The archaeology thread

Since we don't seem to have a thread for this topic, let's make one, and start it off with this story:

Incestuous kings may have built Ireland’s Newgrange passage tomb: Ancient DNA from 44 people sheds light on Ireland's Neolithic political hierarchy.

This find seems to corroborate an ancient myth that has been around for 5,000 years. Some rumours really never die.

A more likely explanation is coincidence. But the DNA analysis of the individual from 3000 BCE, revealing that his parents had been siblings, is interesting.

No. Oral history can and does warp and change, but there's always a backbone of the original message running through it.

That legend has it: the god-rulers who practiced sibling sex rites to keep the sun? Pans out. Granted, it's a very barebones version that focus on one set being ultra special (and weird). And the tone of the tale has gone from religious to salacious with other distortions.

But, the backbone is still there.

Is it possible the god-king part came later, as a mythologizing for a founding dynasty?

<points at Egypt, Mespotamia, the Yellow River and others>

Priest-kings who claim a semi-divine heritage in their actual day? Common as muck.

Heck, Greek legends are rife with leaders descended from various gods. And incest (be it divine, mortal, foretold, deliberate and/or accidental).

In short: the Hapsburgs definitely weren't the first to work out the whole "keep the holdings and titles in the family or lose them" thing. And, even they used the whole "divine right of God-backed bagsie" to explain why.

Encouraging others to not accumulate power while you do for special reasons turns out to older than dirt. Who knew?

Edited by Euodiachloris on Jun 22nd 2020 at 12:42:18 PM

[[https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/jun/22/vast-neolithic-circle-of-deep-shafts-found-near-stonehenge Vast neolithic circle of deep shafts found near Stonehenge: prehistoric structure spanning 1.2 miles in diameter is masterpiece of engineering, say archaeologists]]

It surrounds Durrington Walls, another large henge, and is now the largest prehistoric structure in England. It lays about 2 miles north-east of Stonehenge.

Fascinating. One wonders what, if anything, were in the pits. I also wonder if there are more "Stonehenges" to be found in the surrounding area.

The neolithic was such a fascinating time period. It was just around the time of Otzi the Iceman, over in Italy. Tribes were becoming Chiefdoms, and Cheifdoms the first states. The use of copper was spreading, and the Indo-European language, although neither would have reached Briton by this point. So much change, so many stories that have been lost.

Doggerland... sooooooo much potentially yet to be found.

My money is on finding the precursors to the stonehenges under the Channel and through into Denmark.

The flood that created the Straight of Dover occurred 425,000 years ago, a bit before the neolithic.

OK, I get it now. Still, Doggerland land bridge was flooded over 8000 years ago, still well before the construction of Stonehenge.

Edited by DeMarquis on Jun 22nd 2020 at 2:39:00 PM

Yes. I know.

The henges weren't exactly built this side of AD. And quite a lot before it.

You know... like about the time the pyramids were roughly built (give or take). And the pyramids got a lot of build-up.

In short: the culture(s) took a while to get there. Bet many of the steps didn't happen where we can easily see them.

I'm waiting for the rough European equivalent of pre-dynastic Egypt/Sudan to get found. I mean, that which isn't in the Balkans. Or Alps.

Edited by Euodiachloris on Jun 22nd 2020 at 7:55:31 PM

I see. But I personally do not think those are equivalent cases. Dynsastic Egypt (which didn't appear until the 3rd millennia BCE) was an artifact of a full on centralized state, after they had adopted copper. I don't believe that anything on the same scale could have existed in Briton, even at the exact same time. It didn't have anywhere near the population density of Egypt at that time.

In other words, the Durrington Walls are the predecessors of what would have come later, had the Bell Beaker Culture arrived and displaced everyone.

Focussing so much on metals forgets other leaps: baskets/weaving and pottery (without pottery know-how, forget working copper/ bronze or jumping on iron like sub-Saharan Africa did thanks to a tin-shortage — zinc? Loads of — buuuuut...).

Northern and Western Europe also had the receding of the glaciers: expansions into the new areas would have meant quite a lot of innovation, never mind the losses because of same. Even if these innovations were likely "just" with sod, leather, wool, wood, ivory, horn and bone.

Architecture doesn't need to rely on nails. Europe got really good with drywall, wattle-and-daub and pegged timber. Some of how it got there will be down bellow our current sea level.

Edited by Euodiachloris on Jun 22nd 2020 at 8:36:10 PM

I don't think anything we could find below sea level will be particularly more exiting than what we find on the surrounding coasts. It would be mostly hunter gatherer sites, just like the rest of Europe. Megaliths are only about 7,000 years old, while Doggerland was flooded about a thousand years earlier, so I wouldn't expect much in the way of megaliths, either. There is certainly not going to be some sunk civilisation similar to pre-dynastic Egypt.

Just to be clear, there were older megaliths, but megalith building only reached the Atlantic around 5000 BC, a thousand years after the Doggerbank sank.

Edited by Redmess on Jun 22nd 2020 at 9:54:50 PM

The flooding is the main reason why it's all-too easy to write off the very early development of large sites. Some would probably have been coming along very nicely on this lovely, connected (loads o' wide rivers well beyond their rapid stages), flat (relatively easy to clear or build duckboards and frames on) expanse of game-stone-and-timber-rich land, even if only as large, semi-seasonal/ semi-permanent things. Then *whoosh* an apocalypse large and clear enough to make the Bronze Age Collapse look embarrassed happened and set everything back a hell of a lot.

But, not all will have been wiped. Many later cultures will have had clusters of surviving refugees as some of their seeds.

Edited by Euodiachloris on Jun 22nd 2020 at 9:11:47 AM

I'm not exactly sure what you are expecting to find there. At the time, most of that area would have been covered by glaciers. We are talking sub-Arctic tundra here. There wouldn't be settlements, because everyone in the region was a hunter gatherer. Most of them would have simply moved out as the area flooded.

It is not exactly going to be Atlantis down there, is what I'm saying. Expect old camp fires, bones, and stone tools. Which have been dredged up plenty.

Dogger wasn't glaciers. Hadn't been for ages.

It was rich marsh. With hippos.

Think Belgium: lots of flat and floody, but many bits fairly dry year round. But with quite a lot of African animals who got there thanks to the Iberian-not-yet-a-peninsula. Note: we're also African animals.

The highlands (Britain and France) were still fairly icy, but not the lowlands (Doggerland and the Netherlands).

Edited by Euodiachloris on Jun 22nd 2020 at 9:25:35 AM

Actually, hippos in that part of Europe became extinct before Doggerland emerged...

Then why do elephant (not mammoth) tusks and hippo teeth regularly get dredged up dating from Dogger days, pray tell?

Presumably from earlier periods when the land was dry, or else washed into the ocean from rivers.

Alternatively, waves o' hippos (or they didn't fully die out all over — to become resurgent when possible). Because if it was a case of exposed earlier artefacts, the carbon dating would be a pretty good giveaway.

I think those remains are from interglacials. The drowning of Doggerland would have been at the end of the last glacial period, at which point there certainly wouldn't have been lions or hippos around there.

It does occur to me why, even though the weather would've still been OK, lions, hippos, etc could have run dry before the flood took the last of it all.

Us. Making nice, large bases from which to wipe them out over a couple of hundred years or so.

Ivory (narwal, walrus, elephant or hippo; not picky) is useful. And can be traded raw or carved. And big cats are pains.

Edited by Euodiachloris on Jun 22nd 2020 at 10:50:31 AM

Listen.

Strange tusks lying in coasts distributed by waterflows is no basis for a theory of an era's ecological niche! Supreme empirical deduction derives from a mandate of the evolutionary masses, not from some fangcical aquatic depository!

Oh if I went around claiming I was Cambrian just because some watery horseshoe crab stuck its sting in me, why, they would put me away!

IMPORTANT: I don't actually know what I am talking about I just couldn't resist. That said, I do have a genuine question.

How common is underwater archaeology research in the UK and Europe made? from my understanding it is both the rarest to see done, and also the one that yields the most profound answers for arhaeology.

Underwater archaeology is hard. Which is why we've mostly relied on the fishing industry to accidentally hoist it up until relatively recently.

But, the number of university archaeology departments investing in scuba had started to increase... Dunno what Covid will have done to those programmes, though. <_<

Edited by Euodiachloris on Jun 22nd 2020 at 10:17:55 AM

I don't think the Atlantic coast will be high on the agenda, though. It is hard to justify spending your budget on an underwater site that is likely only going to result in finding more of the stuff you were dredging up anyway.