Megalithic shipping and trade routes

[Boreades]

What about, say, Dawlish and suchlike? Or near the Dor valley (which Durdle Dor is).

What about the bleeding obvious? Dor-setshire. Dor might be a gateway to the rest of the country?

Dawlish ortho etymological bollox now follows:

The name Dawlish derives from a Welsh river name meaning black stream. There was also a Roman translation of Dolfisc, meaning 'Dark river' and 'The Devils Water'. It was first recorded in 1044 as Doflisc.

WTF were the Welsh doing naming a place when the local Damnonians were perfectly capable of naming things themselves? But maybe they were too pisht on local cyder or too damaged by Full-Contact Morris Dancing to think of anything coherent?

I've been to Dawlish many times and the river water was always crystal clear, even after heavy rainfall on the Haldon Hills. The only thing black on the river was the imported Black Swans.

As Dawlish is south of Exeter (Isca), is it more likely the name Doflisc means something like "below Isca"? Below might be conflated with dark(?)

A few 100m inland from Durdle Dor you get Scratchy Bottom. It's not a medical condition, it's the real name of the valley where Gabriel Oak's sheep were driven over the cliff by his effing useless sheepdog. If only he hadn't been so distracted by Julie Christie. Well, I would be too. Far From The Madding Etymologists.

[Mick Harper]

I quite like dor meaning below. Now we need to find the durdle it is below.

[Boreades]

Just thought of an alternate meaning for Dawlish / Dolfisc.

As the Dawlish parish goes as far as Dawlish Warren and the mouth of the River Exe. That name Exe being the same root as Exeter (Isca)

So Dawlish / Dolfisc / Dor-Isca might mean gateway to the River Isca?

[Boreades]

Hat tip to Tisi.

Just found in the uninspiring title "Nonlinear landscape and cultural response to sea-level rise".

From island to archipelago.

Sea level around Scilly rose rapidly in the Early Holocene [defined as the period from 11.7 to 8.2 thousand years (ka)] following the decay of the large Northern Hemisphere (Laurentian and Fennoscandian) ice sheets. Our sea-level reconstruction (Fig. 1) shows that sea level was still rising rapidly in the Mid-Holocene (8.2 to 4.2 ka) at a rate of over 2 mm/year from around 7 ka [2.8 ± 1.4 (1σ) mm/year for 7 to 4.5 ka], gradually slowing to less than 1 mm/year after 4.5 ka [0.8 ± 1.6 (1σ) mm/year for 4 ka to present] for the remainder of the Holocene.

Etcetera.

Of most interest to us maybe Fig. 2 Holocene paleogeographies of Scilly.



Even (just) 2,000 years ago, Scilly was still mostly a single island. Certainly 5,000 years ago it was such. What implications does this have for our view of Doggerland? Especially, how recently it disappeared?

The article itself appears to be a recycle/reprint of material from the 2014 Lyonesse Project.
https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/45/eabb6376

While taking the credit for the work (or rather, the write-up of the work), they mention in passing the real field work was done by the Cornwall and Isles of Scilly Maritime Archeology Society (CISMAS)
http://www.cismas.org.uk/

By that way, I have to confess I've not seen this "Science Advances" portal before. My first response was to recall the phrase usually attributed to Max Plank: "Science advances one funeral at a time". Not sure why UK archeos have to publish in a US magazine. Maybe it's academic brownie points?

[Boreades]

Have we mentioned the historical and legendary connections between GWR territory and Brittany that go back over 1400 years?

The Wasteland is a vaguely mentioned (and little explored) part of Arthurian myth. In the legends, Britain has become a wasteland where nothing much can grow and people are ill and dying. A sorry state of affairs, but is there any substance to this legend? Astonishingly, there is. The most recent evidence is from a team at the University of Maine (UM) in Orono. The team reported that:

a cataclysmic volcanic eruption in Iceland spewed ash across the Northern Hemisphere early in 536. Two other massive eruptions followed, in 540 and 547. The repeated blows, followed by plague, plunged Europe into economic stagnation that lasted until 640

Regardless of whether it was meteors or volcanoes, it seems Britain was no longer a healthy place to live in at the time. In the South West, especially Devon and Cornwall, this triggered a mass migration of Britons southwards across the Channel.

- from Dumnonia (Devon) to Domnonea
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domnon%C3%A9e

- from Kernow (Cornwall) to Cornouaille
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornouaille

Both of which eventually became part of Armorica (Brittany).



GWR in this context is (I believe) a GWR-related shipping service. I don't think even the great Isambard Kingdom Brunel planned on a railway track from Plymouth to Brest.

[Mick Harper]

They're always coming up with these sorts of things to explain 'Dark Ages'. I'll believe it when I see a volcanic eruption that does more than produce a dip in temperatures for a year or two and some spectacular sunsets. Did they say why this continent-wide century of cataclysmic dislocation stopped at the Wiltshire border and halfway across the Channel?

The GRW used to run ferries to the Channel Islands and Northern France from Weymouth in competition with the Southern Region doing the same from Southampton.

[Boreades]

As I understand it, it was the ash cloud in the stratosphere, rather than ash falling to ground, that was the issue - blocking sunlight and causing 'years without summers', as recorded by various chroniclers - the true 'Dark Age'. Something rather similar happened in western Europe, north America, and China in 1816, following the eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia, which reached a peak in April 1815. This was the largest eruption since that of 536. This 'year without a summer' caused the last great famine of the pre-industrial age. Among its more local effects, it is alleged to have hastened Jane Austen's death (from debated disease) the following year.

[Mick Harper]

This is what I was referring to. Did it lead to swathes of the population upsticking for foreign parts but only in one place to one other place?

[Boreades]

The effects of Mount Tambora might serve as an example.

Areas of the northern hemisphere suffered extreme weather conditions and 1816 became known as the "year without a summer". Average global temperatures decreased about 0.4 to 0.7 °C (0.7 to 1.3 °F), enough to cause significant agricultural problems around the globe.
..
On 6 June 1816, it snowed in Albany, New York and Dennysville, Maine. Similar conditions persisted for at least three months, ruining most crops across North America while Canada experienced extreme cold.
..
cool temperatures and heavy rains led to failed harvests in the British Isles. Families in Wales travelled long distances as refugees, begging for food. Famine was prevalent in north and southwest Ireland, following the failure of wheat, oat and potato harvests. The crisis was severe in Germany, where food prices rose sharply. Demonstrations at grain markets and bakeries, followed by riots, arson and looting, took place in many European cities. It was the worst famine of the 19th century

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Tam ... al_effects

[Mick Harper]

And will we be reading chronicles about it fifteen hundred years later? Pah!