New Views over Megalithia

[TisILeclerc]

Wiki has a list of motte and bailey 'castles'.

Funny thing is they are mostly in England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland.

With one in France and one in Holland.

How did the Normans learn to build them and when? Once they landed on the beach at Hastings?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_m ... ey_castles

[Boreades]

Me old mate Barry (Sir Barry Cunliffe to you) has been commenting on the notion that the castle motte is largely a re-used prehistoric structure.

How does the recent archaeological discovery of the Marlborough Mound’s Neolithic dating affect its relationship with Silbury?
https://vimeo.com/30123605

Executive summary: Built at the same time as Silbury. The Norman stuff was added later.



Better historians than me have quite rightly pointed out the bleeding obvious.

(Interview with Dr Richard William Barber)

“Was it unusual for the Normans to site a castle on an existing Neolithic site?” from Marlborough College on Vimeo.
The video is available for your viewing pleasure at https://vimeo.com/30123325

Ancient mounds like Silbury tend to have relatively gentle slopes, presumably so some people could climb them. Whereas Norman moate and bailey stuff (like Oxford Castle and Totnes Castle) are steeper to keep folk off & away.

Given that the Normans were dab hands at grabbing anything that took their fancy as useful or valuable, there seem to be two ways they could turn an existing mound into a military defence. Either by piling more on top, or by cutting away the sides to make the slope steeper. Or both.

[Boreades]

Tizzi's list
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_m ... ey_castles
is a puzzler.

Are we really the only place in Europe with so many "motte and bailey castles"?
(Excepting where Normans are supposed to have started from)

Or is this like "English Chalk Streams" - a special species because of sleight of hand and name changes?

Or was this the Norman equivalent of Vorsprung Durch Technik?

[TisILeclerc]

Or build a castle quickly on that mound over there before the serfs get uppity.

[Boreades]

Careful, the landlords already think we're revolting.

[Boreades]

Research challenges popular theory on origin of languages.

New research published today in the journal Nature, led by University of Adelaide ancient DNA researchers and the Harvard Medical School, shows that at least some of the Indo-European languages spoken in Europe were likely the result of a massive migration from eastern Russia.
(and)
The first was the arrival of Europe's first farmers, who had spread from the Near East (modern-day Turkey)

If the Garden of Eden was in Turkey, I suppose that's the "Out Of Eden" theory? Would you Adam & Eve it? Mine's the apple with no bite marks.

And now British Agriculture is dependent on the goodwill and work of a massive migration of low-paid workers from Eastern Europe. Especially in bootiful Norfolk and Lincolnshire. Seem like the wheel keeps turning full cycle?

Have we seen any haplogroup maps with resemblances between East Anglia and Turkey?

http://phys.org/news/2015-03-popular-th ... uages.html

[Boreades]

There must be something in the military engineering mindset that makes it highly desirable to build something on top of older useful places. If it wasn't the Normans, or whatever, it's our own British Army.

In today's Indy:

A huge, prehistoric religious and ceremonial complex has been discovered near Britain’s most famous prehistoric temple Stonehenge. Its discovery is likely to transform our understanding of the early development of Stonehenge’s ancient landscape. Built about 5,650 years ago – more than 1,000 years before the great stones of Stonehenge were erected – the 200m-diameter complex is the first major early Neolithic monument to be discovered in the Stonehenge area for more than a century. The newly discovered complex, just over a mile and a half north-east of Stonehenge, appears to have consisted of around 950m of segmented ditches – and potentially palisaded earthen banks – arranged in two great concentric circles.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/scien ... 25346.html

This is at (or underneath) Larkhill Barracks.

[TisILeclerc]

The article tells us that others are found in Germany, Denmark and elsewhere.

Wiki goes a bit further

A causewayed enclosure is a type of large prehistoric earthwork common to the early Neolithic in Europe. More than 100 examples are recorded in France and 70 in England, while further sites are known in Scandinavia, Belgium, Germany, Italy, Ireland and Slovakia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causewayed_enclosure

Who had the idea first? If there are more in France than England did they spread from France across the channel. And if there are only two in Ireland were the Irish not much bothered about them.

Or did they start in England and impress the French so much they had to have their own? With balconies no doubt.

Whatever the truth it shows that the British Isles were not isolated. There was a continuous culture crossing the channel and north sea. Which could tell us more about the 'ethnic' make up of the British at the time.

[TisILeclerc]

There is a lot of speculation about when we domesticated cattle. Even drinking milk came late apparently

What we do know is that the hunter gathers gathered and hunted.

They hunted big dangerous beasties. You may say aurochs to that and I would agree.

Whatever happened to the aurochs?

Supposing a hunter decided he was fed up of chasing big dangerous animals all over the place. Let's get them all in on spot and then we can get them he says. Or she of course if there were huntresses, sorry, female hunters involved.

How do we do that?

Build lots of circles we can drive them into but they can't get out of. Feed them with stuff provided by them farmers who've just moved in and then let them out and chop their heads off when we need one.

I would say that's a better idea than holding a handful of hay to a giant thing with horns and saying come this way.

And then you could let the little ones breed. And they will get smaller and more docile over the years.

Has that got legs?

[Boreades]

Whatever happened to the aurochs?

Didn't we mention the bones of aurochs found in the Orkneys?

Archaeologists working at the Links of Noltland, in Westray, have genetic proof that aurochs — the huge, prehistoric ancestor to modern cattle — were once found on the island. Aurochs were much larger than most modern domestic cattle, having a shoulder height of around two metres and weighing in at 1,000 kilograms. On the Scottish mainland, aurochs were probably extinct by the Bronze Age, but in Europe survived until the 17th century. However, the Westray aurochs — the first genetically verified identification of the animals in Orkney — were not native to the isles and had to have been brought in.

Hazel Moore, from Ease Archaeology, explained: “We have also been pursuing a parallel investigation into the genetic origins of the earliest domesticated animals, with a view to tracing not only the origins of the human population, but also the origin of their ‘farming package’, which might prove not to come from the same place.

“So far, this has revealed that Neolithic folk at the Links of Noltland kept both domesticated cattle and wild aurochs.”

A team from Basel and the University of Edinburgh analysed a group of 28 cattle skulls recovered from the ongoing Westray excavation. These skulls have been radiocarbon dated to between 3000BC and 2500BC. Fierce and unbiddable creatures, Hazel suggested that the aurochs may have been imported to breed particular characteristics into domestic herds.

http://www.orkneyjar.com/archaeology/20 ... d-westray/

My immediate reaction was to think this explanation smells like auroch-excrement. I wouldn't want a one-tonne wild auroch on my little wooden boat. Anyway, how would you get a wild auroch to obligingly climb onto your boat, and then stay still all the way to Orkney across open water?

But, hang on though, if the expert is correct, there must have been some big boats (wild auroch grade) between 3000BC and 2500BC. Like the Veneti-era boats, but even older.

Here's a list of domesticated animals, including guestimates of when they were domesticated.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_d ... ed_animals

It looks like they are saying that all the larger four-legged types in Europe have been domesticated since c.4000BC. The only types more recent are varieties of imported birds like Turkeys.