Catalans

The age of our earthly planet is said to be about 4.5 billion years.

The first recognizable tool-using human-like species on earth has been 
named (in Latin of course by scholars) homo habilis (HH) that’s handy 
man in plain English. HH has been tracked back to about 2 million years 
ago.

Ice ages have come and gone a few times during that period. The most 
recent being   about 125,000 years ago when an ice age began ending and 
the climate became much as it is today until about 100,000 years ago 
when the next ice age began. That  lasted until about 20,000 years ago 
when the present climate gradually took over and by 10,000 ago was much 
as it is today,  HH had to adjust a few times and so will we. later, 
when some good evidence was found in Germany the HH remains were called 
Neanderthals after that location so we will call them by that name, For 
us  it’s continuing to warm and by about 2100 there will be no ice 
anywhere and sea level will be about 40-50  feet higher.

The so-called English Channel separating the United Kingdom from Europe 
is said to have formed about 45,000 years ago so the Neanderthals had a 
very long time hunting and gathering over all Europe including it.

As their tool making improved over time, so did their hunting skills, 
for example digging pits then driving large animals so they fell in then 
butchering them where they could not escape the spears. Wolves would 
learn to keep close to humans for easy meat leavings, so gradually some 
became tame, as dogs or hounds. The gatherers had lots of seeds so in 
time some birds stayed close for seeds hence became poultry. But 
basically the Neandertals remained hunter-gatherers with some propensity 
for crop growing occasionally.

It’s said that very recently, as recently as the last 10,000 years or 
so, there came a spreading westward  from the near east across the 
Bosphorus a different breed of humans who lived by growing crops, 
principally starting with their having developed grass seed into emmer 
wheat. Wheat can sustain life without a need to hunt, and the young of 
slaughtered wild animals were gradually domesticated. Then they became 
sheep, goats, cows, and could be milked or slaughtered for food without 
hunting.

These farmers did not want hunters trashing their crops when hunting and 
so gradually drove the hunters westward before them. Over a long period 
of time the Neanderthals, those who did not setttle down with a farming 
female, were gradually pushed further and further westward until there 
was no further to go as they faced the Atlantic ocean. They became in 
due course deep sea fishermen. We know that because they left cod bones 
and cod are deep sea fish. So the progeny of the Neanderthals are now 
pushed next to the Atlantic. They are  the Catalans in Spain, Normans in 
Normandie in France, Welsh in Wales, the Irish in Ireland, and the 
Scots in Scotland in the British Isles.