DROWNED COASTLINES

Mike Jupp · Post by **Mike Jupp** » Mon Dec 04, 2006 6:58 am

Whoa! They're good!
And..look at that!!...my conjecture wasn't that far off!

So, did they follow that coastline...or hack their way through thousands of miles of bear infested, troll poo covered forests?
Especially as from what I've read, Skara Brea was not actually on the coast!

Digit · Post by **Digit** » Mon Dec 04, 2006 7:31 am

Yeah! Youre right, it can't have been on the coast, but did I see somewhere about a large shell dump nearby, if so was it fresh or salt water shellfish?

marduk · Post by **marduk** » Mon Dec 04, 2006 7:50 am

what do you mean its not on the coast

Skara Brae shows occupation from around 4000- 3500bce
the sea level rise that you are talking about was around 9000BP
so the sea level were established and then three and a half thousand years later someone made a boat trip
remember
timelines guys timelines

Skara Brae like a number of equally important but less well known settlements were all settled from Scandanavia around 4000- 3500bce

there were already people living in the British Isles at that point
http://www.orkneydigs.org.uk/dhl/papers/index.html
the real proof of this comes from examinations of Tomb design
the only earlier examples of the type of tombs that mark the oldest burials in the orkneys are found in scandanavia
Rock tombs of the same design normally were used for royalty
however this doesnt mean that the orcadian tombs were all people of royal birth
because in scandanavia the other type of tombs used for the less important were made from wood
and theres bugger all forests on those islands

they were all people typified by the Trichterbecher culture (and yes that is just me trying to be clever) known in english as the Funnel Beaker culture
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Funnelbeaker_culture
this page mentions the types of tombs they built

The oldest graves consisted of wooden chambered cairns inside long barrows, but later in the form of passage graves and dolmens.

pretty conclusive if you have a look at what type of tombs are found in orkney
http://www.orkneyjar.com/history/tombs/styles.htm

Mike Jupp · Post by **Mike Jupp** » Mon Dec 04, 2006 7:51 am

Digit wrote:Yeah! Youre right, it can't have been on the coast..

From what I can understand it was 'near' the sea!
Apparently, It was abandoned when the temperature plummeted and the fish buggered off!

Having just read Marduk's interesting piece, I've got a question...Where did the Beaker Folk originate? I thought it was the Iberian Peninsular, and that they spread North?

I've just found this! Re: 'Beaker People'

There was a changeover during this (Bronze Age) period to round houses, echoed in the mushroom-like growth of stone circles and round barrow mounds. We can guess that huts had a low stone wall for a base which was used to brace wooden poles and rafters. On top of this would have been a roof of thatch, turf, or hides.

They made their own pottery, and eventually the first woven garments in Britain .They also seem to have introduced the first known alcoholic drink into Britain, a form of honey-based mead. The islands have never been the same since.

The Beaker Folk introduced a pastoral pattern to the agricultural lifestyle of Neolithic times. As population grew, more marginal land was brought into cultivation, and was farmed successfully for hundreds of years, until climate changes forced its abandonment. The Beaker Folk were a patriarchal society, and it is during the Bronze Age that the individual warrior-chief or king gained importance, contrasting with the community orientation of the Neolithic times.

Towards the end of the Bronze Age the climate changed drastically. According to tree ring evidence, a major volcanic eruption in Iceland may have caused a significant temperature drop in just one year. At this time the settlements on Dartmoor were abandoned, for example, and peat started to form in many places over what were once farms, houses, and their field systems. It seems likely that warfare and banditry erupted as the starving survivors fought over land that could no longer support them.
Talking of which...Personally I rather talk about 'Man-Made' Global Warming than the Paranormal.

(Wait a minute!!!!..Isn't that the same thing!!!)

marduk · Post by **marduk** » Mon Dec 04, 2006 7:55 am

From what I can understand it was 'near' the sea!

err yes
it was very near
see the picture of Skara Brae
see the big blue thing in the background

Skara Brae in english translates as Cormorant mounds/hills
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cormorant
the Cormorant is a sea bird
the site was discovered when a storm caused waves to wash over a sea bird nesting site in 1850 revealing the houses buried beneath

I'm hoping that this ends any further talk of it not being extremely coastal

Mike Jupp · Post by **Mike Jupp** » Mon Dec 04, 2006 9:34 am

..Except, where was the coast when it was built... when sea levels were much lower?

marduk · Post by **marduk** » Mon Dec 04, 2006 9:50 am

Except, where was the coast when it was built... when sea levels were much lower

sea levels when it was built were in exactly the same place they are today

it was built around 3500bce
thats around five thousand five hundred years ago
the last significant sea levels rises in this area were around 8000bce
thats around ten thousand years ago

Digit · Post by **Digit** » Mon Dec 04, 2006 10:02 am

Few people, of choice, will live as near the sea as Skara Brae currently is, it's to damn windy, I know, I live near the west coast. The Cormorant is a water bird, not a sea bird and is resident where ever a large enough body of water is available.
That may not have been the case at the time Skara Brae was inhabited though as quite a few coastl residents have changed their habits in more recent times. Any angler will tell you that Cormorants have become something of a pest inland in recent years, to the extent that as the Commons was voting to ban Fox hunting because people enjoyed it, they authorised the culling of Cormorants. presumeably the shooters didn't enjoy their day out?
And in any case Marduk, if it ended any discussion on coastal proximity what we have to argue about?

Mike Jupp · Post by **Mike Jupp** » Mon Dec 04, 2006 10:13 am

I tell you what!..if you 2 are ever near Bognor Regis, phone me! I'll buy you each a pint and then we can bore the pants off each other!!!
(as we're probably doing to our American hosts?)

Oh!...and you can have a free Cormorant! There's bloody hundreds of them around here!
This isn't a Cormorant...but it sums up my home town (ESPECIALLY today! Global Warming???..Cobblers!!!!!!!!)

Digit · Post by **Digit** » Mon Dec 04, 2006 10:26 am

No thanks, they taste terrible!

marduk · Post by **marduk** » Mon Dec 04, 2006 10:26 am

I've just found this! Re: 'Beaker People'

not the beaker people
the funnel beaker people
see Digit always plenty to discuss

Starflower · Post by **Starflower** » Wed Dec 13, 2006 7:56 pm

http://www.archaeology.org/0701/abstracts/northsea.html

I am in a dark room at the University of Birmingham in England, looking at a 10,000-year-old landscape projected on a wall. The map in front of me is 12 feet across, and glows in unfocused luminous orange. When I put on battery-operated polarizing glasses, it jumps sharply into three dimensions.

"If you hold a tracker," says geologist Simon Fitch, handing me a gadget that looks like a wired staple gun, "the image knows where you are, and you can walk into the data." Suddenly I feel as if I'm flying up a huge river system the researchers have named the Shotton, after a famous Birmingham geologist and archaeologist. "Imagine," says Fitch, a tall graduate student wearing a white T-shirt and jeans, "crossing that channel in a log boat."

Very cool