Archaeological evidence supports the theory that the earliest human migrants battled woolly mammoths, sabre toothed tigers, wild lions, hippos, and wild boar, in their quest to reach the Lancashire settlement of Burnley.
Historians agree that the early migrants arrived in Britain via an ice bridge leading across the frozen English Channel from the continent. And then for some inexplicable reason, headed for where Burnley is currently situated.
Fossil records show that the early settlers would have had to battle all manner of hostile wildlife in order to reach their goal - which was probably some idyllic vale in the Pennines, which no human before or since has ever strived to return to.
The settlers are thought to have bypassed Worthing, Dorking, London, Birmingham, Stoke on Trent, Manchester, and Rawtenstall on their way to their promised land - but the evidence shows that they didn't stay long.
"The fossil record shows that they didn't hang about," Professor Wes Carton of Burnley College of Arts and Technology said. "They came, saw, conquered, then probably thought: 'What the fuck?' and pissed off back to Italy, or somewhere similar, where it doesn't piss down with rain at least every hour and a half of every day. And people don't try to pick fights with you at bus stops at five o' clock in the morning. That's if they even had bus stops. Which they probably didn't."
One clue remains in a carving in a stone, found recently on the banks of the River Brun, which read simply:
"All this way and they haven't even invented black pudding. Sod this for a lark - we're off back to Roma."
More as we get it.
