Scotland's most ancient home found – at 14,000 years old

The Scotsman ^ | Apr. 10, 2009 | Jenny Haworth

[decimon]

AMATEUR archaeologists have uncovered evidence of Scotland's oldest human settlement, dating back 14,000 years. The team dug up tools that have been shown to date from the end of the last Ice Age.

It is the first time there has been proof that humans lived in Scotland during the upper paleolithic period.

[wildbill]

“To know there is hard evidence that human beings had settled in the Biggar area some 14,000 years ago is quite inspiring, and helps put modern life into a bit of perspective,” she said.

Perhaps this statement is a little ‘over the top’ as they say, but it does Biggar the mind.

[Tax-chick]

In this case, that would be “fascinating prehistory.”

[blam]

Professor Stephen Oppenheimer,in his book, Origins Of The British says that the folks with U5a DNA in Scotland and Finland are (even today) so closely related that they had to have been in physical contact at one time in this area. He speculates that the 'homeland' of these folks probably was centered in an area presently under the North Sea and as the waters rose, they were slowly split into two groups.

On a personal note, my dad's mom (Mrs Smith) has mtDNA U5a as does 9,000 year old Cheddar Man.

BTW, there is also a 23,000 year old Cheddar Man too. (Don't know anything about him)

[Pharmboy]

Thought you might like to see what the North Sea looked like back then...

[blam]

Excellent, thanks.

The U5a's may have been settled on the banks of the river designated as the Norwegian Trench today.

Also see, as Oppenheimer explains, the Rhine and Thames were once the same river.

[blam]

Mapping Doggerland

[blam]

Haplogroup U5

The oldest mtDNA in Europe which is human (i.e. Homo Sapiens and not Neanderthal or other archaic individual) is U5 and U8a (see below). The age of U5 is estimated at 50,000 but could be as old as 60,500 years. Approximately 11% of total Europeans and 10% of European-Americans are in haplogroup U5.

The presence of haplogroup U5 in Europe pre-dates the expansion of agriculture in Europe. Bryan Sykes' popular book The Seven Daughters of Eve says it shows up 45,000-50,000 years ago in Delphi, Greece and named the originator of haplogroup U5 Ursula. It shows that U5 is the first out of Africa into Europe, and that it shows up as the first Europeans in two places, Delphi and Spain around 50,000 years ago.

By another source haplogroup U5, age is estimated at about 52,000 kya, being the oldest subclade of haplogroup U.[8]

Haplogroup U5 and its subclades U5a and U5b form the highest population concentrations in the far north, in Sami, Finns, and Estonians, but it is spread widely at lower levels throughout Europe. This distribution, and the age of the haplogroup, indicate individuals from this haplogroup were part of the initial expansion tracking the retreat of ice sheets from Europe ~10kya.

Haplogroup U5 is found also in small frequencies and at much lower diversity in the Near East and parts of Africa, suggesting back-migration of people from northern Europe to the south.[1]

Mitochondrial haplogroup U5a has also been associated with HIV infected individuals displaying accelerated progression to AIDS and death.[9]

U5 and U6 are "sister mtDNA groups" with a common ancestor (probably in West Asia).

[SunkenCiv]

a wee update:

Hunters' remains earliest known
by George Topp
Nov 19 2009

Scotland's foremost amateur archaeologist, Tam Ward of Biggar Archaeology Group, was guest speaker at the November meeting of Lanark and District Archaeological Society.

The subject of Tam's talk was about the excavation work at Howburn Farm, near Elsrickle, which turned out to be the most important dig in Scotland this year.

Tam related how the site had been discovered through diligent field walking. Initially, Tam thought the site was early Neolithic but a talk with an expert in pre-history revealed the amazing fact that some of the tools that Tam and his team had discovered were about 16,000 years old (later Paleolithic)... Tools fashioned by the people of the palaeolithic period in Scotland were similar to those produced in Denmark, Northern Germany and Holland. They came to Scotland chasing the herds of migrating reindeer and living off their meat and utilising their hides for clothing. No reindeer remains were found was due to the high acidity of the Scottish soil...

Tam also said that investigations of what would have been a nearby lake had not revealed any evidence of the vegetation of the period. Maybe the vegetation such as it was would be similar to the Tundra in Lapland and the landscape would be treeless. He also indicated the glaciers returned to the Howburn area and that accounted for some of the flints being buried in what appear to be natural soil.

[decimon]

Did he find any scozzafava? As far as I can tell, ‘scozzafava’ should mean ‘Scottish broad bean.’ I just knew you’d want to know that. ;-)

[SunkenCiv]

:’)