The Isle of Man is one of the six
Celtic nations, and has been under
Norse, Scottish, English control and self-governing for much of the past thousand years. The earliest traces of people in the Isle of Man date to around 8000 BC, during the
Mesolithic Period, also known as the Middle Stone Age. Small,
nomadic family groups lived in campsites, hunting wild game, fishing the rivers and coastal waters and gathering plant foods. The Neolithic period was marked by important economic and social changes. By 4000 BC, people once reliant upon the uncultivated natural resources of the land and sea had adopted cereal growing and stock rearing, using imported species of grain and animals. Large-scale clearance of natural woodland provided fields for crops and animal fodder. During the
Iron Age, Celtic influence began to arrive on the island. Based on inscriptions, the inhabitants appear to have used a
Brythonic language; however, at some point, possibly c. 700 AD, it is assumed that Irish invasion or immigration formed the basis of a new culture, and the Manx came to speak Gaelic. This language has developed in isolation since, though it remains closely related to
Irish, and
Scottish Gaelic. At the end of the 8th century,
Viking settlers began to arrive and establish settlements, eventually coming to dominate the island. The Norse
Kingdom of Mann and the Isles was created by
Godred Crovan in 1079. The
Norse had a major effect on the island, leaving behind Norse placenames, and influencing its distinctive political system,
Tynwald (from
Old Norse,
Þingvóllr), which is one of the oldest parliamentary democracies in the world. In 1266, under the
Treaty of Perth, Norway's King
Magnus VI ceded the isles to
Scotland. For more than a century the Isle of Man, during the Anglo-Scottish wars, passed between Scotland and England. During this troubled period, the Island was captured by the Scottish army of Robert the Bruce in 1313. Later in the 14th century, when England once more seized the Island, the Lordship – indeed kingship – was given to the Montacute family, Earls of Salisbury. In 1405, the Lordship was granted to Sir John Stanley, whose descendants (later the
Earls of Derby) ruled the Isle of Man for over 300 years. The lordship passed through a female line to the
Dukes of Atholl in 1736 and was eventually
purchased by the British Crown in 1765. Since 1866, when the Isle of Man obtained a measure of
home rule, the Manx people have developed into a modern nation with an economy based decreasingly on agriculture and fishing and increasingly first on tourism and then on financial and other services. The 20th century saw a revival of interest in Manx music and dance, and in the
Manx language, though the last native (first language) speaker of Manx
Ned Maddrell died in the 1970s. In the middle of the 20th century, the
Taoiseach Éamon de Valera visited and was so distressed at the lack of support for Manx that he immediately had two recording vans sent over to record the language before it disappeared completely. The economic changes gave a short-lived impetus to Manx nationalism in the 1970s and 1980s, spawning
Mec Vannin, a nationalist group, as well as the now-defunct
Manx National Party and ("Underground"), which mounted a direct-action campaign of spray-painting and house-burning. Nationalist politics has since declined and a number of its former proponents are now in mainstream politics. The 1990s and early 21st century have seen a greater recognition of indigenous Manx culture, such as the first Manx-medium primary school, though Manx culture still remains on the margins of popular culture for the majority of Manx residents. ==Chronicles of Mann and English possession==