Hi guys,
I'm writing a story for my own fun where 2 of the characters were born 3000 years ago. One lived a fairly sheltered life so he wouldn't have seen much, but the other lived a fairly open life, so would have seen more.
They live in england. But I can't find much about England 3000 years ago. The only thing on google keeps bringing up Endinburgh castle.
Is 3000 years ago technically middle ages or something else?
That would be the first millebium BC. Ancient history, pre roman times, pre middle ages. You would be looking at Celtic culture and the pre-roman iron age.
European Middle Ages is usually okay as 500-1500 AD (advancing date). Three thousand years ago is 985 BC (backwards counting). In Britain, that's prehistory: late Bronze Age, late Urnfield culture. They're often called proto-Celtic, which really means they're whoever was there before we definitely know the Celts arrived. They could have been an earlier wave of Celts.
These Urnfield people did marvelous work in thin gold sheets, notably the Mold Cape and the four "golden hats," yard-high cones that may have been a pre-literate way of recording calendrical information. Maybe they were worn on someone's head and maybe they sat on a post.
They get their name from their habit of cremating the dead, putting the remains in urns, and burying them in a mass area, rather than separating families or individuals. In short, they had a village or town graveyard.
They often had hill forts, and are responsible for some lake towns, built on pilings. They had farms and domestic animals. They used bronze bits on their horses, and drove them on four-wheeled wagons. In your late period, they had 2-wheeled chariots.
Sources:
Michael Parker Pearson, Bronze Age Britain
Stuart Piggott, Wagon, Chariot, and Carriage
Martin Brice, Forts and Fortresses: From the Hillforts of Prehistory to Modern Times
I think it's important to note that Edinburgh castle did not exist in 1000 BCE, and in fact no buildings that we would refer to as castles existed in this time period.
Also, Edinburgh is not in England, but in Scotland. These are separate countries that make up 2/4 parts of the United Kingdom
You won't find many written records from Britain dating to 3000 years ago. As far as we know, the inhabitants at that time had not adopted any form of writing. We're not even sure as to whether or not the Celts, or any Indo-Europeans had yet entered Britain. Everything we know from this period comes from what archaeologists can tell us. This era was certainly a far cry from the Middle Ages, however. If that's what you're going for, I suggest you go with 1000AD as opposed to 1000BC. 1000BC was the around the dawn of the Iron Age in Europe (although the use of Iron may have been adopted later in Britain, I'm not an expert on the area).
Edit: See Zither13 below. Post fixed.