| Author | Theoretical Channel River Culture. |
rogeralbin
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|  Posted 22-08-2014 at 14:34
The premise for this discussion is that about some 10 000 years ago in the Ireland, Britain, France area on what is now the submerged floor of the Celtic sea there existed a Mesolithic megalithic culture.
Centred on the coastal trade routes and Channel river and Severn. That the culture was destroyed by the rising seas of the glacial melt.
That the monuments we see now aged 6500 years are not a new development but rather mark where the survivors of the previous culture, clinging on by their fingernails, finally arrived in sufficient numbers above our high water mark. In what had been previously marginal uplands of the colder climate peopled by nomadic hunter gathers.
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juamei
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| Posted 22-08-2014 at 15:23
Do you expect this to be a different culture/group to the mesolithic folk whose seemingly non-megalithic traces are spread far and wide across the British Isles?
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sem
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| Posted 22-08-2014 at 19:01
Hi Roger
Have you been a-peeking at some of my private research - I'd better switch off my webcam!
I've been trying to pull strands of other people's research together into a coherent pattern and timeline for Wales from the last ice-age (approx. 25,000yrs BP at its height), with some startling results. Oppenheimer in "The Origins of the British" says that over 50% of people can trace a direct maternal lineage to the first colonisers after this event. Pryor in "Britain BC" says that staff and pupils at a school near Cheddar were checked for a DNA match to 9000yr old "Cheddar Man's" tooth and 2 provided an exact match! Once you start linking this to geological maps and finds for the periods concerned, even without using linguistics it becomes obvious that there is a continuity of culture.
The only thing I have not found anything about for Wales YET is evidence for/against the Bristol Channel being subjected to a tsunami c6200BC. I did come across a reference to a myth for land off Glamorgan being lost to the sea (similar to Cantre'r Gwaelod in Cardigan Bay) but have not been able to find the source of this.
At risk of sounding pompous, I'll end with a quote from my research "This leads to one inevitable question - when the post holes in the car park at Stonehenge were utilised (RC dated from 8500BC to 7650BC) did people in Wales have contact with their builders? The answer is very possibly - especially given that the Bristol Channel was above sea-level at that time."
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davidmorgan
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| Posted 22-08-2014 at 22:05
This is an interesting web page - Europe during the last 150,000 years.
If you're talking about the land mass in the Celtic Sea available for habitation after the Younger Dryas, it appears that the area was not huge (compared with Doggerland) and the time-slot fairly brief with the coastline gradually receding all the time.
The Severn estuary looks like the place. And then the warmer climate of the Late Mesolithic/Early Neolithic creating a boom in human cultural development on the mainland.
I would say it's good guess that there might have been trade routes between Wales and Devon/Somerset in those earlier days. It must have been quite a river there then - I don't know the geological profile, whether it was a torrent or meandering.
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sem
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| Posted 22-08-2014 at 23:11
And this one too. Approx 1/3 of the way down the page entitled "The Europe that Was."
http://www.donsmaps.com/icemaps.html
What struck me here was not the Mesolithic shoreline (8000BC) but the Upper Paleolithic (16000BC).
The start of the Mesolithic (c9500BC) saw an enormous temperature rise, possibly 5degC in 50yrs, so much of the land area would have been lost in a short space of time. The 16000BC shoreline could well be the same as that of c9500BC.
Now, if you consider that archaeological theory still corresponds to or follows on in many ways from that of it's founding fathers and Victorian antiquarians, all of whom lived on a sceptre'd isle, imagine the shock to discover that our ancestors lived in a world where you could follow herds from west of Ireland to Denmark and Frisia. Then, retreating from the ice during the Younger Dryas you could walk in a straight line from the Prescelis to the French-Spanish border.
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davidmorgan
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| Posted 23-08-2014 at 08:45
That's a good page, sem. I don't know if you'd want to be living there in those really earlier times, wasn't it practically tundra then? I wonder when the trees and animals returned.
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sem
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| Posted 23-08-2014 at 11:28
Hi David
There seems to be plenty of suggestions that birch and pine had taken hold just before the Younger Dryas. Francis Pryor says that for a short period of time it was actually warmer than today!
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rogeralbin
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| Posted 23-08-2014 at 17:19
Thanks for the input folks, I'm quite busy this weekend, some of the things that have struck me are 120m depth contour of coast 10 000 BP from Finisterre to Further west than SW Ireland, the 6300 BP Solent forest 30m below present sea level, that the maritime micro climate in the area ought be more benign than Doggereland and the reasoning that "large" constructions must require a greater population density and resources than wandering bands of hunter gatherers. Leading me to speculate that the marine food sources (fish, shellfish, sea birds and sea mammals) as well as the land and river resources in the area may have provided the population density needed for permanent settlements and to embark on the path of monument construction.
[ This message was edited by: rogeralbin on 2014-08-23 17:22 ]
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davidmorgan
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| Posted 24-08-2014 at 09:36
What type of monuments are you thinking of? Is there any evidence of Mesolithic monument building on the mainland? The climate and resources wouldn't have been much different. The littoral folk would have had to keep retreating from the rising sea levels.
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rogeralbin
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| Posted 27-08-2014 at 03:32
Juamei,
not necassarialy a different culture group, simply living a different lifestyle due to location ie Reindeer herders to Oslo dwellers at present.
David Morgan,
Les Fouaillages, Guernsey, (the Neolithic circa 6000 BP), the second phase late mesolithic 6500 BP. Pushing into the oaken forests as of the Solent valley 6300 BP. My argument is that this is representative of upward migration, a time of still sparse frontier population, later when more people had been displaced to the previous frontier and population density allowed ie sufficient muscle they put a 35 ton capstone on La Varde on a 45 foot hill. In the absence of evidence are we to dismiss out of hand what may have happened in the submerged regions?
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davidmorgan
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| Posted 27-08-2014 at 09:19
I don't think the Tardenoisians were up to it -
"One of the most striking facts about the Tardenoisian is its poverty. The bone and antler work is poor and monotomous and art is non-existent." - The Cambridge Ancient History.
Lots of info from the University of Southampton's
"Research project: Neolithic land and seascapes in Guernsey".
"This project aims to investigate changes in settlement, landscape occupation and environment over the course of three millennia in Guernsey (c 5500-2500 BC). In doing so, we also hope to situate the impressive and well-known monumental evidence on the island in its broader landscape context, and to shed light on the initial introduction of Neolithic practices there.
"It is expected that as a result of this detailed regional study, the project will ultimately make a significant contribution to understandings of the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition in north-western Europe more widely, and in particular the mechanisms by which Neolithic practices spread into western France and then across the Channel to Britain".
A graphic (I like graphics)...
[ This message was edited by: davidmorgan on 2014-08-27 20:19 ]
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sem
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| Posted 07-09-2014 at 22:30
Hi Roger
Just shown on C4 and available for a few weeks.
http://www.channel4.com/programmes/time-team-specials/4od
Full of the normal superlatives associated with TV archaeology (why is the subject always discussed from a modern perspective - gold=rich etc) and in many of Sir Tony's monologues factually incorrect, but as ever Francis Pryor and Phil Harding are absolute gems. The reconstruction of the Dover Boat is a superb achievement; especially, when after modern synthetic materials don't do the job, original materials succeed.
Most relevant to this thread is (approx. 45mins) the talk about a Bronze Age "English" village on the coast of France. Any idiot looking at maps of sea levels after the last Ice Age could see they were close neighbours before the land bridge was lost.
Best wishes.
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sem
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| Posted 07-09-2014 at 22:58
If you want a bit more info on ancient boat building and experimental archaeology this is great. You have to navigate a few web pages to get the complete 60mins though.
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xgsfk5_bbc-the-pharaoh-who-conquered-the-sea-part-1-6_shortfilms
Tim Severin did the same in his books the Ulysses Voyage (why oh why did he use the Roman name and not Odysseus?) and the Jason Voyage, using traditional craftsmen to recreate a Greek Bronze Age ship.
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