Oldest town in Britain with the River Avon acting as a transit route. Evidence of frogs' legs being eaten as well as 31,000 flints and animal bones have also been found. Colchester claims to be Britain's oldest "recorded" town. Its claim is based on a reference by Pliny the Elder, the Roman writer, in his "Natural History" ("Historia Naturalis") in 77 AD. He described Anglesey as "about from Camulodunum, a town in Britain", where Camulodunum was the Roman name for Colchester. It is claimed that this is the first known reference to any named settlement in Britain, although coins minted by Tasciovanus mention the
Old English Latin alphabet (also known as "Caroline") replaced the insular. The letter ðæt (called "eth" or "edh" in modern English) was an alteration of Latin , and the runic letters thorn and wynn are borrowings from futhorc. Also used was a symbol for the conjunction "and", a character similar to the number seven (, called a Tironian et or "ond"), and a symbol for the relative pronoun "þæt", a thorn with a crossbar through the ascender (). Macrons over vowels were rarely used to indicate long vowels. Also used occasionally were abbreviations for following "m"s or "n"s. A number of changes are traditionally