No Flint In Paleo Britain?

[Sam Salmon]

A quote from this article baffles me-these people didn't have tool making material and humped it all the way from present-day Eurolandia?

During question time after the lecture the domestication of reindeer was discussed as the palaeolithic people of Scotland needed something to assist with the transportation of flint from Northern Europe to Scotland.

[JSteen]

That caught my eye too. No flint in Britain?? Maybe no flint in Scotland and an assumption that they never went south but just came straight across from Europe?

I'm glad you asked because I'm very curious.

[Minimalist]

Well.....


http://www.aberdeenshire.gov.uk/archaeo ... /flint.asp

[JSteen]

so, not a lot of flint in Scotland? Have they found flint tools there that they can say for sure came from elsewhere?

[Digit]

There appears to be something of a contradiction here. The articles states that Doggerland was flooded 9k yrs ago 'when the glaciers melted'.
Fine, but 16k yrs ago Scotland was supposed to be covered in ice!

Roy.

[Minimalist]

Maybe the ice only covered the flint....or maybe the ice selectively moved the flint to Britain....along with those stones for Stonehenge?

[uniface]

Never a serious moment, eh ?

On this side of the globe, tools of Knife River Chalcedony (source in the Dakotas) turn up washed ashore from now-sunken Paleo habitation sites off the Gulf Coast in Texas. Long-range transport and use of high quality chert during the Paleo era here is one of its identifying features.

[Sam Salmon]

The article as linked seems to be about a discussion by some amateurs like ourselves-uninformed folks speculating.

[kbs2244]

Capitalism sometimes works in strange ways.
I was for a while involved with a company that did real time weighing of product moving along a conveyor belt.
The application we worked on was weighing how much gravel came off a bulk gravel carrying ship.
The ships were coming from Nicaragua to New Orleans to deliver fill at the end of the New Orleans airport main runway.
It was cheaper to bring rocks from Nicaragua then to truck it down from Arkansas and through town.
(There isn’t much stone in Louisiana.)

Of course, this assumes boat commerce.

[JSteen]

Wait, so the article is saying that Scotland was under ice 16K years ago but these guys followed reindeer herds over the ice to Scotland, bringing their flint tools with them (as they couldn't get Scottish flint because it was under a lot of ice). They dropped the tools for whatever reason and when the ice melted the tools ended up on the ground - to be found today. Is that it? And they know they're 16K old by their style?

[Digit]

I doubt Reindeer would live on ice actually.

Roy.

[Rokcet Scientist]

I doubt Reindeer would live on ice actually.

Indeed. Reindeer live on halfway thawed permafrost ground and sustain themselves with mosses. Mosses don't grow on ice.

[Minimalist]

All of which demands the question......why would anyone live on top of a glacier in the first place?

[Digit]

So one date or 'tother would seem to be in error Min.

Roy.

[Minimalist]

At the least....