Terry Deary - Scotland

Your teacher wont know this, but a Scotsman invented prehistoric monsters! No, he wasnt God. He was the Scottish archaeologist Daniel Wilson who invented the word prehistoric to mean a time before written history. If it wasnt for Dan wed still be saying things like monsters-from-the-time-before-written-history.

Early historic Scotland followed prehistoric Scotland, surprisingly enough. Its called the Dark Ages because we dont know a lot about it were in the dark, in fact. Thats a pity, because it must have been an exciting place to live and an easy place to die.

Timeline Dark Age deeds

AD 80 The Roman governor of Britain, Julius Agricola, invades Scotland he calls the place Caledonia and goes on to massacre up to 10,000 Caledonians.

Emperor Hadrian orders a wall to be built from the Tyne to the Solway to keep the Picts out of Roman England.

Romans build another wall, made of turf and timber, further north from the Firth to the Clyde but its a struggle to keep the Picts out (or in ). This is known as the Antonine Wall.

The Romans finally give up trying to conquer the Picts and go back to having Hadrians Wall as their border.

Picts, Scots and Saxons attack Roman London. Maybe they wanted to play a football international?

The Romans leave and the Scots tribes (from Ireland) move in to south-west Pictland and found the kingdom of Dalriada.

St Columba, from Ireland, starts converting the Picts and Scots to the Christian religion. He sets up a monastery on Iona.

St Donan, a missionary, is killed along with 52 followers on the island of Eigg in a row with Pict warriors about some sheep.

Ecgfrith of Northumbria massacres a Pict army and a lot of its leaders. But hell pay for it.

Ecgfrith tries to invade Pictland to teach the Pict raiders a lesson. Picts massacre him and his army at Nechtan Pass. Some lesson.

The king of the Picts defeats the Scots but

Vikings arrive and mince monks on Iona.

The Scot king, Kenneth MacAlpine, fights the Vikings and takes back the Scot lands plus the Pict lands. He is now king of the Kingdom of Alban.

1018 In the battle of Carham the northern English are defeated and the winner, King Malcolm II, becomes king of a land known as Scotland.

Painted people

In 1603 James VI of Scotland wanted to prove that he was the rightful king. He said that his family could be traced all the way back to Noah and the flood when the animals went in two by two. (If you believe this then your brain cell will not go anywhere two by two because you probably only have one.)

The truth is that the Picts probably arrived in Scotland about 500 BC. They may have been Celtic tribes, like the Welsh and the Irish. The land was probably empty apart from a few prehistoric cave people around the coasts. (Those prehistoric Scots are often called the beaker people because their bodies have been found buried with beakers, not because they had beaks.)