UK's oldest town Amesbury dates back more than 10 millennia

UK's oldest town has finally been confirmed to be Amesbury, some 40 miles from Stonehenge.

Archaeologists at the University of Buckingham believe that it is the oldest settlement in Britain, and not the previously thought Thatcham, the Daily Express reported.

Researchers said that the new findings dismiss previous theories that the Wiltshire town was conceived by European immigrants - instead, relics uncovered during a painstaking search point to British settlers being behind the settlement, which dates back to more than 10 millennia.

David Jacques, research fellow in archaeology at the University of Buckingham, who led the dig, said that the site blows the lid off the Neolithic Revolution (deemed the first agricultural revolution in Middle Eastern history) in a number of ways.

Carbon dating from an archaeological dig by the university shows that the parish of Amesbury has been continually occupied for every millennia since 8,820BC.

The origins of Amesbury have been discovered as a result of carbon dating bones of aurochs - twice the size of bulls, wild boar and red deer - following a dig at Vespasian's Camp, Blick Mead, a mile-and-a-half from Stonehenge.

It dates the activities of the people who were responsible for building the first monuments at Stonehenge, made of massive pine posts, and show their communities continuing to work and live in the area for a further 3,000 years, close to the dawn of the Neolithic when Stonehenge was first built.

Archaeologists say the results provide the the missing link between the erection of the posts between 8,820 and 6,590BC, and of Stonehenge in 3,000BC.