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Post by marchesarosa on Oct 19, 2012 11:42:31 GMT 1
Good question, jonjel. Sea levels were certainly 100s of feet lower during the extensive glaciation and the English Channel did not exist so stone-agers probably had to dig for their flints rather than merely pick them up from the coastal areas where they were eroded out or washed out by wave action. www.bournemouth.ac.uk/caah/landscapeandtownscapearchaeology/neolithic_flint_mines_of_sussex.htmlHarrow Hill Flint mines, West Sussex, today Harrow Hill flint mines under excavation, 1936
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Post by mrsonde on Oct 20, 2012 12:36:51 GMT 1
Was there a beach there in the stone age? According to the NT, it's a Bronze Age quarry, about 3,500 years old. At that date the coastline was pretty much what it is now, give or take a bit of erosion. I assume they arrive at this date by presuming it's contemporaneous with the barrow nearby. It's all guesswork, imo.
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Post by mrsonde on Oct 22, 2012 18:15:48 GMT 1
On today's mission, I checked out the beach available to the supposed flint-miners. Here my girlfriend is selecting a suitable pebble to turn into a hand-axe, so I can do something manly for a change: This is the one she said would suit me to a tee: A bit of napping about while she skins the rabbit and hey presto: So, my Neanderthal pals, do we amble down here when we want a new tool, pick these pebbles up, or maybe use these here seams, nice and open for us in the cliff: Or do we haul our asses a mile up that effin' great cliff and dig a bloody great hole in the ground in the hope of finding the stuff instead?
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Post by marchesarosa on Oct 22, 2012 19:09:02 GMT 1
So what were the bronze-agers (or stone-agers) digging out of the 50ft deep hole, in your opinion, Mr Sonde?
What if this hole dates back 40,000 years and was dug during the last glaciation when sea levels were hundreds of feet lower? How far away would the sea shore have been then? Would the "cliffs", that today are nearby, have been exposed and accessible for easy flint extraction THEN? Or would they have been invisible and part of an uneroded hillside? Maybe digging deep for the flints was the only way of getting at them back then?
All those years ago there wasn't a sea between the British Isles and Europe. Your 21st century desirable coastal location was inland, just like (heaven forbid) Leeds!
Flint tools have been used for 2 million years, apparently.
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Post by mrsonde on Oct 24, 2012 11:20:13 GMT 1
I don't know what the hole is. It could be a natural formation - it's on top of an exposed headland - wind can do strange things to soft rock. It could be an impact crater. But I do doubt it was a quarry. There are several other likely candidates similarly identified as such by the NT - they're on the sides of cliffs, working inwards, easily accessible from lower ground, which seems to me to be far more plausible.
The problem with the glaciation reminder is that we're then looking at a lower sea level. These chalk cliffs would have been even more prominent and laborious to work, not less. This coastline extends to South Dorset, incidentally - it's called the Jurassic Coast, due to the amount of dinosaur fossils found therein. In other words, the flint would have been even more abundant and accessible then than it is now.
No one will know for sure until it's excavated, which it never has been - none of the "quarry" candidates have been; probably because there's nothing to excavate. Neither have the barrows, on the other hand - if barrows they are.
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Post by marchesarosa on Oct 24, 2012 13:41:38 GMT 1
Surely it could be that 100s of thousands of years ago the "cliffs" were not "cliffs" at all but were deep inside uneroded hillsides. The "cliffs" as we currently see them must surely be fairly recent features of the landscape. Are we to assume that our "white cliffs" existed even when there was no wave action to reveal them? It is not only wind that does strange things to soft rock. Water does as well. Have you been watching the prehistoric autopsy progs on BBC 2? Fascinating! Neandertals and homo-erectus already discussed. www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p00xfdmw/Prehistoric_Autopsy_Neanderthal/
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Post by mrsonde on Oct 24, 2012 14:29:25 GMT 1
Surely it could be that 100s of thousands of years ago the "cliffs" were not "cliffs" at all but were deep inside uneroded hillsides. The "cliffs" as we currently see them must surely be fairly recent features of the landscape. Well...the NT assertion is that this hole is the remnant of a Bronze Age quarry. I've gone along with the possibility that it might be older - Stone Age, say; extending into the recent glacial period. In that period the cliffs would certainly have existed, more or less as they are now - no proposed action could have eroded any heavier concealing rock. A bit of topsoil, perhaps. Settlements and farms have been excavated on the bed of The Solent stretching back 10,000 years ago or more. The sea level was lower then, Marchesa. Your scenario proposes that water action would have extended to the top of, say, Beachy Head. There was certainly a worldwide flood approximately 11,000 years ago, and another even more destructive one a couple of thousand years before that. Enough to erode surface topsoil, typically found on chalk downs. Incidentally, there was a very recent discovery of "flintmines" just across the Solent in Hampshire that look exactly like the photograph you posted above. They were found when people's gardens suddenly collapsed, leaving gaping great holes. It was eventually ascertained that the mine workings dated from the late Victorian period. And they weren't mining flint at all. Yes - very interesting.
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