UK's Oldest Cemetery Identified

guardian.co.uk ^ | Maeve Kennedy

[foolscap]

Maeve Kennedy Wednesday September 24, 2003 The Guardian

A narrow cave in a gorge in Somerset has been identified as the oldest cemetery in Britain, used by generations of people from one area in the Mendips just after the last ice age, 10,000 years ago. Scientific tests, released yesterday, showed it had been sealed and abandoned more than 6,000 years before the first stone of the pyramids of Egypt was laid. The site, Aveline's Hole, is unique in Britain and earlier than anything similar on mainland Europe.

According to legend it was found in 1797 by two boys so determined to catch the rabbit they were chasing, that they took a pickaxe to the hole in the rock it escaped through and found a cavern full of skeletons.

Some accounts say that up to 100 skeletons were found neatly laid out in rows but tourists and amateur archaeologists flocked to the site, and the bones were scattered. Hundreds were stored at Bristol University but destroyed by a bomb during the second world war. Fragments survived there and in other museum collections.

Peter Marshall of English Heritage's scientific dating service, which commissioned the first comprehensive tests on the bones, said the results were remarkable. "People in early Mesolithic Britain were creating what we can recognise as a cemetery thousands of years earlier than has previously been thought. Although late Mesolithic cemeteries have been found on the continent, none have been recognised over here," he said.

The tests showed that the men, women and children buried in the cave were small and strong and ate meat. They rarely lived to be older than 50 and were tormented with bad teeth, rheumatic pains and osteoarthritis.

[RightWhale]

Their direct descendants probably live in the nearby village, still tending their gardens in the same spots.

[pepsi_junkie]

The tests showed that the men, women and children buried in the cave were small and strong and ate meat. They rarely lived to be older than 50 and were tormented with bad teeth, rheumatic pains and osteoarthritis.

Heh. British people with bad teeth 10,000 years ago. Guess some things never change. :)

[LibKill]

Heck of a life back then, no dentists.

No, I don't like going to the dentist, but a toothache is a lot worse.

[Pearls Before Swine]

They rarely lived to be older than 50 and were tormented with bad teeth, rheumatic pains and osteoarthritis.

The famous phrase that comes to mind concerning prehistoric life is "nasty, brutish... and short."

[blam]

Earliest British Cemetery Dated (10,000+ Years)

Cheddar Man

[foolscap]

LOL

[GladesGuru]

One more site supporting Raymond Dart's "Ostio-dento-keratic" hypotheses. For a remarkable read, try Robert Ardrey's "African Genesis". It was on the New York Slimes Best Seller list for many a week - and it is footnoted non-fiction. Now that's a wordsmith!

As to the significance of the finding that the owners of the skeletons ate meat, Dart's hypotheses was that man has evolutionarily selected behavioral predispositions foremost of which are: in group amnity and out group emnity needed to maintain hunting territiories, that man is an armed, social carnivore, and that the weapon was the femor of a mid-sized antelope while the jaw of a smaller antelope was the knife.

The book lists sites where meat was found to be 90% to nearly 100% of the diet. As these sites were some 200 times older than the one in this article, it is interesting that man seemed to prefer a meat diet for so long a time.

Indeed, meat was the prefered diet long before we were Homo sapiens. Dart was working Australopithicine sites.

Dart's hypothesis is a an interesting one, but so loaded politically and philosophically, that only the Journal of Linguistics and Anthropology (published original at the University of Miami, assuming they haven't trashed it by now) dared to publish it.

Interestingly, Ardrey's Territorial Imperitave is widely used in the Grove of the Academe. His far more important African Genesis and his The Hunting Hypotheses are virtually never used by academics.

Wonderous indeed are the ways of the denizens of the Grove of the Academe.

[Age of Reason]

The famous phrase that comes to mind concerning prehistoric life is "nasty, brutish... and short."

I am not so sure.

Just why is it mankind suffers from tooth decay?

One would think that evolution would not allow a life form to evolve with a defect--especially a defect so serious as one that affects the organism's ability to eat.

something is wrong.

And, I suspect it's diet--I suspect the people in this grave ate things they weren't evolved to eat.

[Cowboy Bob]

Peter Marshall of English Heritage's scientific dating service...

Wow, everyone is getting into the matchmacking business nowadays!

(its a joke!)

[Age of Reason]

At what time in the fossil record do we begin to detect evidence of tooth decay?

[Leroy S. Mort]

Just why is it mankind suffers from tooth decay?
One would think that evolution would not allow a life form to evolve with a defect--especially a defect so serious as one that affects the organism's ability to eat.

British dental problems just have a longer history than we thought, is all....

[LibKill]

"The famous phrase that comes to mind concerning prehistoric life is "nasty, brutish... and short."

I am not so sure.

Just why is it mankind suffers from tooth decay?

One would think that evolution would not allow a life form to evolve with a defect--especially a defect so serious as one that affects the organism's ability to eat.

something is wrong.

And, I suspect it's diet--I suspect the people in this grave ate things they weren't evolved to eat.

Fair enough, but you are forgetting one classic principle of evolution.

After you reproduce, evolution is finished with you.

Humans can reproduce before age 16. And they can live a few years beyond that even with their teeth rotting and poisoning their bodies.

Fortunately, we now have intelligence, and dentists.

[blam]

This may interest you.

The Neanderthal Theory

[Age of Reason]

Fair enough, but you are forgetting one classic principle of evolution.

After you reproduce, evolution is finished with you.

Humans can reproduce before age 16. And they can live a few years beyond that even with their teeth rotting and poisoning their bodies.

I don't buy it--I suspect humans may well be able to have healthy teeth into their 50's and beyond, and without dentists.

Providing people eat those things they evolved to eat.

[LibKill]

I don't buy it--I suspect humans may well be able to have healthy teeth into their 50's and beyond, and without dentists.

Providing people eat those things they evolved to eat.

You could be right. I have frequently been wrong.

It does make me wonder what we were meant to eat.

Let's start by considering our jaw muscles. As mammals our size go, our jaw muscles are not impressive, but not weak.

Let us now consider our teeth. Incissors for biting off chunks, canines and bicuspids for tearing, molars for grinding. Just going by the teeth I would say that we are omnivores (critters who can eat durn near everything).

So, where did we go wrong?

[billorites]

"men, women and children buried in the cave were small and strong and ate meat. They rarely lived to be older than 50 and were tormented with bad teeth, rheumatic pains and osteoarthritis"

French Canadian?

[AgThorn]

[Age of Reason]

I asked my dentist this question.

He singled-out sugar as being the biggest culprit.

Next comes bread--even bread without sugar (read the labels of store-bought bread, and you will see corn syrup listed among the ingredients; corn syrup is a cheap form of sugar; and in today's processed food, sugar or corn syrup is EVERYWHERE--check you canned or frozen vegetables labels, for example; you ever see that "extra sweet" corn in cans? I'll bet it's extra sweet because they put more sugar in the can!).

Even without sugar, bread forms a paste in the mouth which sticks to teeth.

The starch in the bread then breaks down to sugar, forming an ideal breeding ground for bacteria, whose acid secretions rot your teeth.

He told me plain meat and most vegetable do not cause teeth to rot.

As I recall, early European explorers to the Polynesian Islands found that native people did not suffer from tooth decay.

Later, when those navtives adopted a European diet, decay became rampant.

In one island--I think it in Tahiti--the favorite breakfast in the mid-twentieth century was toast soaking in a bowl of coffee, to which so much sugar had been added as to form a paste.

Needless to say, they no longer have perfect teeth.

I suspect the fossil record will show a close correlation between the advent of agriculture and an epidemic of tooth decay.

[LibKill]

I suspect the fossil record will show a close correlation between the advent of agriculture and an epidemic of tooth decay.

I think you may be onto something here. Evolution is OLD. Agriculture is very recent (in historical ages).

We have to put up with things that our remote ancestors were not built for.

Consider driving. Consider the instant reaction time needed to get out of the way of some idiot who breaks right-of-way. Consider the thousands of casualties per year in the USA.

Maybe evolution is still ongoing.