Megalithic shipping and trade routes

[hvered]

Fascinating, TisI, though whoever posted up the map seems to have hit on dates that uncannily fit with the archaeological findings.

I wonder where '7,000 B.C.' comes from? For such a thesis to hold water, you would expect to have a string of formerly stranded groupings from the same date rather than in one place. And if it was so, why on earth stay there?

My first thought was 'a whaling station'. Or, recalling the N-W Pacific American peoples, a suitable place to process sea-otters. Either way, there's no reason not to have several enterprises operating, perhaps seasonal.

[Mick Harper]

Yes, this is a runner. Would South Georgia look like the Orkneys in a few thousand years? This would at least account for the northern location which our previous ideas eg navigational school never really addressed. On the other hand it doesn't account for the isolation. South Georgia is because there are no alternatives, but there is no such pressing need up here.

[Boreades]

I am temperamentally and intellectually averse to using Big Stuff to explain relatively small stuff. Doggerland just gets in the way. As it were. Much better to assume everything is just as it is now

Would that be the AEL approach we see before us? Useful sometimes, perhaps most of the time. But in this case, the approach is fundamentally flawed. This was not a "steady state" situation. It was a catastrophic change, in the proper sense of the word. Doggerland was not just as it is now, it had ceased to exist. It was a geo-physical Brexit that literally changed the face of Western Europe.

Sometimes, Big Stuff does happen, and it's not good pretending the situation afterwards is the same as the situation before, or intellectually saying "la-la-la" when people point it out.

For a large part of northern Doggerland, an area as big as Scotland is now, the Orkneys were the nearest available high ground.

[Mick Harper]

Would that be the AEL approach we see before us? Useful sometimes, perhaps most of the time. But in this case, the approach is fundamentally flawed.

It is an AE principle to junk a priori principles -- including AE ones -- when challenged.

This was not a "steady state" situation. It was a catastrophic change, in the proper sense of the word.

Well, okay, but remember that this catastophe is hypothesised rather than evidenced. Could you remind me the nature of the catastrophe proposed?

Doggerland was not just as it is now, it had ceased to exist. It was a geo-physical Brexit that literally changed the face of Western Europe.

This is a reasonable, not to say evidenced, event. I entirely accept it. The question is whether it was catastrophic or not. If it is an 'end of the Ice Age' event, then clearly it is not since the rising water levels would have been gradual -- not even perceptible to the inhabitants. It would clearly lead to radical change over hundreds/thousands of years but nothing sudden. Catastrophic changes in sea-level eg tsunamis do not have permanent effects. Doggerland might have been inundated but it would still be there when the event was over.

Sometimes, Big Stuff does happen, and it's not good pretending the situation afterwards is the same as the situation before, or intellectually saying "la-la-la" when people point it out.

OK, point it out. I don't mind radical revisionism (to put it mildly!) but normal physical processes have to be observed. What would cause a catastrophic and permanent rise in sea level? Remember, we have no such model presently.

For a large part of northern Doggerland, an area as big as Scotland is now, the Orkneys were the nearest available high ground.

Even assuming that Britain, Scandinavia and Germany would not make perfectly adequate alternatives (for southern Doggerfolk for example), why would the Orkneys, having received these Doggerfolk, produce something that all the other Doggerfolk fleeing in other directions would not? Or, assuming this was the sole refuge, why did these Orkney Doggerfolk not promptly apply their advanced cultural practices to everywhere else?

[Boreades]

We might argue the toss about whether is was a sudden, single-event catastrophe (tsunami-style), or a slow-but-sure cumulative/ratchet event over many years (sea levels), or both.

Either way, the effect of the catastrophe is evidenced e.g. the submerged forests found near Norfolk.

Some of the wood was compressed but whole tree trunks with branches could be seen, with starfish and crabs making knots in the wood their home.

The preserved forest was part of the former landmass known as Doggerland, which connected the UK to mainland Europe until after the last Ice Age, when it was flooded by rising sea levels.

Boats have salvaged mammoth and lion fossils from the sea, as well as prehistoric tools and weapons, but scientists had no idea the forest could still be seen so close to the Norfolk shore.

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style ... 03703.html

Agreed, if it was a really slow change, people and nature would have adapted. I expect many did. But land trees don't adapt and start growing in salt water. They aren't mangroves. For them, the war with the sea was over. The landscape did change, and rather quickly.

[hvered]

Your Orkney folk didn't get there by land. A place that size on Orkney couldn't live off the land surely? You seem to be discussing a landscape that provides trees and grazing for land animals and gets inundated. So what? The risk of sea level rise is normal for Norfolk. Or was.

[Mick Harper]

As you know, I am a proponent of SLOT theory which says that ice ages end catastrophically -- and the pix you post certainly support this. I am not opposed to Doggerland Disappears Catastrophically -- indeed I believe it did -- but I am opposed to opportunistic use of the event. In the first place it happened twelve thousand years ago which is at least seven thousand years too early for Orkney. In the second place I doubt if the event left anybody alive in Doggerland to go whither they (or youse guys) might wish.

My other objections stand. However. I do not wish to cramp your styles so let us take up the story after the Doggerland refugees have reached Orkney. Perhaps you can take it from there.

[TisILeclerc]

In 2007, during an archaeological survey being carried out at Links House on Stronsay, a scatter of flint was recovered. Naomi Woodward, found two tiny arrowheads, which were later identified as tanged points and thought to have been in use 10,000-12,000 years ago. The finds led to further investigation and by the end of the dig, more than 10,000 pieces of flint were recovered, the largest collection of material for this period in Orkney.

Another exciting find was made in 2007 in Tankerness, when Caroline Wickham-Jones and her team excavated an area on the top of a mound known as Longhowe. In 2004 work was carried out on a small Bronze Age burial on top of the mound and excavations uncovered some very early stone tools, which suggested an earlier occupation lay below the burial. When a further excavation was carried out in 2007, a well-preserved charred hazel-nut shell was recovered and this was sent off to be carbon dated. When the results came back it caused great excitement. The shell was dated to 6820-6660 BC. This showed that people were living in Orkney around 7000 BC.

http://www.scapaflow.co/index.php/histo ... hic/sites/

The arrow heads look quite similar to other arrow heads shown in the Time Team video from Doggerland. We are used to pointed arrow heads but at this time they all seem to have a flattened end like a chisel.

Perhaps the early settlers skied there or went over the ice on sledges pulled by mammoths?

[Boreades]

It may be significant that Orkney (as it was) was always an island since the ice retreated.

The landscape of Orkney has changed considerably since the end of the last Ice Age some 11,000 years ago. Despite a drop in relative sea-level of up to 40m, the depth of the Pentland Firth means that Orkney has always been an island, but when the glaciers first retreated, it comprised a single island with a large landlocked bay to the south, where Scapa Flow lies today. Since then sea-level has been rising; recent dates obtained by the Rising Tide project indicate that present day sea-levels were only reached around 4000 years ago, and a very slow increase is still taking place.

This means that when people first came to Orkney in the millennia after the Ice Age they would have found a much larger landmass, and since then the inhabitants of Orkney have had to cope with a process of dynamic environmental change as the sea rose and the coasts retreated. The early inhabitants of Orkney were no strangers to sea-level rise

.



GIS reconstruction of Orkney 10,000 years ago

(the map) shows how much of the coastal land that they favoured is now submerged below the shallow Orkney seas. It is possible that in some places the evidence of their passing still lies buried beneath the sediment that has accumulated as the seas rose. In places, the submerged coastal lands of Orkney also preserve buried evidence of the environment in the centuries before the seas rose. Deposits of peat survive in the inter tidal zones of many beaches, witness to a time when the vegetation of the coastal lands comprised patches of marsh and bog land. Elsewhere actual tree trunks survive, relicts of coastal woodland that must have grown above the shore.

http://www.scapaflow.co/index.php/histo ... sing_tide/

[Boreades]

In case some think that the Norfolk case is some strange oddity, there are plenty more places around the coast of Britain where submerged mature forests are still being discovered.

Like the one in Mount's Bay in Cornwall.

Storms have revealed ancient forests on several beaches in the South West. Remains in Penzance, Cornwall, can be seen after sand was ripped from beaches by a series of storms which hit the coast in the new year. Geologists believe extensive forests extended across Mount's Bay in Penzance between 4,000 and 6,000 years ago.

Remains of ancient forests have also been seen on Portreath beach, Daymer Bay in Cornwall and Bigbury Bay in Devon. Frank Howie, Cornwall Wildlife Trustee and chair of the county's Geoconservation Group, said submerged forests were evidence of changes in Mount's Bay as the sea level had risen. He said: "The storms have revealed trunks of pine and oak as well as the remains of hazel thickets with well-preserved cob nuts and acorns washed out by streams running across the beach. "At Chyandor to the east of Penzance rooted stumps are exposed in situ in peaty soils and massive trunks have been washed out onto the rocky foreshore.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-devon-26263856

It used to be called quaint local legends when Cornish folk told visitors about the lands beneath the sea.

Then there are all the ones in Wales.


The distribution of ancient submerged forests in Wales
1 Abergele, 2 Amroth, 3 Borth/Ynyslas, 4 Formby, 5 Goldcliff, 6 Lydstep, 7 Newgale, 8 Rhyl, 9 Whitesands Bay

Cantre'r Gwaelod : The lost lands of West Wales that lie off Cardigan Bay are handed down in folklore as the story of the Lowland Hundred or Cantre’r Gwaelod. There are several versions of the myth with the oldest recorded, the poem ‘Seithennin’ or ‘Boddi Maes Gwyddneu’, dating to around 1250. The tale tells of a country defended from the sea by a wall or dyke. When the floodgates are negligently left open one night, Cantre’r Gwaelod is flooded and lost beneath the waves.

The preserved stumps of willow, hazel, oak, pine and birch are evidence of former woods and forests swamped by the encroaching tides.

The tree stumps are rooted in peat levels lying below the marine sand and have been preserved by the continuous waterlogged conditions. The sites around the Welsh coast do not represent a single phase of inundation. The radiocarbon dates from the trees at Ynyslas, Cardigan Bay, suggest that they died around 5,500 years ago, while those just over a kilometre to the south at Borth died some 2,000 years later.

Although observed and commented upon through the centuries, including by Gerald of Wales in 1188 and Samuel Pepys in 1665 no serious study of the submerged forests was made until 1913 when Clement Reid, a geologist, published a book on the subject. His Submerged Forests was the first survey to put these trees into a wider archaeological context and to argue conclusively that they were the result of a rise in sea level. Reid’s work to identify the extent of submerged land led him to study the area east of the Humber, where bones from extinct animals had long been dredged up by fishing trawlers. One area of the North Sea in particular caught his attention - Dogger Bank.

"Myth and legend" say the historians, until the locals literally trip over the evidence on the beaches and archaeologists get called in.

http://www.dyfedarchaeology.org.uk/lost ... rests.html