Aerial view of the archaeological site excavated at Bar Hill.Photograph: ©Mola/HeadlandInfrastructure
Posted on 06/19/2022 8:32:17 AM PDT by SunkenCiv
Archaeologists working near the site of an iron age home near Cambridge were perplexed when they uncovered a vast trove of frog skeletons. Quite why more than 8,000 bones had been piled up and preserved is a prehistoric mystery.
They were all recovered from a single 14-metre-long ditch, right next to the site of an iron age roundhouse at Bar Hill, where there was a settlement during the middle and late iron age (400BC-AD43)...
It is unlikely that these amphibians had been eaten by the people living at the settlement. The archaeologists say that, while there is evidence of amphibian consumption in Britain dating to the stone age, these bones have no cuts or burn marks. If the frogs had been boiled, however, this may not have left traces.
Evidence of charred grain found near the site suggests that its inhabitants were processing crops that would attract pests such as beetles and aphids, which frogs are known to eat. So perhaps the frogs were drawn to the area by the promise of food, the archaeologists suggest.
Other potential explanations include “a prehistoric frog tragedy”. The archaeologists say that frogs are known to move in large numbers in spring in search of breeding waters and these could have fallen into the ditch and become trapped.
According to one hypothesis, the unusual death toll might also have been caused by winter hardship. While hibernating frogs sometimes hide in the mud, extreme cold can kill them and perhaps they fell victim to a particularly severe winter...
(Excerpt) Read more at theguardian.com ...
Aerial view of the archaeological site excavated at Bar Hill.Photograph: ©Mola/HeadlandInfrastructure
Amphibian ‘death pit’ filled with 8,000 bones unearthed in Iron Age village
By Owen Jarus published 3 days ago
https://www.livescience.com/amphibian-death-pit-iron-age-village
In before, or, well, at the same time as the cartoon singing frog reference.
If we took the bones out, it wouldn’t be crunchy!
Singing Frogs,,,
French I’d imagine.
They put the whiz in Whizzo.
Please tell us this road project is not going to be held up by frog bones.
Was there an outbreak of warts in the village and blamed on the frogs?
If the researchers find fillet of a fenny snake, eye of newt, wWool of bat, tongue of dog, adder's fork, blind-worm's sting, lizard's leg and howlet's wing, they'll know what was really going on.
I lol'd
Maybe frogs were sacred back then.
Frogs jumped in and couldn’t get out
Were they all missing leg bones????
Used to eat frog legs quite often when my kids were young...My son and I would tell my daughters that we’d only cut off one leg of each frog so that it would just swim in circles and we could get it easy the next time we went out...
Anyone remember that classic B horror movie “No Blade of Grass”. A frog infestation was a major plot point.
The people were suffering from some sort of epidemic/pandemic and thought the frogs were the source - just a guess.
Frogpox!!
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