Bronze Age 'Facebook' discovered by Cambridge experts

Cambridge News ^ | May 2012 | Leanne Ehren

[SunkenCiv]

Mark Sapwell believes he has discovered an 'archaic version' of social networking site Facebook.

Mark Sapwell, who is a PhD archaeology student at St John's College, believes he has discovered an "archaic version" of the social networking site, where users share thoughts and emotions and give stamps of approval to other contributions -- similar to the Facebook "like".

Images of animals and events were drawn on the rock faces in Russian and Northern Sweden to communicate with distant tribes and descendants during the Bronze Age.

They form a timeline preserved in stone encompassing thousands of years.

Mr Sapwell said: "Like a Facebook status invites comment, the rock art appears very social and invites addition -- the way the variations of image both mirror and reinterpret act as a kind of call and response between different packs of hunters across hundreds -- even thousands -- of years."

The two sites he is investigating, Zalavruga in Russia and Nämforsen in Northern Sweden, contain around 2,500 images each of animals, people, boats, hunting scenes and even early centaurs and mermaids.

He is using the latest technology to analyse the different types, traits and tropes in the thousands of images imprinted on the two granite outcrops, where the landscapes of early Bronze Age art stretch across areas of rock the size of football pitches.

Mr Sapwell, 28, explained: "These sites are on river networks, and boat is likely how these Bronze Age tribes travelled.

"The rock art I'm studying is found near rapids and waterfalls, places where you would have to maybe leave the river and walk around -- carrying your animal-skin canoe on your back -- natural spots to stop and leave your mark as you journey through, like a kind of artistic tollbooth."

[muawiyah]

It's been within living memory that the top archaeologists and paleontologists thought the Sa'ami (and others) in the Sapma were thought to be just runaways from the more heavily populated Scandinavian South.

More recently (just months ago) a cut stone foundation for a more permanent dwelling was found in Southern Norway and identified as ............ well, fur shur, something far older than Norse ~ but they weren't quite ready to match that up with the known Sa'ami artifacts found in the same region.

So, nothing firm on that yet, but even Alaska is turning up foundations and artifacts more typical of NE Asia, but older!

The North was warmer in the past.

[SunkenCiv]

Yes it was, and multiple times; someone I know online stated that according to records, his Scandinavian ancestors traded with eastern Asia by sailing to and from the Bering Strait in the Arctic Ocean during the long summers of the medieval warming period.

[muawiyah]

Bering, on his first trip East, sailed most of the way ~ but there were only limited windows without problems with ice.

[2ndDivisionVet]

“And just like many of the Facebook users and employees, the long-dead cavemen & women will vote for Mr. Obama in November” he added.

[SunkenCiv]

:’D