At around 5,000BC, a new group of people arrived in Britain. The technology of farming had been developed in the fertile crescent, at around 12,000BC, down in the bottom of modern Turkey. It took many thousands of years for the methods to creep out of the middle east, and across europe. The first farmers would have set off across the channel in log boats, carrying with them domestic cattle, pigs, and most importantly, early forms of wheat. They arrived into the midst of a mesolithic culture, seizing land, chopping trees down, building large houses, and ploughing the land. Here in Britain we shifted from a hunter gatherer society, to farming. Once the population were stationary, many crafts developed. We see the development of vegetable fibre, with the use of flax (Linum usitatissimum), hemp (Cannabis sativa), and nettle (Urtica dioica), along side clothes of skins and furs. The physical work involved of woodland management and farming may have resulted in more robust clothing being needed.

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