The territory that now constitutes England, a country within the United Kingdom,

was inhabited by ancient humans more than 800,000 years ago as the discovery of
flint tools and footprints at Happisburgh in Norfolk has revealed.[1] The earli
est evidence for early modern humans in North West Europe is a jawbone discovere
d in Devon at Kents Cavern in 1927, which was re-dated in 2011 to between 41,000
and 44,000 years old.[2] Continuous human habitation dates to around 12,000 yea
rs ago, at the end of the last glacial period. The region has numerous remains f
rom the Mesolithic, Neolithic, and Bronze Age, such as Stonehenge and Avebury. I
n the Iron Age, England, like all of Britain south of the Firth of Forth, was in
habited by the Celtic people known as the Britons, but also by some Belgae tribe
s (e.g. the Atrebates, the Catuvellauni, the Trinovantes, etc.) in the south eas
t. In AD 43 the Roman conquest of Britain began; the Romans maintained control o
f their province of Britannia through to the 5th century.
The end of Roman rule in Britain enabled the Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain,
which is often regarded as the origin of England and the English people. The Ang
lo-Saxons, a collection of various Germanic peoples, established several kingdom
s that became the primary powers in what is now England and parts of southern Sc
otland.[3] They introduced the Old English language, which displaced the previou
s British language. The Anglo-Saxons warred with British successor states in Wal
es, Cornwall, and the Hen Ogledd (Old North; the Brythonic-speaking parts of nor
thern England and southern Scotland), as well as with each other. Raids by the V
ikings were frequent after about AD 800, and the Norsemen took control of large
parts of what is now England. During this period several rulers attempted to uni
te the various Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, an effort that led to the emergence of the
Kingdom of England by the 10th century.
In 1066, the Normans invaded and conquered England. The Norman Dynasty establish
ed by William the Conquerer ruled England for over half a century before the per
iod of succession crisis known as The Anarchy. Following the Anarchy, England ca
me to be ruled by the House of Plantagenet, a dynasty which also had claims to t
he Kingdom of France; a succession crisis in France led to the Hundred Years War
s, a series of conflicts involving the peoples and leaders of both nations. Foll
owing the Hundred Years Wars, England became embroiled in its own succession war
s; the War of the Roses pitted two branches of the House of Plantagenet against
one another, the House of York and the House of Lancaster. Henry Tudor ended the
War of the Roses and established the Tudor dynasty.
Under the Tudors and later Stuart dynasty, England became a world colonial power
. During the rule of the Stuarts, England fought the English Civil War, which re
sulted in the execution of King Charles I and the establishment of a series of r
epublican governments, first a Parliamentary republic known as the Commonwealth
of England, then as a military dictatorship under Oliver Cromwell known as The P
rotectorate. The Stuarts were restored to the throne in 1660, though continued q
uestions over religion resulted in the deposition of another Stuart king, James
II, in the Glorious Revolution. England, which had conquered Wales in the 13th c
entury, was united with Scotland in the early 18th century to form a new soverei
gn state called Great Britain.[4][5][6] Following the Industrial Revolution, Gre
at Britain ruled a worldwide Empire, the largest in recorded history. Following
a process of decolonisation in the 20th century the vast majority of the empire
became independent; however, its cultural impact is widespread and deep in many
countries of the present day.