. Despite this, Wales has been inhabited by modern humans for at least 29,000 years. The Red Lady of Paviland, a human skeleton dyed in red ochre, was discovered in 1823 in one of the Paviland limestone caves of the Gower Peninsula in Swansea, South Wales. Despite the name, the skeleton is that of a young man who lived about 33,000 BP at the end of the Upper Paleolithic Period. Paviland cave lay just to the south of the ice sheet and the sea level was lower, so the cave was inland at the time. It is considered to be the oldest known ceremonial burial in Western Europe. The skeleton was found along with jewellery made from ivory and seashells and a mammoth's skull.Mesolithic and Neolithic
Continuous human habitation dates from the end of the last ice age, between 12,000 and 10,000 years before present, when Mesolithic hunter-gatherers from Central Europe began to migrate to Great Britain. At that time, sea levels were much lower than today. Wales was free of glaciers by about 10,250 BP, the warmer climate allowing the area to become heavily wooded. The post-glacial rise in sea level separated Wales and Ireland, forming the Irish Sea. By 8,000 BP the British Peninsula had become an island. Following the last ice age, Wales became roughly the shape it is today by about 8000 BC and was inhabited by small numbers of Mesolithic hunter-gatherers. These people lived in caves and wood-constructed houses, the latter of which have not stood the test of time. The earliest farming communities are now believed to date from about 4000 BC, marking the beginning of the Neolithic period. This period saw the construction of many chambered tombs, particularly dolmens or cromlechs. The most notable examples of megalithic tombs include Bryn Celli Ddu and Barclodiad y Gawres on Anglesey, Pentre Ifan in Pembrokeshire, and Tinkinswood Burial Chamber in the Vale of Glamorgan. By the beginning of the Neolithic sea levels in the Bristol Channel were still about lower than today. The historian John Davies 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.Neolithic colonists integrated with the indigenous people, gradually changing their lifestyles from a nomadic life of hunting and gathering, to become settled farmers about 6,000 BP – the Neolithic Revolution. They cleared the forests to establish pasture and to cultivate the land, developed new technologies such as ceramics and textile production, and built cromlechs such as Pentre Ifan, Bryn Celli Ddu, and Parc Cwm long cairn between about 5,800 BP and 5,500 BP.
Bronze Age
Metal tools first appeared in Wales about 2500 BC, initially copper followed by bronze. The climate during the Early Bronze Age is thought to have been warmer than at present, as there are many remains from this period in what are now bleak uplands. The Late Bronze Age saw the development of more advanced bronze implements. Much of the copper for the production of bronze probably came from the copper mine on the Great Orme, where prehistoric mining on a very large scale dates largely from the middle Bronze Age. Radiocarbon dating has shown the earliest hillforts in what would become Wales to have been constructed during this period. Historian John Davies theorises that a worsening climate after around 1250 BC required more productive land to be defended.Over the centuries following their initial settlement, the Neolithic population assimilated immigrants and adopted ideas from Bronze Age and Iron Age Celtic cultures. Some historians, such as John T. Koch, consider Wales in the Late Bronze Age as part of a maritime trading-networked culture that included other Celtic nations. This "Atlantic-Celtic" view is opposed by others who hold that the Celtic languages derive their origins from the more easterly Hallstatt culture.
Iron Age
The earliest iron implement found in Wales is a sword from Llyn Fawr which overlooks the head of the Vale of Neath, which is thought to date to about 600 BC. Hillforts continued to be built during the British Iron Age. Nearly 600 hillforts are in Wales, over 20% of those found in Britain, examples being Pen Dinas near Aberystwyth and Tre'r Ceiri on the Llŷn peninsula. A particularly significant find from this period was made in 1943 at Llyn Cerrig Bach on Anglesey when the ground was being prepared for the construction of a Royal Air Force base. The cache included weapons, shields, chariots along with their fittings and harnesses, and slave chains and tools. Many had been deliberately broken and seem to have been votive offerings.A tendency to see the creation of hillforts as evidence of a Celtic invasion that also brought a Celtic language to the Britain has been dealt a blow by recognition that the earliest forts predate the arrival of Iron Age Celtic culture by hundreds of years. The present tendency is to reject the hypothesis of mass invasion in favour of more sporadic migration and a cultural spread of language and ideas, a "culminative Celticity". Then, with the coming of the Celts, there was an agricultural improvement of farming in Britain. This is evident with the then new use of the iron ploughshare, a type of Plough.