 |
||
| · join · view topics · view or post blog · bookmark · post new topic · subscribe · | ||
Posted on 03/19/2010 4:22:22 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
It is just eight inches long, but its discovery changed what we know about prehistoric Europe and our ancestors.
The harpoon, which was found by a Lowestoft fishing trawler in 1931, was yesterday under the lens of a Norwegian television crew, who are making a documentary on the origins of Norway.
It is 14,000 years old, but in perfect condition, the points carved into it still sharp. It would have been used for hunting by modern man in late Paleolithic or early Mesolithic times; a time before written records when people lived in hunter-gatherer communities.
But it is where it was found, 25 miles off the coast of Cromer, that makes it important to history. When it was dredged off the sea bed in 1931, hidden inside a lump of peat, it was taken home by Pilgrim Lockwood, the skipper of the fishing boat Colinda. It later ended up in Norwich's Castle Museum, where it fascinated archaeologists. They thought it might have been dropped by hunters on a fishing expedition. But later tests showed that the freshwater peat it came from would have been on land thousands of years ago. They realised the existence of land in the North Sea, long since drowned, called Doggerland.
(Excerpt) Read more at edp24.co.uk ...
|
||
| · join · view topics · view or post blog · bookmark · post new topic · subscribe · | ||
|
|
|||
Gods |
Thanks sodpoodle! |
||
|
· Discover · Nat Geographic · Texas AM Anthro News · Yahoo Anthro & Archaeo · Google · · The Archaeology Channel · Excerpt, or Link only? · cgk's list of ping lists · |
|||
I can feel that spear talking to me ~ explaining why I, and so many other people, need “Viking Hand” genes!
It is just eight inches long, -that`s about the size of it.
And Hubby is 6' 8" and of most definite Nordic descent. So I'm reading him this piece if his own history, and then we came to
"They are also planning to visit Vince Gaffney, of Birmingham University and an expert in Doggerland. He says that: 'a very real, human tragedy lies behind the loss of this immense landscape', and that with global warming and sea levels rising, it has relevance today."
Which lost us both. Sickening and not science.
Yep. I saw that sentence and said to myself “I KNEW it!! I knew it, I knew it, I knew it!!!”
They always have to ruin these cool articles. shows, etc. with the GW crap. Of course, they could also have talked about “as the earth continually changes, this is a great opportunity to see how humans have adapted to the changing conditions and how they responded to the environment around them, blah, blah, blah”.
Well said.
http://www.archive.org/stream/earthupheaval010880mbp/earthupheaval010880mbp_djvu.txt
EARTH IN UPHEAVAL
EXCERPT:
The North Sea
The stormy North Sea, bordered by Scotland, England,
the Low Countries, Germany, Denmark, and Norway, is a very recent basin. The geologists assume that the area
was once before occupied by a sea, but that early in the
Ice Age the detritus carried from Scotland and Scandi-
navia filled it, so that there was no sea left: it was all
turned into land. The river Rhine flowed through this
land and the Thames was its tributary; the mouth of the
river was somewhere near Aberdeen.
In post-glacial times, so it is assumed, in the Subboreal
period, which began about 2000 years before the present
era and endured to about 800, large parts of the area
were added to the sea. The Atlantic Ocean sent its waters
along the Scottish and Norwegian shores, and also through
the Channel that had been formed only a short while
before. Human artifacts and bones of land animals were
dredged from the bottom of the North Sea; and along
the shores of Scotland and England, as well as on the
Dogger Bank in the middle of the sea, stumps of trees with
their roots still in the ground were found. Forty-five miles from the coast, from a depth of thirty-six meters, Norfolk fishermen drew up a spearhead carved from the antler of a deer, embedded in a block of peat. 1 This artifact dates from the Mesolithic or early Neolithic Age and serves as one of many proofs that the area covered by the North Sea was a place of human habitation not many thousands of years ago. From the analysis of the pollens found in the peat taken from the bottom of the sea, the conclusion was reached that these forests existed in not too remote times. It has also been assumed that the building of large areas of the North Sea in the Subboreal period resulted from a rather sudden sinking of the land, which some authorities date at about 1500, or a little earlier, at the same time that floods destroyed the lake dwellings of central Europe.
If we consider that Phoenician vessels were already
visiting the Atlantic coast of Europe in the days of the
Middle Kingdom in Egypt, or before 1500, we begin
to see in its historical perspective the catastrophe that
spread the North Sea over inhabited land. The submerged
land must have been occupied by human settlements of
the Mesolithic and Neolithic ages, whereas Egypt and
Phoenicia had already reached the Middle Bronze.
The sea did not slowly encroach, finally to evict the
population of the settlements; it entered the land without
much warning, and sent its dark billows rolling to find
new barriers. The Dogger Bank may have stood out for
some time longer, but at last it, too, was taken over by
the sea...
PUBLISHED IN 1956
Was this a keychain for the SUV. Obviously the norsmen were up to no good to cause all of that sea level rising.
BTW, ping.
Sorry about hijacking the thread, I love ancient history, please add me to your ping list.
we find those here all the time in 6,000-7000 year old sites here.
Scientifically, at least THAT would have been honest as well as the truth.
Atlantis! (Or perhaps Antlertis?)
I could see how something like this, which no doubt occured in other areas, could account for the Atlantis story. With some embellishments of course. But, looking at that harpoon from 14,000 years ago, it is an amazing piece of work!
Just a weird coincidence. ;’)
Thanks.
Here's another fun fact for Mr. Tragedy. When Doggerland was actually dry land back when this object was left it would have been tundra as temps were still recovering from the last ice age. So, would he like to avoid his "human tragedy" by trading his verdant modern England for subarctic tundra to recover Doggerland???
.
Ping of interest
14,000 year old regifted fruitcake discovered
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
