Posted on 02/23/2009 7:55:54 PM PST by SunkenCiv
It's a mystery that could shed light on life in Hampshire 6,000 years ago. Four Stone Age axes, dating from a time when people had stopped hunting woolly mammoths and sabretoothed tigers and turned to farming, are giving clues to the origins of settled human life in the county. They were found at Hill Head and Titchfield, near Fareham, and at Beaulieu, in the New Forest, and Bartonon- Sea. The tools, which are now in Winchester City Council's collection, have been analysed and found to originate in the north Italian Alps from around 4,000BC... The analysis, undertaken at the British Museum, measured the electro-magnetic radiation in the axes... In 2003, extraction sites for the distinctive and beautiful green stone, known as jadeite, were discovered high up in the North Italian Alps by the pioneering archaeologists, Pierre and Anne-Marie Pétrequin... Researchers believe that jadeite axes were valued not just for their practical uses but also for magical properties. These were conferred by their origin in places where earth meets sky; where this world meets that of the gods and spirits. Comparisons with the continent show that the axes were old when they arrived in Hampshire. Along with the seed corn needed to grow crops, and domesticated animals, the settlers brought their treasured heirlooms to remind them of the magical places far away and to bring good luck in the new land... Meanwhile, a fifth specimen, from Shawford Down, near Winchester, which was recently donated to the museum, was pronounced by researchers to be "probably not Alpine". Further work is under way to see if it might be British.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailyecho.co.uk ...
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Those hi-tech researchers sure belief in a whole lot of magic.
Researchers believe that jadeite axes were valued not just for their practical uses but also for magical properties.
These were conferred by their origin in places where earth meets sky; where this world meets that of the gods and spirits.
About that second sentence: I assume they know what the people in Northern Italy and Britain thought 6000 years ago because they found it written in the instructions they found with the axes or something.
Yeah, I love how they pull that stuff out of their hats (as it were).
...Two groups of quarries (Mont Viso and Mont Beigua, Italy) were the source of the Alpine axeheads that circulated throughout western Europe during the Neolithic. The quarries on Mont Viso (Oncino: Porco, Bulè and Milanese), discovered in 2003, have been radiocarbon-dated, and this has revealed that the exploitation of jadeites, omphacitites and eclogites at high altitude (2000—2400 m above sea level) seems to have reached its apogee in the centuries around 5000 BC. The products, in the form of small axe- and adze-heads, were distributed beyond the Alps from the beginning of the fifth millennium, a few being found as far away as the Paris Basin, 550 km from their source as the crow flies. However, it was not until the mid-fifth millennium BC that long axeheads from Mont Viso appeared in the hoards and monumental tombs of the Morbihan, 800 km from the quarries. Production continued until the beginning of the third millennium BC, but at this time the distribution of the products was less extensive, and the process of distribution operated in a different way: tools made from jadeite and eclogite are still found in the French Jura, but the extraction sites at the south-east foot of Mont Viso no longer seem to have been used. The variability in the geographical extent of the distribution at different times seems to be related to the social context of exploitation of the high-altitude quarries, which were only ever accessible for a few months each year...
Archaeologists are uncovering a huge prehistoric "lost country" hidden below the North Sea.
So far, the team has examined a 23,000-sq-km area of the sea bed - mapping out coastlines, rivers, hills, sandbanks and salt marshes as they would have appeared about 12,000 years ago.
It's a mystery that could shed light on life in Hampshire 6,000 years ago. Four Stone Age axes, dating from a time when people had stopped hunting woolly mammoths and sabretoothed tigers and turned to farming,...
After 5,000 years of not finding any extinct beasts to kill, it is no wonder they quit hunting them. Not that I specically remember ever hunting sabertooths, since it was more a matter of me killing them first, when they were hunting me...otherwise, I wouldn't still be here.
In 2003, extraction sites for the distinctive and beautiful green stone, known as jadeite, were discovered high up in the North Italian Alps by the pioneering archaeologists, Pierre and Anne-Marie Pétrequin... Researchers believe that jadeite axes were valued not just for their practical uses but also for magical properties. These were conferred by their origin in places where earth meets sky; where this world meets that of the gods and spirits.
That kind of stuff I left to the priests and shaman. As for myself, I just looked for good, hard stones I could work, as I crossed the river where the Straits of Dover would eventually be. It was amazing what nice rocks and shiny stones would be washed down from Austria and Germany in the winter floods.
but doesn't that make you feel all spiritual and warm and fuzzy all over...?
Well, in retrospect it does, but at the time I didn't give a hoot. I just didn't want the danged thing to break when I was depending on it to save my neck.
That was how I came up with calling those huge wolves dire wolves.
I was hunting in the area that later would be Nottingham, when a pack got on my trail. I didn't worry too much, as I had my weapons, and knew how to use them. Unfortunately, my spear shaft broke at an inopportune time, and a large splinter wounded my flank, just below the ribs. (I still have the scar, though most people now think it is from a gall bladder surgery)
I had to climb for my life.
The pack kept that tree surrounded for six days, the last three with me out of water.
It was a dire situation, but just as I was losing my last strength, a large hunting/search party from our camp found me.
They have been called dire wolves ever since.
You have reminded me of Otzi, although I realize *you* are much older...
http://www.donsmaps.com/otzi.html
My ancestors came from the same region he did.
Almost older than dirt, but twice as filthy. LOL
wonder how they figured that out?
Scientific Method no doubt
Did Swiss Immigrant Build Stonehenge?An early Bronze Age archer, whose grave was discovered near the stone circle last year, may have helped build the monument. And tests on the chemical components of his tooth enamel showed he grew up in the region that is now Switzerland... The 4,000-year-old man was identified as an archer because of the flint arrowheads found by his body, along with other artifacts belonging to the Beaker Culture that flourished in the Alps during the Bronze Age... The 100 artifacts found in his exceptionally rich grave, discovered about three miles from Stonehenge, indicate he was "obviously a very prominent man" and likely involved in constructing the monument, Wessex Archaeology spokesman Tony Trueman said. Although the indigenous British originally came from mainland Europe, they settled thousands of years before the arrival of the archer, who clearly belonged to a different culture, marked by a new style of pottery, the use of barbed flat arrow heads, copper knives and small gold ornaments. His grave contained teeth and bones as well as two gold hair tresses, three copper knives, flint arrowheads, wrist guards and pottery. The copper knives came from Spain and France. The gold dated to as early as 2470 B.C., the earliest dated gold objects found in Britain.
by Michael McDonough
February 11, 2003
man, even stonehenge was outsourced.
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