500,000-8500 BC Palaeolithic

Eastern England is a rich area for Palaeolithic sites. The bedrock over large parts of the region is chalk, which provided abundant quantities of flint for making tools. The lack of caves and rock-shelters means that evidence of human activity is mainly found in gravels or silts laid down by rivers.

All of eastern England was covered by ice during the most severe of the Ice Ages, called the Anglian Glaciation, about 450,000 years ago. When the ice retreated it left a thick covering of boulder clay over the region. Some sites are preserved in river sediments beneath this clay and are among the earliest in northern Europe, dating to 500,000 or possibly even 700,000 years ago.

Many sites have been found above the boulder clay and date to the warm period after the Anglian Glaciation, about 400,000 years ago. Excavations at Barnham and Elveden in Suffolk have shown where people made handaxes on the banks of an ancient river. Bones, shells and pollen from the sites show that the climate was slightly warmer than today in a wooded landscape inhabited by elephant, rhinoceros and lion.

Evidence of Neanderthals has been found at Lynford in Norfolk, where handaxes have been found with the remains of mammoth. The site dates to about 60,000 years ago.