The Stone Age impressions were remarkably well preserved (Photo: Museum Lolland-Falster)
Posted on 11/15/2014 5:07:29 PM PST by SunkenCiv
Archaeologists working on the excavations for the Femern Bælt Tunnel have discovered several well-preserved footprints dating back to the Stone Age.
The prints were left by fishermen looking to safeguard their weirs (river barriers used for fishing) in a storm 5,000 years ago, announced Lolland-Falster Museum.
"It is quite surreal to have found human footprints," said archaeologist Terje Stafseth in a press release.
"We normally find historical clues in the form of human waste, but here we have found an entirely different clue and a first in Danish archaeology: a physical print left behind by a human."
Prints belonged to fishermen
The footprints were found alongside a metre-long system of fishing weirs used to feed a nearby Stone Age community.
The discovery of the prints' close proximity to the weirs, suggest the fishermen attempted to safeguard their constructions before a flood came in and covered it all with sand.
Judging by the size of the prints, at least two people waded out into the silted seabed in an attempt to salvage what they could. With every step, the sand left behind by the flooding got pushed further into the bed to leave behind the tell-tale prints.
The surviving weirs were subsequently set up further away.
"Our investigations have shown that these Stone Age inhabitants repeatedly repaired and moved the system of weirs to improve their overall efficiency," continued Terje Stafseth
"We can follow the footprints, sense the importance of these weirs and know they would have been an important source of nutrition for the coastal community."
Lolland-Falster Museum are hopeful the prints will shed further light on the past in the days to come.
(Excerpt) Read more at cphpost.dk ...
The Stone Age impressions were remarkably well preserved (Photo: Museum Lolland-Falster)
The first muslim in Denmark.
Danish archaeologists find 5,000-year-old human footprints
http://sciencenordic.com/danish-archaeologists-find-5000-year-old-human-footprints
There is a Viking graveyard called Lindholm Hoje near Aalborg, which sits near a huge fjord. One day in the 11th century, a sandstorm blew in and buried some farm fields near the edge of the graveyard. A local villager drove a two-wheeled carriage over the field, probably in an attempt to flee the storm. The sand covered the field and the tracks for almost a thousand years until 1956 when archeologists began excavating the site. You can see the carriage tracks and the footprints of the owner plainly. It is eerie to think that you’re looking at traces of a man who was alive around the time of the Battle of Hastings.
Nice! Stuff like that really makes archaeology come alive. One of the first explorers of “ice age” caves found the impressions of bare feet in the moist clay — impressions kept fresh by the conditions, but 10s of 1000s of years old.
Beer cans. Sandwich wrappers. Lure packaging. Cigar butts.
Just the normal stuff fisherfolk always leave behind.
Five-thousand-year-old stink bait must be truly pungent.
As a boy in Western Denmark, I often found prehistoric fishing lures and rigs snagged in the bushes and under bridges near fishing hot spots.
That dude looks like a young John Boehner.
Lutefisk and Surstremming, although undoubtedly pungent, are not to be characterized as "stink bait."
Denigrating these Viking Culinary Treats could cause Scandinavians a serious loss of self-esteem and cause them to retaliate by awarding serious assklowns like Al Gore and Barak Hussein Obama, Jr. (or II) Nobel Prizes.
(Nobody ever caught anything on a freakin’ spoon. Shh! Don’t tell the “Daredevle” people.)
Let's Finnish this argument later. Although I must commend the Mepps people for their expensive lures' uncanny ability to get hung up in overhead wires on bridges. Fisherman trying to retrieve them often drown, providing proletarian youngsters with free Mepps Hats AND Creels.
One must also applaud Mepps for making such nice creels even though their lures are quite useless for actually catching fish. "Damned sporting of them," say I!
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