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Post by The Great Aztec Joe on Aug 11, 2010 7:40:54 GMT -8
www.independent.co.uk/news/science/archaeology/archaeologists-discover-britains-oldest-home-2048927.htmlArchaeologists discover Britain's oldest homeArchaeologists have found Britain's earliest house - constructed by Stone Age tribesmen around 11,000 years ago. The discovery is likely to change the way archaeologists view that early period. Just 3.5 metres in diameter, the circular post-built house pre-dates other Stone Age buildings in the UK by up to a thousand years. Located at one of Britain's most important prehistoric archaeological sites, Star Carr in North Yorkshire, the newly discovered building may have been home to a Stone Age hunter - or conceivably even a prehistoric priest or shaman. Ethnographic parallels elsewhere in the world suggest that, in hunter-gather societies, well-built structures of this kind were often the homes of shamans. It's also known from previous excavations that the site as a whole was probably used, at least partially, for ritual activity. Back in 1950, archaeologists there discovered 21 Stone Age head-dresses made of modified deer skulls and antlers - which were almost certainly used for ceremonial hunting-related rituals, possibly dances. High value beads - made of amber, shale and deer teeth, and elsewhere associated with ritual activity - have also been found on the site. And, over recent weeks, archaeologists at the site - on the edge of a now long-vanished prehistoric lake - have been uncovering the remains of a well-built wooden platform which they believe may have been used as a ritual location from which Stone Age tribesmen threw high value objects into the water as offerings to their deities or ancestral spirits. Careful excavation - by archaeologists from the universities of Manchester and York - has revealed that the walls of the newly discovered house consisted of up to 18 upright posts, each on average around 20 centimetres in diameter. However it's not been possible to ascertain the shape of the roof - and it could have been either flat or conical. Inside the house, which was built sometime between 9200 and 8500 BC, the occupants had created a living/sleeping area - a 20-30 centimetre thick layer of moss, reeds and other soft organic material deliberately placed in a shallow 2.5 metre diameter man-made depression. The presence of burnt flints inside the house suggests that the building also had a small hearth.
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Post by The Great Aztec Joe on Aug 11, 2010 7:46:30 GMT -8
I find it ironic that for half a century in history, I was told that northern Europe was covered in an ice sheet at this time. If so, now did man build houses under the ice?
Something tells me that the Ice Sheet was not really there, and that all of the climatologists of the world have been propagating a myth about how cold it was back then in the Northern parts of Europe.
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Post by Bob Forsythe on Aug 11, 2010 10:43:24 GMT -8
I find it ironic that for half a century in history, I was told that northern Europe was covered in an ice sheet at this time. If so, now did man build houses under the ice? Something tells me that the Ice Sheet was not really there, and that all of the climatologists of the world have been propagating a myth about how cold it was back then in the Northern parts of Europe. It was at the end of the last ice age, so it's likely not much of England was under ice. This article: tinyurl.com/29aw2r8quotes a woman as saying that this is important because it shows settlement patterns of the people who were just returning to England. =Bob |
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Post by Bob Forsythe on Aug 11, 2010 10:45:11 GMT -8
Only thing that bothers me is that most archeologists refrain from stating any artifact is related to religion simply because it looks like it should be.
=Bob
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Post by The Great Aztec Joe on Aug 12, 2010 7:06:13 GMT -8
Only thing that bothers me is that most archeologists refrain from stating any artifact is related to religion simply because it looks like it should be. =Bob Throughout history, mankind has devoted his greatest art and architecture for religious expression. The pyramids, mayan temples, Teotihuacan (Don't know who those people were exactly, but GAWD, what a great series of pyramids!), Stonehenge (and fifty other like sites in Europe........................... We could make a list pages long. The simple fact of the matter is that we are strongly motivated by religious expression. Man is always seeking after God or gods or the supernatural. |
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Post by Bob Forsythe on Aug 12, 2010 13:20:01 GMT -8
Only thing that bothers me is that most archeologists refrain from stating any artifact is related to religion simply because it looks like it should be. =Bob Throughout history, mankind has devoted his greatest art and architecture for religious expression. The pyramids, mayan temples, Teotihuacan (Don't know who those people were exactly, but GAWD, what a great series of pyramids!), Stonehenge (and fifty other like sites in Europe........................... We could make a list pages long. The simple fact of the matter is that we are strongly motivated by religious expression. Man is always seeking after God or gods or the supernatural. While that's accurate, those structures are obvious. It's this sort of thing I was referring to: And, over recent weeks, archaeologists at the site - on the edge of a now long-vanished prehistoric lake - have been uncovering the remains of a well-built wooden platform which they believe may have been used as a ritual location from which Stone Age tribesmen threw high value objects into the water as offerings to their deities or ancestral spirits. That is just nothing more than speculation and archaeologists tend to not speculate because other archaeologists love cutting anyone who does so off at the knees. =Bob |
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Post by The Great Aztec Joe on Aug 12, 2010 18:00:57 GMT -8
Throughout history, mankind has devoted his greatest art and architecture for religious expression. The pyramids, mayan temples, Teotihuacan (Don't know who those people were exactly, but GAWD, what a great series of pyramids!), Stonehenge (and fifty other like sites in Europe........................... We could make a list pages long. The simple fact of the matter is that we are strongly motivated by religious expression. Man is always seeking after God or gods or the supernatural. While that's accurate, those structures are obvious. It's this sort of thing I was referring to: And, over recent weeks, archaeologists at the site - on the edge of a now long-vanished prehistoric lake - have been uncovering the remains of a well-built wooden platform which they believe may have been used as a ritual location from which Stone Age tribesmen threw high value objects into the water as offerings to their deities or ancestral spirits. That is just nothing more than speculation and archaeologists tend to not speculate because other archaeologists love cutting anyone who does so off at the knees. =Bob Not knowing the location, but a very poor alternative solution would be that it was a raised platform for spearing fish when they swam into view. |
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Post by Bob Forsythe on Aug 12, 2010 18:51:37 GMT -8
While that's accurate, those structures are obvious. It's this sort of thing I was referring to: And, over recent weeks, archaeologists at the site - on the edge of a now long-vanished prehistoric lake - have been uncovering the remains of a well-built wooden platform which they believe may have been used as a ritual location from which Stone Age tribesmen threw high value objects into the water as offerings to their deities or ancestral spirits. That is just nothing more than speculation and archaeologists tend to not speculate because other archaeologists love cutting anyone who does so off at the knees. =Bob Not knowing the location, but a very poor alternative solution would be that it was a raised platform for spearing fish when they swam into view. Could be any number of things and it might well have been a platform for some ritual - in short, who knows? But when archaeologists offer these sorts of things, it's generally for public consumption. Good pub gets you funding and archaeology is not a science that gets much funding for field work. The spin with archaeologists is that they practice a "social science with a hard science discipline". That's all well and good, but it's also just a very arbitrary social science, especially when dealing with digs dating back to 8,500 BCE. =Bob |
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Post by The Great Aztec Joe on Aug 12, 2010 19:58:10 GMT -8
Not knowing the location, but a very poor alternative solution would be that it was a raised platform for spearing fish when they swam into view. Could be any number of things and it might well have been a platform for some ritual - in short, who knows? But when archaeologists offer these sorts of things, it's generally for public consumption. Good pub gets you funding and archaeology is not a science that gets much funding for field work. The spin with archaeologists is that they practice a "social science with a hard science discipline". That's all well and good, but it's also just a very arbitrary social science, especially when dealing with digs dating back to 8,500 BCE. =Bob Archeology vs. Economics. Knowing that almost all economic theory has faults, I would have to go with Archeology as being more scientific. Neither, as best I can tell, is a real science. Oh, on the Ice Age thing, I had books that said that the Restoration of man to England happened as the ice age waned, 8000 to 9000 years ago. The textbook was 40 years old. It showed about 90 percent of England ice covered with only the southern coast region free from snow and ice. It also showed large ice masses in central France leading towards Switzerland and Austria. If England was free, then Central France should have been free at the same time. I guess they have done a lot of rethinking on that in the past 40 years. they now have England populated 2000 years earlier than my instruction. Another reason to throw out old text books, even if old textbooks are just like old friends. Obviously, I have not kept up to date on the latest thinking. If they can vary as much as 2000 years on settlement, that is a lot of information they must have uncovered in the past 40 years. |
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Post by Bob Forsythe on Aug 13, 2010 15:28:26 GMT -8
Could be any number of things and it might well have been a platform for some ritual - in short, who knows? But when archaeologists offer these sorts of things, it's generally for public consumption. Good pub gets you funding and archaeology is not a science that gets much funding for field work. The spin with archaeologists is that they practice a "social science with a hard science discipline". That's all well and good, but it's also just a very arbitrary social science, especially when dealing with digs dating back to 8,500 BCE. =Bob Archeology vs. Economics. Knowing that almost all economic theory has faults, I would have to go with Archeology as being more scientific. Neither, as best I can tell, is a real science. Oh, on the Ice Age thing, I had books that said that the Restoration of man to England happened as the ice age waned, 8000 to 9000 years ago. The textbook was 40 years old. It showed about 90 percent of England ice covered with only the southern coast region free from snow and ice. It also showed large ice masses in central France leading towards Switzerland and Austria. If England was free, then Central France should have been free at the same time. I guess they have done a lot of rethinking on that in the past 40 years. they now have England populated 2000 years earlier than my instruction. Another reason to throw out old text books, even if old textbooks are just like old friends. Obviously, I have not kept up to date on the latest thinking. If they can vary as much as 2000 years on settlement, that is a lot of information they must have uncovered in the past 40 years. Joe, I majored in archaeology for a while and spent 4 years as a "diggroe" (AKA "dig bum/shovel bum) and I can't keep up with what's been happening since I left the field in '83. New things get discovered every year from new or not so new digs. Technology leads to new abilities to understand things far better than was the case even 5 years ago. 40 years is a lifetime (well, at least it was for those guys back then). =Bob |
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