History of England

The earliest attested reference to the Angles occurs in the 1st-century work by Tacitus, Germania, in which the Latin word Anglii is used.[20] The etymology of the tribal name itself is disputed by scholars; it has been suggested that it derives from the shape of the Angeln peninsula, an angular shape.[21] How and why a term derived from the name of a tribe that was less significant than others, such as the Saxons, came to be used for the entire country and its people is not known, but it seems this is related to the custom of calling the Germanic people in Britain Angli Saxones or English Saxons

to distinguish them from continental Saxons (Eald-Seaxe) of Old Saxony between the Weser and Eider rivers in Northern Germany.[22] In Scottish Gaelic, another language which developed on the island of Great Britain, the Saxon tribe gave their name to t

he word for England (Sasunn);[23] similarly, the Welsh name for the English language is “Saesneg”. A romantic name for England is Loegria, related to the Welsh word for England, Lloegr, and made popular by its use in Arthurian legend. Albion is also applied to England in a more poetic capacity,[24] though its original meaning is the island of Britain as a whole.

History
Main article: History of England
Prehistory and antiquity
Main article: Prehistoric Britain
Sun shining through row of upright standing stones with other stones horizontally on the top.
Stonehenge, a Neolithic monument

View of the ramparts of the developed hillfort of Maiden Castle, Dorset, as they look today
The earliest known evidence of human presence in the area now known as England was that of Homo antecessor, dating to approximately 780,000 years ago. The oldest proto-human bones discovered in England date from 500,000 years ago.[25] Modern humans are known to have inhabited the area during the Upper Paleolithic period, though permanent s