There is no evidence that the neighbourhood of Dolgelley and Llanelltyd was inhabited until what can be called, in the long history of man's wanderings on the earth, a comparatively recent period.
The valley appears, at the beginning of more or less historic times, to have been a swampy marsh, into which the drainage of the hills descended, and quite unsuited to habitation by the earliest of primitive men.
The banked up floods, which inundate parts of the valley to-day, when the spring -tides keep the torrential rain without an outlet to the sea, portray to us in a mild form, the probable appearance of the countryside in very early times. Sometimes it was deeply flooded, and at all times it was water-logged. There was little footing in the valley for man or beast.
In fact the whole of western Merioneth, whether valley or hill, away from the sea coast, seems to have offered little attraction to men of the Stone Age, though here and there a few implements - one an axe head from near Dolgelley - which may be of that period, have been discovered in some parts of the interior. Even the Dolgelley axe-head appears to have drifted to where it was found from the summit of Penmaenmawr.
But it is not easy to determine whether a particular stone implement was made in the Stone Age or whether it is merely a survival into a later age of an older art, employed concurrently with a more newly learned one. So much depends on the presence or absence of other articles in the same strata.
The Stone Age is divided by archaeologists into three periods, which overlap one another to some extent - the paleolithic, the Neolithic, and the megalithic, the latter of which approximates, so far as Wales is concerned, roughly with the years 3000 B.C. to 2500 B.C.
Of paleolithic and Neolithic man there seems to be no reliable trace at all in Merioneth; of megalithic man, the man who erected cromlechau and meini hirion, there are some remains along the sea-coast of Ardudwy, but none exist in Dolgelley and Llanelltyd.
There was, it is said, at one time a huge cairn in a field called Maes-y-garnedd near the village of Llanelltyd; but it has long since been swept away, and all record of what might have been found there has likewise been swept away. Possibly this cairn was a megalithic structure; and if so, we would have grounds for believing that the first dwellers arrived in Llanelltyd nearly 5000 years ago, coming, perhaps, adventuring inland from the sea coast. But that is pure conjecture; and we have to come down many many centuries before we find definite evidence of human life in the neighbourhood.
The people of the Stone age were succeeded by a race commonly called Beaker Folk, men who made a particular type of pottery which they decorated with simple designs; but no trace of their craft has been found in the neighbourhood.
They ushered in the age which is called the Bronze Age, the period when men began to work in metal, first in copper, and then in Bronze, by admixing a little tin with the copper.
This period covers roughly in Wales the centuries that elapsed between 2000 B.C. and 500 B. C. The earlier peoples of the Bronze Age buried their dead; the latter ones cremated them, and enclosed their ash in cinerary urns.
That colonists of the Bronze Age found their way into the immediate neighbourhood. is without question, for at least two important sepulchral mounds of theirs have been found.
One of these was a mound at Llanfachreth known as Cors y Garnedd, which was opened some years ago. In it were found a stone cist or coffin with human remains, seven urns containing ashes, along with a brass dagger and a gold ring.
Even more important was the discovery 50 or 60 years ago, of another mound, traces of which are still evident, in the yard of Pentre Farm, a little farm just above and to the south of Cymmer Abbey.
When this mound was opened, two distinct layers of pre-historic remains were found; and in both of them there was a number of burnt bones, charcoal, pottery, lead-sheets, bronze articles and spindle-whorls.
These two mounds were the burial places of the people of the Bronze Age living in these parts, and the presence in the one of human remains, and in the other of distinct layers, proves that they were used for that purpose for many generations, how many can only be guessed at, but possibly off and on, for a thousand years.
On the other side of the valley there have also been discoveries of the Bronze Age, funeral mounds, a bronze spear-head, and a bronze axe-head; but they come from sites in the direction of Llyn Cregennan, and consequently outside the immediate range of Dolgelley.
But in the year 1823 a magnificent gold torque was discovered near Llyn Gwernan, and it was no less than 42 inches in length and 8 ¾ oz. in weight. It and the gold ring found in Llanfachreth both belong to the later part of the Bronze Age, dating, say, roughly from 1000 B.C. They suggest that gold was worked in the Merioneth mountains so far back as that; but it is only a possibility, which it is not safe to be positive about. It is just as likely that they hail from over the seas, where, in those far distant ages, gold was worked in the Wicklow mountains and found its way even to many parts of the continent.
Of these ancient people, the first settlers in the neighbourhood. of Dolgelley, we know nothing beyond what their sepulchral remains can tell. How they lived we can only conjecture. They probably had herds, hunted and fished, and they seem, so far as we can tell, to have been peaceably enough inclined. However, all we can be certain about is that they had learnt how to fashion bronze, were acquainted with the art of pottery, knew the uses of charcoal, and could smelt lead, but not iron.
Of their religion we know nothing, beyond that they believed in some kind of a life hereafter; but why they turned from internment to cremation we do not know. We can be, certain though, that that change in habit corresponded with some great change in religious outlook.
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