British origins

[ZenGum]

This thread starts with an ambiguity.

Are you talking about the history of your country - conceived of as a geographic entity - or of your nation - conceived of as a political &/or social entity.

For the USA, the nation pretty clearly started with Washington and friends in 1776. The (human) history of the country is at least 11,000 years.

For The Poms, it is much more complicated. The human history of the British Isles is much longer - so long that the question of what actually counts as human arises. The nation of "England" might go back to Alfred the Great, or perhaps to William the Conqueror, or even - if nations are truly united by a shared language and body of cultural literature - to Chaucer.
Britain, a strange grouping of different peoples, formed politically after Elizabeth I, and really only formed culturally in the 1800s with the romantic movement who largely invented a shared mythology.

Australia? Humans for at least 40,000 years, European settlement in Sydney in 1788; six states federated in 1901 with the guidance of some chap named Parkes who had a very impressive beard. We had a national cricket team by 1877, though. And they beat the poms.