Posted on 04/07/2011 7:47:12 AM PDT by decimon
A large gap in pre-history could signal that Britain underwent an economic downturn over 2,500 years ago.
In history lessons, the three ages of pre-history - Stone Age, Bronze Age and Iron Age - seem to flow together without a gap.
But there is a 300-year period in British history between around 800 BC and 500 BC where experts still struggle to explain what happened, where bronze is in decline and iron was not widely used.
"By 1000 BC the bronze axe had become almost a proto-currency," says historian and presenter Neil Oliver.
"It was wealth that was divorced from its use as a metal. And, a little like economic bubbles that we see today, it spelt danger.
"Attitudes to bronze were about to change, with dramatic consequences not only for Bronze Age elite, but for all British society.
"By 800 BC, Britain - along with the rest of Europe - was heading for an economic meltdown."
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.co.uk ...
Iron maiden ping.
global warming from all that bronze smelting.
Possible explanations in Worlds in Collision and Ages in Chaos (Immanuel Velikovsky). Good reads.
Dumb Observation department:<
Good bronze polishes up beautifully and can look like gold.
A. Better than a stone axe. Bronze tools were widely used in woodworking, and even by stonemasons. Just have to sharpen them more often than iron ones.
B. Easily. Bronze axeheads can be cast with holes or tangs or sockets. There are plenty or examples. Much more convenient than stone.
Leftists took over for those three hundred years and ground all economic activity to a halt.
You have to axe to find the answer.
Last time I axe you a serial question. And if’n I’da had me a bronze axe, I wouldna hadda axe.
"Mike Baillie is Professor of Palaeoecology at Queens University, Belfast, Northern Ireland. He is an authority on tree rings and their use in dating ancient events (every year, a tree adds a "ring" to its trunk as it grows - good years are represented by thick rings while bad years are represented by thin rings). He conducted a complete (and continuous) review of annual global tree growth patterns over the last 5,000 years and found that there were five major environmental shocks that were witnessed worldwide. These shocks were reflected in the ring widths being very thin. Wanting to know more, he turned to human historical records, and found that the years in question (between 2354 and 2345 BC, 1628 and 1623 BC, 1159 and 1141 BC, 208 and 204 BC, and AD 536 and 545) all corresponded with "dark ages" in civilisation."
Now I’m gonna go over this real slow-like, son. None a them dates is between 800 and 500 BC. ;-)
Okay. I blew it. I Zipped through it in to big of a hurry.
(What's a little BC and a little AC amoungst friends?)
They do mention climate as a possible factor so maybe something ‘environmental’ did happen.
The good old English pioneers swung the axe sparingly — the method used around these parts — by homesteaders, not lumberjacks — was to girdle all the trees in the area to be cleared. That killed ‘em. The bark was left right around the trunk. After everything was nice and dry, as many fires as could be handled by the number of people in the family were started, which burned the circumference, reducing it, and thereby reducing the number of cuts needed to fell the trees. No reason to think that’s a particularly new technique to the 19th c. :’)
Bronze is plenty tough enough to chop down a tree, it would just require more sharpening. Also, stone axe heads continued to be made for stuff like this, because stone was still easy to find (kinda like now) and dirt cheap. Attaching handles to bronze was done the same way it is done with ferrous axe heads, but also the techniques used to put a stone head on a handle were used.
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I saw AC/BC during their last tour. Wait, what?
Hey, good idea, this could be pingworthy on the Catastrophism list.
That Stonehenge concert was classic.
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