History of Kent

Kent is a traditional county in South East England with long-established human occupation.

The discovery of stone tools at the Lower Palaeolithic site of Chequer's Wood and Old Park, near Canterbury, provides the earliest evidence of human occupation in Kent, as early as 712,000–621,000 years ago. The early human species who made these tools was likely Homo antecessor or Homo heidelbergensis. This is the earliest securely dated site with Acheulean stone tools in northern Europe. The Old Park site is also important for retaining evidence of very early Neanderthal populations visiting Britain during the Anglian Glaciation, the most severe glaciation of the last two million years. Although they likely visited during the brief, warmer interstadial periods within this broader ice age period.

The Swanscombe skull, uncovered at Barnfield Pit, a quarry in Swanscombe, is the oldest human skull found in Britain. It is difficult to say much about the three fragments of skull from one individual, as they are all from the rear of the skull, but Chris Stringer suggests that they come from a female, some of whose characteristics suggest she is from a population ancestral to Neanderthals. It dates to the Hoxnian Interglacial, a warming period 400,000 years ago.

In June 2023 researchers from UCL Archaeology Southeast over 800 stone tools, including two giant handles dating to over 300,000 years ago, were discovered on a hillside near Medway Valley in Frindsbury near Strood. At the time the area was a wild landscape of forests and river valleys with animals including red deer, straight-tusked elephants, lions and horses.

During the Neolithic the Medway megaliths were built and there is a rich sequence of Bronze Age occupation indicated by finds and features such as the Ringlemere gold cup.

The name Kent probably means 'rim' or 'border' (compare the dictionary words cant in English, Kant in German, etc.), regarding the eastern part of the modern county as a 'border land' or 'coastal district.' Historical linguists believe that the proto-Indo-European root *kanthos could not pass into a Germanic language with its initial K sound intact, so the word must have passed via an intermediate language, either Celtic or Latin. Julius Caesar described it as Cantium, although he did not record the inhabitants' name for themselves, in 51 BC. His writings suggest localised groups of people whose chieftains were flattered by his description of them as 'kings'. Writing of the Britons generally in his Commentarii de Bello Gallico Caesar noted that: "...by far the most civilised are those who inhabit Cantium, the whole of which is a maritime region; and their manners differ little from those of the Gauls". Pottery studies indicate the county east of the River Medway was inhabited by Belgic peoples who were part of an economic and cultural region embracing south east England and the lands across the English Channel.

The extreme west of the modern county was occupied by other Celtic Iron Age tribes; the Regni and possibly another ethnic group occupying The Weald known today as the Wealden People. During the late pre-Roman Iron Age the names of a few British kings are known, such as Dumnovellaunus and Adminius. An Iron Age settlement seems to have formed the basis for the later town of Folkestone, whilst a hillfort of that date seems to be the forerunner of Dover Castle.

Although now two miles from the sea amid the marshes of east Kent, Richborough Roman fort was arguably the Romans' main entry point when they invaded Britain in circa AD 43. They established a bridgehead and commemorated their success by building a triumphal arch whose cross shaped foundations still survive at the site which is now looked after by English Heritage.