Yiddish is spoken in various countries of the world

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Part 2 
A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE 
UNIT 1. THE ORIGINS OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE 
§ 1. The very beginning of British history 
The first evidence of human life (Homo Sapiens) in Britain dates from about 
15000 BC.
At the end of the Ice Age the British Isles were gradually populated from Europe 
by people called Cro-Magnons. The main occupations of them were hunting and 
gathering. What language they spoke is unknown. 
In about 5000 BC a new group of people moved in from Europe. They 
introduced agriculture and probably spoke an Indo-European language. By 3500 BC, 
farming had largely superseded hunting; people began to build huts of stone and 
wood.
In about 3000 BC the British Isles were largely inhabited by the 
Iberians
, who 
had come from the Iberian Peninsula, located in the extreme southwest of Europe 
(occupied today by Spain, Portugal, Andorra, Gibraltar and a very small area of 
France). The Iberians were skilled riders. Their main weapons were the bow and the 
arrows, falcata, the shield, the helmet and the large spear. Sometimes, women fought 
together with the men. The Iberians built the first roads. They built the burial 
chambers and huge temples (henges). They used stone axes and made antlers or 
bones into leather-working tools. Unfortunately no linguistic evidence is preserved 
about the Iberians either. 
Bronze, made by mixing copper with tin, was in use in Britain from about 2100 
BC; weapons, tools and utensils were made of it.
In the period from 5000 BC to 1000 BC there were built considerable 
monuments, e.g. Newgrange (Ireland), Skara Brae (Scotland), Stonehenge (England). 
Stonehenge 
(located in Wiltshire) is the most famous prehistoric temple in 
Britain. It was built in about 1800 BC. Its purpose, time of erection (1800 BC is only 
an approximate date), and the race that built it will probably never be known with 
certainty. It was possibly used as a giant calculating machine to know the position of 
sunrise and sunset at different times of the year; it may also have been used to 
calculate the position of the stars. Many researchers believe that Stonehenge was 
primarily a place for worship of the sun or was a sepulcher. As to the language 
spoken by the inhabitants of the British Isles at that time, unfortunately, we do not 
have any evidence concerning the linguistic situation of that time either. 
The first identified language in England is that of the Celts, which is the first 
Indo-European tongue known to have been used in the British Isles. The first Celtic-
speakers came in about 1000 BC, probably, initially from the Danube delta. Many 
Celtic tribes settled in Britain in about 500 BC. They spoke languages ancestral to 
Welsh, Scots Gaelic, Cornish, Erse. Some of the tribes, called „Britons‟, inhabited 
most of the territory, and the southern part of the island was named Britain after them 

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(in ancient geography, after the time of Caesar, the name was „Britannia‟; now it is 
the poetic name for Great Britain and for a female personification of Great Britain).
The Celtic tribes spoke various Proto-Celtic languages (also known as Gallo-
Brittonic). Some of these languages are dead today: e.g. 
Gallic
, which was spoken in 
Gaul.
The Celtic languages that originated in Britain and Ireland are known as 
Insular 
Celtic languages
. All surviving Celtic languages are from the Insular Celtic group, 
including Breton, which is spoken now in Continental Europe. The Insular Celtic 
languages of modern times are six in number and are divided into two groups: 
Brittonic
and 
Gaelic
.
The 

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