Posted on 04/23/2007 2:29:02 PM PDT by blam
Lost world warning from North Sea
By Sean Coughlan
BBC News education
How a homestead might have looked in the flooded area
Archaeologists are uncovering a huge prehistoric "lost country" hidden below the North Sea. This lost landscape, where hunter gatherer communities once lived, was swallowed by rising water levels at the end of the last ice age.
University of Birmingham researchers are heralding "stunning" findings as they map the "best-preserved prehistoric landscape in Europe".
This large plain had disappeared below the water more than 8,000 years ago.
Scientists at the University of Birmingham have been using oil exploration technology to build a map of the once-inhabited area that now lies below the North Sea - stretching from the east coast of Britain up to the Shetland Islands and across to Scandinavia.
'Terrifying'
"It's like finding another country," says Professor Vince Gaffney, chair in Landscape Archaeology and Geomatics.
Prehistoric rivers, hills and valleys are mapped off the east coast
It also serves as a warning for the scale of impact that climate change can cause, says Professor Gaffney.
Human communities would have lost their homelands as the rising water began to encroach upon the wide, low-lying plains.
"At times this change would have been insidious and slow - but at times it could have been terrifyingly fast. It would have been very traumatic for these people," he says.
"It would be a mistake to think that these people were unsophisticated or without culture... they would have had names for the rivers and hills and spiritual associations - it would have been a catastrophic loss," says Professor Gaffney.
As the temperature rose and glaciers retreated and water levels rose, the inhabitants would have been pushed off their hunting grounds and forced towards higher land - including to what is now modern-day Britain.
The rising water levels began to remake the coastline
"In 10,000 BC hunter gatherers were living on the land in the middle of the North Sea. By 6,000 BC, Britain was an island. The area we have mapped was wiped out in the space of 4,000 years," says Professor Gaffney.
So far the team has examined a 23,000 square kilometre area of the sea bed - mapping out coastlines, rivers, hills, sandbanks and salt marshes as they would have appeared about 12,000 years ago.
And once the physical features have been established, Professor Gaffney says it will be possible to narrow the search for sites that could yield more evidence of how these prehistoric people lived.
These inhabitants would have lived in family groups in huts and hunted animals such as deer.
The mapping of this landscape could also raise questions about its preservation, says Professor Gaffney - and how it can be protected from activities such as pipe-laying and the building of wind farms.
They were hunter gatherers. They arrive in an area, hunt and gather until there isn't much to hunt and gather any more, then move on. Over a scale of hundreds or thousands of years, they would not have noticed the rising water
Did they find any SUVs in there?
 |
||
| · join · view topics · view or post blog · bookmark · post new topic · | ||
Please FREEPMAIL me if you want on or off the
"Gods, Graves, Glyphs" PING list or GGG weekly digest
-- Archaeology/Anthropology/Ancient Cultures/Artifacts/Antiquities, etc.
Gods, Graves, Glyphs (alpha order)
It also serves as a warning that climate change is a natural process of planet Earth.
They’d be in old-folks’ homes, though—and their sight might not be very good anymore.
:-)
Wonder how much peat you'd have to throw on a campfire to melt a glacier.
Cable tools and a walking beam.
It's a miracle anyone escaped with their lives...
You understand it. IMO, we’re still coming out of the Ice Age.
Actually these villages are being looked for (and some found) off of Alaska and Western Canada. The rising sea levels from melting ice (over a mile thick in Seattle and extending all the way to Northern New York). Plus, once all that ice melts the weight off the continent is released and the ground “rebounds” and rises up (and it’s still rising!).
We’re not talking about the relatively limted amount of ice we see today.
Thanks and according to some we are just in a warming stage of the ice age.
http://www.museum.state.il.us/exhibits/ice_ages/when_ice_ages.html
My Brother, Sister and I, all O+, my fathers family came from SW England, we are going to do a DNA to find out where she, as my Brother puts it, got her, African blood, AB is very rare. She has been offered thousands for a pint but she is to old and frail to donate, 88.
Global warming caused by Bush’s ancestors burning too much firewood in ancient England?
English And Welsh Are Races Apart
Now, I'm going to look in my book, Origins Of The British and see what Oppenheimer says about "AB" type blood in the British Isles.
Nope. It was Bush and Rove and Cheney who went back in a time machine to mess up everything in the universe. Didn’t you get the Democrat memo from Moonbat HQ ? See, I just dropped a Cheerio on the floor. That’s Bush’s fault, too. ;-D
I would suspect Sa'ami (Laplanders). The Sa'ami who have the second highest % of blood group 'AB'. The highest is the Bengalis.
Cheddar Man who is 9,000 years old belongs to haplogroup U5 as do most of the Sa'ami. Cheddar Man was found in England.
Ancient DNA (Cheddar Man, Otzi, Etc)
"In 1903, skeletal remains were found in a cave in Cheddar, England. The remains of a 23 year-old man, who was killed by a blow to the face, were discovered to be at least 9,000 years old. Ninety-four years after the discovery of "Cheddar Man", scientists were able to extract mitochondrial DNA from his tooth cavity. Name Haplo Haplotype Cheddar Man U5a 16192T, 16270T
“It also serves as a warning for the scale of impact that climate change can cause, says Professor Gaffney. “At times this change would have been insidious and slow - but at times it could have been terrifyingly fast. It would have been very traumatic for these people,” he says.”
“The area we have mapped was wiped out in the space of 4,000 years,” says Professor Gaffney.”
4k years is “terrifyingly fast”. Enviro whackos never cease their unending propaganda.
Descendant Of Stone Age Skeleton Found (Cheddar Man - 9,000 Years Old)
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.