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 "et" ligature) first, then 5 additional English letters, starting with the Tironian note "ond" (⁊), resulting in a list of 29 symbols: Old English was first written in runes ("futhorc") but shifted to a (minuscule) half-uncial script of the Latin alphabet introduced by Irish Christian missionaries from around the 9th century. The Latin spellings include some conventions associated with the Italian alphabet, such as hard vs. soft "c", "g", and "sc". This was replaced by insular script, a cursive and pointed version of the half-uncial script. This was used until the end of the 12th century when continental Carolingian minuscule