Like other nations, Scots are descendants of every race who ever settled upon our shores. Our earliest immigrants, primitive hunters, most likely came over from Europe about eight thousand years ago, shortly after the ice from the last Ice Age finally melted. We don't know much about these ancient ones, but their island would be invaded some five thousand years later by a people known as the Celts. Hailing from parts of northwestern Europe, these conquerors referred to themselves as "Pretani," which was later misconstrued by future Celtic settlers as "Britoni."

Britons soon found themselves invaded by the Romans, the masters of Europe and the Mediterranean world who never met a land they didn't seek to conquer. The Romans quickly subdued the Celtic tribes of the south, then gradually worked their way north toward the future nation of Scotland. Unfortunately for the Romans, the farther they distanced themselves from their southern ports, the more difficult it was to maintain their supply lines.

The northern region also involved another challenge: the Highlanders.

To the Roman conquerors, these mountain barbarians were known as the Picts, a name derived from the Latin word, Pictii, meaning painted, perhaps referring to the tribes' body tattoos, or their written records, left in the form of pictures carved on great vertical stones. To this day, we're not sure where they came from, what language they spoke, or what they even called themselves, but one thing is clear, these Highland warriors refused to succumb to the rule of Rome, or of any other invader. Like relentless vermin, the Picts never ceased attacking the Romans, and by A.D. 409, the Romans had finally had enough, abandoning Britannia, leaving as legacy their lifestyle and the Christian religion.

It was about this time that a Gaelic-speaking tribe invaded Britain and settled along Scotland's southwest coast, establishing the kingdom of Dalriada. These were the Scots and they came from Scotia, the northeastern region of Ireland, then called Hibernia. By the seventh century, they had succeeded in moving their frontier a half day's march south of Inverness, the Pictish capital, before eventually being pushed back again toward Dalriada.

By A.D. 834, the Picts found their armies occupied to the north by the invading Vikings, to the south by the Angles, and to the west by the Scots. Seriously weakened by the Viking raids, Drust IX, the new Pict king, accepted an invitation by Kenneth MacAlpin, a Scot from the Gabhran clan, to settle the issue of Dalriada. Arriving in Scone, Drust and his nobles were plied with alcohol and became quite drunk. The Scots then pulled the bolts from the Picts' benches, trapping the king and his nobles in earthen hollows, where they impaled them on sharp blades and killed them.