East Kent

Kent is a traditional county in South East England with long-established human occupation.

Kent has been occupied since the Lower Palaeolithic as finds from the quarries at Swanscombe attest. The Swanscombe skull, uncovered at Barnfield Pit, a quarry in Swanscombe, is the oldest skull found in Britain. Identified as Homo heidelbergensis it dates to the Hoxnian Interglacial 400,000 years ago.

During the Neolithic the Medway megaliths were built and there is a rich sequence of Bronze Age occupation indicated by finds and features such as the Ringlemere gold cup.

The name Kent probably means 'rim' or 'border' (compare the dictionary words cant in English, Kant in German, etc.), regarding the eastern part of the modern county as a 'border land' or 'coastal district.' Historical linguists believe that the proto-Indo-European root *kanthos could not pass into a Germanic language with its initial K sound intact, so the word must have passed via an intermediate language, either Celtic or Latin. Julius Caesar described it as Cantium, although he did not record the inhabitants' name for themselves, in 51 BC. His writings suggest localised groups of people whose chieftains were flattered by his description of them as 'kings'. Writing of the Britons generally in his Commentarii de Bello Gallico Caesar noted that: "...by far the most civilised are those who inhabit Cantium, the whole of which is a maritime region; and their manners differ little from those of the Gauls". Pottery studies indicate the county east of the River Medway was inhabited by Belgic peoples who were part of an economic and cultural region embracing south east England and the lands across the English Channel.

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