Stuck in the Middle

Where did we get to on our  time travel through the stone age? Ah yes, it’s almost midnight on our imaginary clock…

Readers of my previous post will recall  a million years or so of the human habitation of these islands, magically condensed into a single virtual  hour. We met the nomadic visitors who walked here, from what’s now continental Europe. They followed the herds and followed the seasons, building no permanent settlements. But they left behind their tools, and the scattered  bones of the animals they hunted and butchered. Remarkably, they sometimes even left themselves: we viewed the remains of humans and neanderthals, dug from the muddy sediments of  south-east England.

From Old Age to Middle Age…

Our pretend  clock now stands at a  minute or so to midnight, or around 10,000 BC in the real world. And progress arrives thick and fast, as we transit from the old stone age, or Paleolithic (in academic-speak),  into the middle stone age or Mesolithic. So what exactly triggered the topsy-turvy change from old to middle age, from Paleolithic to Mesolithic?  The inhabitants here were still hunter-gatherers after all, stalking and killing prey, and still supplementing their diets with whatever tasty molluscs or fruits and berries that fell into their path. 

Our house

But they were inhabitants now, not just visitors. Our Mesolithic Brits were putting down roots, and starting to give up their nomadic way of life. They originally came here to hunt and move on, but  then they hunted and stayed. And so they started to build dwellings. 

Star Carr in Yorkshire claims to be the oldest site of permanent habitation in the UK that been found to date. It was occupied on and off for hundreds of years, from around 9,000 BC.  Thanks to the boggy conditions, many non-stone artefacts survived. Archaeologists found impressions in the ground of a circular dwelling, around 3.5 metres wide, constructed with wooden posts. It was probably shaped either like a wigwam (with a rounded top) or a teepee (pointy). The floor was covered with soft plant materials, probably moss and reeds. A charred area suggests where a fire burned. And – the skeletal remains of a domesticated dog – the oldest found so far in the UK. Not our usual idea of a “caveman’s” dwelling, you’ll agree? Here’s a reconstruction.

It’s a similar story at the Howick House site, in Northumberland. Similar pole markings  suggest a teepee-like dwelling. The remains of multiple fires dotted the floor. Found in the fire debris, the remains of roasted hazelnuts, of all things. It’s dated a little later than Star Carr,  from around 7,500 BC, but it’s a similar tale of a permanent settlement, in use for hundreds of years.

Slings and arrows

Our Mesolithic Brits developed  far more efficient  weapons than their Palaeolithic forebears. They’d now learned how to fix smaller, sharper  worked flints onto wooden, antler or bone handles. At Star Carr they unearthed microflints and almost 200 small barbed pieces of bones, probably made to be fixed to arrows or harpoon shafts.  

I’ve always been a fan of Neil Oliver, the historian. (Not so much of his politics, but hey, it’s a free country). I’ve mentioned this book of his before, it’s  an interesting read. He describes a “dig” at Loch Doon, in Ayrshire, when he was  a student. He was examining debitage, the debris left on the ground by a Mesolithic  flint-knapper, after chipping away at the stones to make tools and weapons. His tutor pointed out to him a couple of blank patches, the size of beermats, amongst the debris. They marked where a workman had knelt on the ground, around 10,000 years ago, to better chip at the flints. I am awestruck at that immediate human connection, over such a vast expanse of time. 

Mesolithic musings

And somewhere along the way, as we learned from the grave decorations of the  Red Lady of Paviland, discussed in my last post,  these early Brits  started to have ideas. Ideas of  something beyond their own hard, physical lives – something metaphysical.  For me, the most intriguing discovery at  Star Carr  was a cache of 21 stag red deer skulls. But what a cache! Antlers were still attached to the skulls, but the bottom halves of the skulls had been removed. And on either side of each partial skull, two holes had been drilled. 

Archaeologists concluded that the holes had been used to attach thongs, so as to use the skulls as head-dresses.  You can only surmise their purpose, but doesn’t it bring  to mind the shamanistic rituals found around the world, where chosen people dress as animals, in order to invoke the spirit of that beast?

“Is it a bird?”

At Cresswell Crags in Nottinghamshire, there is a series of limestone caves. In them, only just visible without an artificial  source of light, are a series of carvings. If you squint hard enough you can make out deer, bison and – of all things – what looks to be an ibis!  An ibis in Nottingham!  Archaeologists however, hedge their bets and suggest it might be another bird – or not a bird at all. Whatever the  case, the carvings are an intriguing glimpse into the inner lives of our Mesolithic relatives. The image below, of that strange bird, was taken by Chris Collyer, who kindly gave me permission to use it. It comes from a posting on Chris’s intriguing website, found here, where the prehistoric remains of these islands are discussed in fascinating detail – do go and have a look.

A piece of Cheddar

You might wonder what about the appearance of a  typical Mesolithic hunter. Would they draw a second glance, walking down Oxford Street on a Saturday afternoon? Thanks to  wondrous advances in DNA technology, we can answer that question. You may recall meeting Mr. Adrian Targett, a Somerset teacher, in my earlier post on genetics.  He has the distinction of being able to trace his maternal ancestral line back to “Cheddar Man”, a middle stone-age hunter, who lived around 10,000 years ago.  This was thanks to the extraction of DNA from a molar in the huntsman’s skull.  Mitochondrial DNA analysis proves that  Mr. Taggart’s  300th or so great-grandmother was also Cheddar Man’s mother.

Here’s Cheddar Man. It’s actually of course a reconstruction, based on his DNA and skull measurements. You will see that Mr. Cheddar has the unusual (to us) combination of dark hair and skin, yet blue eyes. Probably enough to warrant a second  glance on Oxford Street.

And here’s Mr. Taggart, with some of his pupils.

Demand characteristics

When devising psychology experiments at university, our lecturers warned against  design flaws which would allow in the sins of “demand characteristics”. This is where your subjects either wittingly or unwittingly give you what they think you want to hear. Perhaps a bit of that went on in the construction of Mr. Cheddar’s face because I think there’s a remarkable resemblance between the two generations, down to the smile and the twinkly blue eyes. Or perhaps that’s a deliberate act by light-hearted anthropologists.  Either way, the pictures invoke for me  one of my go-to quotes: “the past is not dead; it’s not even past”. (William Faulkner gets that credit).

Forging a further link in the chain of history, genetic scientists tell us that a modern day Briton whose ancestors had not just recently migrated here, shares around 10% of their genes with one of the same population as Cheddar Man. If you couple that with a 3% or thereabouts sprinkling of Neanderthal genes, (as I wrote in my previous, toothy post), you really do have “living history”.

From middle to new: finding Neo

In the way that life sometimes tumbles like  a mad kaleidoscope , things started to rapidly change again. Britain was a rather sleepy backwater, compared to developments in continental Europe and the Middle East. There, the old hunter-gatherer way of life had been overtaken by permanent settlements and by an exciting new innovation: domestication – both of animals and plants. The hunters had become farmers. 

The Mesolithic age had made way for the new: the Neolithic age. Why was sleepy Britain so late to the party? Of course, it was right on the edge of the known world. And around 6,000 BC the inevitable happened: sea levels rose again as the climate changed. Following a tsunami,  Doggerland disappeared under the waves and Britain was finally cut off from the Continent (or vice versa, as that old joke goes).

But around 4,000 BC new waves of Neolithic migrants from Europe did make their way here by boat, and within a few generations they’d displaced the old Mesolithic hunter gatherers, almost entirely. They bought new ideas, new foods, new technology, new ways of living. And they built things that lasted. Awesome things that we can see in the landscape today. Of which, more later.

Hiding in plain sight

How can we connect with those Mesolithic hunter-gatherers?

You can visit the Howick House site, and admire their reconstruction of a Mesolithic tepee. And this Youtube video explains the background of the site really well.  The settlement at Star Carr is now buried under working farmland, but you can view the excavation of the site online here. There are fine walking trails around Cresswell Crags and you can visit the caves and their museum. Mind you, bats have taken up residence in the “ibis” cave apparently, so it’s currently out of bounds. 

We haven’t yet reached the age of the great Neolithic structures, that’s still to come. Our Mesolithic hunter-gatherers weren’t ones for monuments.  But you can see the reconstruction of Cheddar Man at the Natural History Museum. His skeleton is currently on loan for viewing at Longleat House, in Wiltshire. And of course, there’s a chance you may be sharing some genes with him, yourself!