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The British Isles (Irish: variously Na hOileáin Bhriotanacha, Oileáin Iarthair Eorpa, Éire agus an Bhreatain Mhór;[1] Manx: Ellanyn Goaldagh; Scottish Gaelic: Eileanan Breatannach; Welsh: Ynysoedd Prydain) are a group of over 6,000 islands off the northwest coast of Europe, covering an area of 315,134 km² (121,673 sq miles).[2] The term British Isles is controversial in relation to Ireland.
The British Isles is surrounded by water on all sides. To the west there is the Atlantic Ocean, to the north of Shetland is the Norwegian Sea, to the east is the North Sea, and to the south is the Celtic Sea and the English Channel.
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[edit] Sovereign states and constituent countries
There are two sovereign states located on the islands: the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and Ireland.[3]
The group also includes the Crown dependency of the Isle of Man.
The Channel Islands are not part of the British Isles archipelago, but were often included historically.[4]
[edit] Historical uses of the term
[edit] Geography
- Also, see the section on the geography of the Channel Islands.
There are more than 6,000 islands in the group, the largest two being Great Britain and Ireland.
Great Britain is to the east and covers 216,777 km² (83,698 square miles), over half of the total landmass of the group.
Ireland is to the west and covers 84,406 km² (32,589 square miles).
The largest of the other islands are to be found in the Hebrides, Orkney and Shetland to the north, Anglesey and the Isle of Man between Great Britain and Ireland.
See also:
- Great Britain and Ireland
- List of islands of England
- List of islands of Ireland
- List of islands of Isle of Man
- List of islands of Scotland
- List of islands of Wales
The islands are at relatively low altitudes, with central Ireland and southern Great Britain particularly low lying: the lowest point in the islands is the Fens at −4 m (−13 ft). The Scottish Highlands in the northern part of Great Britain are mountainous, with Ben Nevis being the highest point in the British Isles at 1,344 m (4,409 ft). Other mountainous areas include Wales and parts of the island of Ireland, but only seven peaks in these areas reach above 1,000 m (3,281 ft). Lakes on the islands are generally not large, although Lough Neagh in Northern Ireland is an exception, covering 381 km² (147 square miles); the largest freshwater body in Great Britain is Loch Lomond at 71.1 km² (27.5 square miles). Neither are rivers particularly long, the rivers Severn at 354 km (219 miles) and Shannon at 386 km (240 miles) being the longest.
[edit] Climate
The British Isles have a temperate marine climate, the North Atlantic Drift ("Gulf Stream") which flows from the Gulf of Mexico brings with it significant moisture and raises temperatures 11 °C (20 °F) above the global average for the islands' latitudes.[5] Winters are thus warm and wet, with summers mild and also wet. Most Atlantic depressions pass to the north of the islands, combined with the general westerly circulation and interactions with the landmass, this imposes an east-west variation in climate.[6]
[edit] Geology
The British Isles lie at the juncture of several regions with past episodes of tectonic mountain building. These orogenic belts form a complex geology which records a huge and varied span of earth history.[7] Of particular note was the Caledonian Orogeny during the Ordovician Period, ca. 488–444 Ma and early Silurian period, when the craton Baltica collided with the terrane Avalonia to form the mountains and hills in northern Britain and Ireland. Baltica formed roughly the north western half of Ireland and Scotland. Further collisions caused the Variscan orogeny in the Devonian and Carboniferous periods, forming the hills of Munster, south-west England, and south Wales. Over the last 500 million years the land which forms the islands has drifted northwest from around 30°S, crossing the equator around 370 million years ago to reach its present northern latitude.[8]
The islands have been shaped by numerous glaciations during the Quaternary Period, the most recent being the Devensian. As this ended, the central Irish Sea was de-glaciated (whether or not there was a land bridge between Great Britain and Ireland at this time is somewhat disputed, though there was certainly a single ice sheet covering the entire sea) and the English Channel flooded, with sea levels rising to current levels some 4,000 to 5,000 years ago, leaving the British Isles in their current form.
The islands' geology is highly complex, though there are large amounts of limestone and chalk rocks which formed in the Permian and Triassic periods. The west coasts of Ireland and northern Great Britain that directly face the Atlantic Ocean are generally characterized by long peninsulas, and headlands and bays; the internal and eastern coasts are "smoother".
[edit] Demographics
The demographics of the British Isles show dense population in England, which accounts for almost 80% of the total population of the region. In Ireland, Northern Ireland. Scotland, Wales dense populations are limited to areas around, or close to, their respective capitals. Major populations centres (greater than one million people) exist in the following areas:
- Greater London Urban Area (8.5 million)
- London metropolitan area (12—14 million)
- West Midlands conurbation (2.3 million)
- Greater Manchester Urban Area (2.2 million)
- West Yorkshire Urban Area (2.1 million)
- Greater Glasgow (1.7 million)
- Greater Dublin Area (1.6 million)
- Tyne and Wear (1.1 million)
[edit] History
The British Isles have a long and complex shared history. While this tends to be presented in terms of national narratives, many events transcended modern political boundaries. In particular these borders have little relevance to early times and in that context can be misleading, though useful as an indication of location to the modern reader. Also, cultural shifts which historians have previously interpreted as evidence of invaders eliminating or displacing the previous populations are now, in the light of genetic evidence, perceived by a number of archaeologists and historians as being to a considerable extent changes in the culture of the existing population brought by groups of immigrants or invaders who at times became a new ruling élite.
[edit] Prehistory
At a time when the islands were still joined to continental Europe, Homo erectus brought Palaeolithic tool use to the south east of the modern British Isles some 750,000 years ago followed (about 500,000 years ago) by the more advanced tool use of Homo heidelbergensis found at Boxgrove. It appears that the glaciation of ice ages successively cleared all human life from the area, though human occupation occurred during warmer interglacial periods. Modern humans appear with the Aurignacian culture about 30,000 years ago, famously with the "Red Lady of Paviland" in modern Wales. The last ice age ended around 10,000 years ago, and Mesolithic hunter-gatherers spread to all parts of the islands by around 8,000 years ago, at a time when rising sea levels now cut off the islands from the continent. The immigrants came principally from the ice age refuge in what is now the Basque Country, with a smaller immigration from refuges in the modern Ukraine and Moldavia. Three quarters of the ancestors of people of the British Isles may have arrived in this wave of immigration.[9]
Around 6,500 years ago farming practices spread to the area with the Neolithic Revolution and the western seaways quickly brought megalithic culture throughout the islands. The earliest stone house still standing in northern Europe is at Knap of Howar, in Orkney which also features such monuments as Maes Howe ranking alongside the Callanish stone circle on the Isle of Lewis, Newgrange in Ireland, and Stonehenge in southern England along with thousands of lesser monuments across the isles, often showing affinities with megalithic monuments in France and Spain.[10] Further cultural shifts in the Bronze Age were followed with the building of numerous hill forts in the Iron Age, and increased trade with continental Europe.
[edit] Languages
A combined Venn diagram showing language branches, major languages and typically where they are spoken for modern languages in the British Isles.
The ethno-linguistic heritage of the British Isles is very rich in comparison to other areas of similar size, with twelve languages from six groups across four branches of the Indo-European family. The Insular Celtic languages of the Goidelic sub-group (Irish, Manx, Scottish Gaelic) and the Brythonic sub-group (Cornish, Welsh and Breton, spoken in north-western France) are the only remaining Celtic languages - their continental relations becoming extinct during the 4th, 5th and 6th centuries. The Norman languages of Guernésiais, Jèrriais and Sarkese are spoken in the Channel Islands, as is French. A cant, called Shelta, is a language spoken by Irish Travellers, often as a means to conceal meaning from those outside the group. However, English, sometimes in the form of Scots, is the dominant language, with few monoglots remaining in the other languages of the region. The Norn language appears to have become extinct in the 18th/19th century.
[edit] Footnotes
- ^ Na hOileáin Bhriotanacha from CollinsHapper Pocket Irish Dictionary (ISBN 0-00-470765-6). Oileáin Iarthair Eorpa meaning Islands of Western Europe from Patrick S. Dineen, Foclóir Gaeilge Béarla, Irish-English Dictionary, Dublin, 1927. Éire agus an Bhreatain Mhór, meaning Ireland and Great Britain (from focail.ie, "The British Isles", Foras na Gaeilge, 2006)
- ^ "British Isles," Encyclopædia Britannica
- ^ Article 4, Bunreacht na hÉireann. Section 2, Republic of Ireland Act, 1948.
- ^ Collier's Encyclopedia, 1997 Edition
- ^ Mayes, Julian; Dennis Wheeler (1997). Regional Climates of the British Isles. London: Routledge, p. 13.
- ^ Ibid., pp. 13–14.
- ^ Goudie, Andrew S.; D. Brunsden (1994). The Environment of the British Isles, an Atlas. Oxford: Clarendon Press, p. 2.
- ^ Ibid., p. 5.
- ^ Stephen Oppenheimer, Myths of British Ancestry, Prospect, Issue 127, p.50 (Oct. 2006)
- ^ British Archaeology Magazine - People of the Sea article by Barry Cunliffe
[edit] References
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- An interactive geological map of the British Isles.
- Geograph British Isles — Creative Commons-licensed, geo-located photographs of the British Isles.
- Britannicarum Insularum Typus, Ortelius 1624
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