During the Palaeolithic period (780,000-10,500 BP) the landscapes of Wales were shaped by numerous glaciations ad associated changes in sea level including three major glaciations - the Anglian (470,00BP-423,000BP), the Woolstonian (380,000BP-130,000BP) and the Devensian (100,000BP-13,000BP). During each of these glacial phases, the Study Area would have been covered by ice, prohibiting any kind of human activity. However, during the interglacial phases temperate climates would have, at times, corresponded to low sea levels where the whole of Liverpool bay would have been dryland and habitable. Through each glacial cycle of cooling and warming, the land would have been remodelled by the erosion caused by glaciers scouring away the land surfaces and depositing that material elsewhere; glacial outwash forming rivers and lakes; and topographical change caused by the effect of the weight of the ice sheet upon the landmass. There are only a few periods - 125,000 years ago, 200-330 years ago, and briefly 330,000 years ago and again at 400,000 years ago - when the British Isles were cut off from the continent. Specialists now believe that there at least eight different waves of early humans who came, died out or retreated, before the last wave (fully modern man) which continues today.

The earliest evidence from Wales for one of these waves of occupation is Pontnewydd Cave, Denbighshire, where early Neanderthal remains have been recovered dating to 225,000BP. The bones and artefacts were found accompanied by bones from bear and horses which showed butchery marks, and also the bones from rhinoceros, wolf, leopard and bison. Middle Paleolithic remains have been found at Coygan Cave, Carmarthenshire (50,000BP), and represent a wave of classic Neanderthal occupation. The cave was primarily a hyena den and included an assemblage of carnivore and herbivore bones: mammoth, woolly rhinoceros, horse and spotted hyena. The species being typical of abundant arid grassland teeming with game. Pavilland Cave on the Gower Peninsula associated with the `Red Lady', provides evidence for a wave of modern humans later re-occupied in the Early Upper Palaeolithic. Bone protein analysis indicates that the "lady" lived on a diet that consisted of between 15% and 20% fish, which, together with the distance from the sea, suggests that the people may have been semi-nomadic.
After the retreat of the Devensian ice sheets, during the Late Upper Palaeolithic, there is evidence for occupation near the current North Wales coast from cave sites such as Kendrick's Cave, Ogof Tan-y-Brun and Cefn . Though sea levels were beginning to rise as a result of the post-glacial melting of the ice sheets, the Bristol channel was a relatively flat valley with channels and a series of depressions suggesting the courses of rivers were flowing into at least two large lakes.

Attempting to piece together a living landscape from small elements of original topography, a very few finds, and trends observed from terrestrial sites remains difficult. Especially when recognizing that the actual population of whole of the British Isles at any one time during the Palaeolithic may only have a few hundred or at most a few thousand individuals. However, the types of site that have identified from these very early periods on land include hunting positions from which hunters observed game and which might be evidenced by a few flint scatters; kill sites where an animal was caught and dismembered where a bone may display butchery marks or an arrow head be found in close association; short term extractive sites resulting from the harvesting of foodstuffs from the foreshore; meal time camps/foraging camps, where a small number of artefacts might be found along with evidence of a hearth; field camps in proximity to a particular type of resource; and residential camps forming the hubs of subsistence, processing and manufacture presuming residence for several months of the year. Evidence for Early, Middle and Upper Palaeolithic populations may survive in small pockets of sediment surviving in situ from those periods or, in the case of hardy stone implements, within deposits that have been reworked by natural forces. Evidence from the Late Upper Palaeolithic period may survive in topographical areas where erosion during the most recent marine transgression has been minimised.

Sources include:
Bell, M, 2007, Prehistoric Coastal Communities: The Mesolithic in Western Britain, CBA Research Report 149
Cummings, V. and Fowler, C., 2004 The Neolithic of the Irish Sea: Materiality and Traditions of Practice, Oxbow Books
DAT/RCAHMW/University of Birmingham, 2011, The Lost lands of our Ancestors
Fleming, N. C., (ed), 2004, Submarine prehistoric archaeology of the North Sea, CBA Research Report 141
Lynch, F., Alderhouse-Green, S. and Davis, J. L, 2000, Prehistoric Wales, Sutton House Publishing Ltd
Shennan, I., Lambeck, k., Flather, R. , Horston, B., McCarthur, J. Innes, J. Lloyds, J. Rutherford, M, and Wingfield, R. 2000 Modelling western North Sea palaeogeographics and tidal changes during the Holocene pg299-219 in Sheenan , I. and Andrews, J. (eds) Holocene Land-Ocean Interactions and Environmental Change around the North Sea, Geological Society, London.

WWW resources:
http://www.cambria.org.uk/lostlandscapes/index.html

Maritime Officer, RCAHMW, May 2011