From the BBC.  The image was taken by NASA’s Terra satellite showing Britain in the clutches of a cold snap.

Last night proved to be the coldest night of the winter so far, according to the BBC, with temperatures reaching -22°C (-8°F) in one village in Sutherland, in the Highlands.  Supplies of road grit are running low in some areas, with councils restricting gritting to major roads only.

‘Icy River Nevis’ taken by HighlandSC

Wildlife is particularly hard hit by the weather.

Photograph of a goldfinch taken by Simball

This from the BBC -

[Sites like power stations] are likely to be sought out by water birds that normally forage for fish when their usual habitats of freshwater rivers and lakes become frozen over.

“Kingfishers, particularly, are having a tough time finding food at the moment,” says Grahame Madge of the UK-based Royal Society of the Protection of Birds (RSPB).

“Their strategy in weather likes this tends to be to move a short distance to the warmer waters near power stations or in city centres. It’s quite possible we will see higher numbers of kingfishers in London and other metropolitan centres”.

[...] Mr Madge says such cold temperatures force many birds to make a tough choice at this time of year – whether to stay put and see out the worst of the weather or use their last energy reserves to fly to warmer climes.

[...] But with freezing temperatures affecting much of Britain and northern Europe, those who do fly south hoping to find some ice-free conditions could be out of luck, he says.

“Birds will generally make short-distance movements when their energy levels are low,” he says.

“But those birds that fly even as far as southern Ireland at the moment aren’t going to find what they are looking for. They may have to go further into southern Europe.”

The RSPB has also noticed that Britain this year has become a refuge for higher numbers of bitterns, owls and other birds flying in from Scandinavia and northern Europe, hoping to find warmer temperatures.

But it is not just birds that are feeling the effects of the cold weather.

[...] At London Zoo [...]  the animals are enjoying some well thought-out protection from their keepers.

Those that need it have heaters, increased levels of food and – if you are a kinkajou (a member of the racoon family) – a sleeping bag.

The cold weather has created some unlikely bedfellows, senior keeper Jim Mackie explains.

The zoo’s two Aardvarks, who arrived this year, like to snuggle up together under the heater. They share the meerkats’ enclosure, and around five meerkats have worked out that by sleeping on top of the Aardvarks they can get even closer to the heat, Mr Mackie explained.

“We’d noticed quite a lot of interaction between the two species in the summer, but we didn’t see anything like this,” he said.

“It’s been quite an exciting sight to see. We don’t think there would be this much interaction between the two in the wild.”

While the zoo’s tropical animals have preferred to stay close to the heaters in recent days, some of the inhabitants have been enjoying the snow – particularly the young ones who have never seen it before.

“The coati [another member of the racoon family] had a brilliant time, charging around in the snow and trying to find the food we’d buried,” Mr Mackie said.

“The ferrets have also had a great time digging through the snow. But they soon get tired of it, once they get cold.”

One animal that is not getting tired of the snow is Mercedes, the new polar bear at Scotland’s Highland Wildlife Park, where temperatures have been as low as minus 20C.

“A lot of the wildlife here are huddling together right now and cutting down on their activity to stop burning energy,” explained the park’s Douglas Richardson.

“It’s quite the opposite with Mercedes. Right now, she’s spinning round on the pond and generally having a great time.”

Charles Darwin kindly posing for a picture… by tranchis

From the Darwin 200 website -

Darwin is now a household name whose ideas over the last 150 years have revolutionised our understanding of nature and our place within it.

Darwin challenged the thinking of the day because his observations – that every living thing is related and belongs to one big family – placed humans firmly within the natural world.

As the following quotes indicate, Darwin’s innovative thoughts are just as important to our lives today…

‘Charles Darwin’s concept of evolution through natural selection is one of the most illuminating scientific ideas of all time for understanding our biosphere and humanity’s place in nature. As an iconic figure, Darwin is matched only by Newton and Einstein – indeed, he has perhaps had a more pervasive influence on human culture than any other scientist.’ Lord Rees of Ludlow, The Charles Darwin Trust’s Science Advisory Panel

‘The two governing ideas of modern biology are first, the molecular basis of all life processes and second, the origin and evolution of all life processes by Darwinian natural selection.’
Professor E O Wilson, The Charles Darwin Trust’s Science Advisory Panel.

Through a combination of meticulous observation and innovative thinking, Darwin came up with an explanation for the incredible variety of living things: that evolution was driven by natural selection. By this process, organisms most suited to their environment survive and reproduce and pass their advantages to their offspring.

‘There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.’ Charles Darwin

Although Darwin had already presented his theory to fellow scientists, it was the publication of his book, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, in 1859 that shook the rest of the world.

‘We must, however, acknowledge, as it seems to me, that man with all his noble qualities… still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin.’ Charles Darwin

Initially greeted with controversy, Darwin’s ideas now form the foundation of modern biology.

‘It is interesting to contemplate an entangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent on each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us.’ Charles Darwin

A natural life

Charles Darwin was born on 12 February 1809. As a child he loved the outdoors and collecting beetles.

He abandoned his studies of medicine to study theology but then, when he was just 22 years old, joined a voyage around the world on the ship, the Beagle. During this five-year adventure, he keenly observed and collected hundreds of different types of plants, animals, fossils and rocks.

He spent the rest of his life carefully studying and interpreting what he had seen. Darwin came up with his original explanation for the variety of living things, the theory of evolution by natural selection, soon after his return from the Beagle voyage, but it was many years before he had accumulated enough evidence to publish his work.

‘I can remember the very spot in the road, whilst in my carriage, when to my joy the solution occurred to me; and this was long after I had come to Down. The solution, as I believe, is that the modified offspring of all dominant and increasing forms tend to become adapted to many and highly diversified places in the economy of nature.’ Charles Darwin

Although Darwin is the most familiar name associated with evolution, he was only persuaded to publish his work when another young scientist, Alfred Russel Wallace, came forward having independently come up with a similar explanation for how evolution occurs.

• Shrewsbury, Shropshire

Charles Darwin was born and raised in the family home in Shrewsbury and also attended school in the town.

The Mount

Charles Darwin was born in the Mount on 12 February 1809. The large Georgian house was built by his parents, Robert and Susanna Darwin. It has been used as offices but is currently being renovated and is due to open to the public in 2009.

St. Chad’s Church

Charles Darwin was christened at St Chad’s Church, which is now used as a venue for an annual Darwin Festival.

Shrewbury School

In 1818, aged just 9 years, Darwin was sent to Shrewsbury School, an Anglican boarding school in the centre of town. He boarded despite it being less than a couple of kilometres from his home, and only a few months after losing his mother.

Darwin hated the harsh environment of the school but made some good friends there. Charles, aged 12, wrote in a letter to a friend, ‘I only wash my fe[e]t once a month at school, which I confess is nasty, but I cannot help it, for we have nothing to do it with’.

His older bother, Erasmus, also attended the school and the brothers were renowned for their chemistry experiments, conducted in a self-equipped ‘Lab’ in an outbuilding of The Mount.

The school building has been renovated and now accommodates the town’s library with an imposing statue of Darwin outside.

The Bellstone

Darwin’s first introduction to geology was a granite boulder, called the Bellstone, situated in a courtyard in the town centre. As a child he was told that this sort of stone was only found much further north in Cumbria or Scotland and there was no explanation for how it ended up in Shropshire.

It was only when he studied geology at Edinburgh that Darwin learned that during the last ice age moving glaciers had transported massive rocks across the country.

An annual toast is now held at the Bellstone on Darwin’s birthday, 12 February.

St Chad’s Church, Montford

Darwin’s mother and father were buried in St Chad’s Church in the village of Montford about 10 kilometres from Shrewsbury. Darwin’s father, Robert Darwin was buried here in 1848.

• Maer Hall, nr Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire

Maer Hall was the Wedgwood family home, located near to the Wedgwood factory.

Maer Hall

Maer Hall was the family home of Emma Wedgwood, who was born there in 1808. The house was near to the Wedgwood factory owned by Emma’s father Josiah Wedgwood, who was also Charles’ uncle.

Charles Darwin was a frequent visitor in his youth. He greatly enjoyed the countryside for walking and shooting and the informal evenings with the Wedgwood family. It was in the fields around Maer that Charles first investigated the role of earthworms, recording that cinders spread on the surface became buried over several years.

After his return from the Beagle voyage, his attentions turned to courting Emma and they married in the church in the grounds. Charles and Emma continued to make frequent visits to Maer Hall with their growing family, spending many summer holidays there.

St Peter’s Church

Charles married Emma in 1839, two weeks before his thirtieth birthday, at St Peter’s church in the grounds of the Jacobean mansion.

Welsh holidays

During his childhood and student days, Darwin spent several family holidays in North Wales, staying, on different occasions, near Abergele, Tywyn, Pistyll Rhayader, Barmouth and Mount Snowdon. He enjoyed riding and beetle collecting.

After graduating from Cambridge, in 1831, he was Adam Sedgwick’s assistant on a field trip to North Wales surveying red sandstone in Llangollen, Ruthin, Conwy, Bangor and Capel Curig. He returned in 1842 to study the geology at Capel Curig, Bangor and Caernarfon. Darwin’s last visit to Wales was for a family holiday in 1869 to Caerdeon and Barmouth.

Edinburgh University

In 1825, aged 16, Darwin enrolled at Edinburgh University to study medicine, following his father and grandfather. Although it offered the best medical education in Britain, Charles found the lectures dull and the clinical studies distressing. He was horrified to witness the pain patients had to suffer when operated on with no anaesthetic.

During his second year, Darwin pursued his interests in natural history through a small student group called the Plinian Society. He became close to Robert Grant, a sponge expert, with whom he explored and studied the marine life of the coastline near Edinburgh. Grant moved on to University College, London, where he established the Grant Museum.

After two years Darwin finally abandoned his medical studies and left Edinburgh in 1827.

• Cambridge

Darwin studied theology at Cambridge University but also spent much time developing his passion for natural history.

Christ’s College, Cambridge University

In 1827, Darwin enrolled at Christ’s College, Cambridge University where he studied theology for just over three years.

During his time at Cambridge, Darwin continued to enjoy the countryside and spent much time with his cousin, William Fox, who introduced him to beetle collecting. He also became friends with William Paley, who promoted natural theology, and the geologist Adam Sedgwick.

In his last two terms Darwin spent much time with the Rev John Henslow, a professor of botany, and became known as ‘the man who walks with Henslow’.

It was Henslow, himself restricted by family commitments, who recommended Darwin as a suitable companion and naturalist for Captain FitzRoy on the Beagle expedition.

Darwin lived in the same first floor rooms in College from late 1828 until he graduated in 1831.

Today, the College Hall has a portrait of Darwin and a stained glass window depicting him.

A large bronze bust by William Couper, presented by an American delegation in honour of the centenary of his birth, is displayed in the Shrine in the college grounds.

Sidney Street

Darwin only moved up to Cambridge early in 1828, and at first lived in lodgings above a tobacconist’s in Sidney Street. He later moved into rooms in one of the college’s courtyards.

Fitzwilliam Street

Years later, after he returned from the Beagle voyage in 1836, Darwin revisited Cambridge many times. Needing time to sort his specimens from the voyage, he rented a house in Fitzwilliam Street for a few months, which can now be identified by a stone plaque.

• Plymouth, Devon

The Beagle set sail from Plymouth in 1831 with 22-year-old Darwin on board as the gentleman naturalist and companion to Captain FitzRoy.

HMS Beagle

Darwin spent two months in Plymouth before setting sail while Captain FitzRoy was supervising alterations to the ship. He stayed in lodgings in Clarence Baths with John Lort Stokes, one of the two survey officers with whom he would share a cabin on board.

The waiting and increasing anxiety about the impending voyage caused Darwin to refer to this time as ‘the most miserable which I ever spent’.

Darwin commented to Henslow on the ship’s cramped interior, ‘The corner of the cabin, which is my private property, is most woefully small. – I have just room to turn around & that is all.’

The Beagle finally set sail from the Devonport Dockyard in Plymouth on 27 December 1831 with Darwin on board.

• Falmouth, Cornwall

After five years spent circumnavigating the globe the Beagle returned to Falmouth harbour on 2 October 1836.

Epic voyage

During the voyage Darwin experienced extreme hardship and exhilarating discovery. Often having to cope with illness, hunger, tiredness, turbulent weather, natural disasters, and disagreements within the crew, Darwin dedicated his time to studying and collecting thousands of fossils, plants and animals previously unseen by his contemporaries back home.

• London Societies linked to Darwin

After his return from the Beagle voyage, Darwin developed contacts with many eminent scientists and scientific societies based in London.

Geological Society of London

Darwin was an active member of the Society as he was elected a Fellow in 1836, became a Secretary in 1838, and Vice-President in 1843. He had regular interactions with Charles Lyell, whose book, Principles of Geology, Darwin had fervently studied while on the Beagle voyage using it as a basis for developing his ideas on the formation of coral reefs.

Hunterian Museum, Royal College of Surgeons

After Darwin returned from the Beagle voyage, he needed to find people to identify the thousands of specimens he collected on his travels. In October 1836 he met Richard Owen, who was the new Hunterian Professor at the Royal College of Surgeons. Later that year he handed over his prized fossil mammals for Owen, a skilled anatomist, to identify. Owen’s assertion that the fossils belonged to extinct giant mammals of similar types to smaller living mammals in South America, provided Darwin with evidence of common ancestry.

Linnean Society of London

On 1 July 1858 Joseph Hooker and Charles Lyell read out Darwin’s and Alfred Russell Wallace’s papers on the tendency of species to form varieties and species by natural means of selection to a select group of scientists.

The timing was prompted by a letter Darwin received from Wallace a month before. Darwin was alarmed to find out that Wallace, who was collecting specimens in the Far East, had come up with almost the same theory as Darwin’s of evolution by natural selection. He was now forced to make his ideas public.

Hooker and Lyell arranged to read Wallace’s letter and extracts of Darwin’s unpublished manuscripts to the next meeting of the Linnean Society. Wallace was far away and Darwin’s youngest son had recently died of scarlet fever so they were both absent from the meeting.

Later that year, the president of the Linnean Society wrote in his annual report that the year had not been marked by any discoveries which “revolutionize science”.

The Natural History Museum

During the Second World War a number of Darwin’s fossil mammal specimens were taken to the Natural History Museum when the Hunterian Museum suffered bomb damage.

Today, the Museum stores hundreds of specimens collected by Darwin, including parrotfish preserved in jars of spirit, domestic pigeon skins, beetles, stuffed armadillos, giant ground sloth fossils, fragments of coral, and dried mosses and lichens.

There are many specimens from the Beagle voyage, including the finches and mocking birds from the Galapagos Islands that helped to crystallise his ideas. Darwin’s barnacle collections, which he studied later in his life to establish himself as a senior and serious systematic scientist, are also held at the Museum.

The Museum has recently acquired the Kohler Darwin Collection, the world’s largest collection of works by and about Charles Darwin, which includes a first edition presentation copy of On the Origin of Species.

Royal Institution of Great Britain

In 1880 Thomas Huxley gave an address on ‘The coming of age of The origin of species’, which was published in Nature. He talked of the significant accumulation of fossil evidence in favour of evolution that had occurred since 1859, when On the Origin of Species was first published.

Royal Society of London

Darwin was elected fellow of the Society on 24 January 1839. In 1853 he was awarded the Royal Medal for his exhaustive work on barnacles, and in 1864 he was awarded the prestigious Copley Medal for his outstanding researches in geology, zoology and botanical physiology.

Royal Zoological Society of London

Darwin became a fellow of the Royal Zoological Society of London in 1837. John Gould, who was then employed by the Zoological Society, described the birds Darwin had collected on the Beagle voyage. It was Gould who realised that the finches found on the Galapagos Islands belonged to a new group and that different species were confined to different islands.

In March 1838, Darwin saw his first ape in London Zoo, which had recently acquired an orang-utan named Jenny. Darwin observed a keeper teasing her with an apple and was fascinated by the similarity between the ape’s reaction and a child’s tantrum, later writing to his sister, that the ape ‘threw herself on her back, kicked & cried, precisely like a naughty child’.

• London locations linked to Darwin

Darwin lived in several locations in London and is buried in Westminster Abbey.

Great Marlborough Street

Darwin lived in rented accommodation here from 1837-8, soon after his return from the Beagle voyage.

Upper Gower Street

Number 12 Upper Gower Street, which later became number 110, was the first home of Charles and Emma Darwin after their marriage in 1839. Charles Darwin moved in on 31 December 1838, and Emma joined him after their wedding on 29 January 1839. They rented it, furnished, and called it Macaw Cottage after the gaudy colours of its furnishings.

Their eldest two children, William Erasmus and Anne Elizabeth, were born here. They moved out in September 1842.

The house was bombed in 1941 and the site is now part of the Department of Biology, University College London. A modern block called the Darwin Building stands on the exact site of Macaw Cottage.

Grant Museum

The Darwin Building, which bears a blue plaque commemorating Darwin, houses the Grant Museum of Zoology and Comparative Anatomy. The collection was started by Robert Grant, an early mentor of Darwin’s at Edinburgh University.

Westminster Abbey

Charles Darwin was buried in Westminster Abbey in April 1882. His gravestone and a bronze memorial relief are inside the Abbey.

• Glen Roy, Scotland

Darwin studied the unique geology of Glen Roy when he returned from the Beagle voyage.

Parallel roads of Glen Roy

In 1838 Darwin made observations on the parallel roads of Glen Roy, and of other parts of Lochaber in Scotland, with an attempt to prove that they were of marine origin. He published his paper but later wrote, ‘I do believe every word in my Glen Roy paper is false’.

It is now known that the famous geological feature is the remains of ancient shorelines. They formed at the end of the last ice age when an advancing glacier pushed up the water level of a lake that filled the valley.

• Downe, Bromley, Kent

Darwin moved to Down House with his growing family in September 1842, and lived here for 40 years until he died in 1882.

Down House

Darwin bought the house, with 18 acres of land, from the vicar of Downe for just over 2000 pounds. Soon after they moved in, Charles and Emma began extending and renovating the house and gardens to create the home they wanted.

Down house is now owned by English Heritage and is open to the public

Darwin’s study

Darwin’s study at Down House remains much as it was when Darwin was alive.

The writing desk and chair were used by Darwin as he developed his theory of evolution.

Gardens and greenhouses

The gardens and greenhouses have been restored and some of Darwin’s experiments on orchids, carnivorous plants and honeybees have been recreated.

Sandwalk

Beyond the garden was a path around a small wood, that Darwin referred to as his ‘thinking path’ as he paced around it fives times every day at noon.

Emma Darwin, Charles’ wife was buried in Downe churchyard in 1896.

Downe Bank

Darwin’s observations here of orchids and their insect pollinators gave him evidence of co-evolution and led to the publication of his famous book Fertilisation of Orchids in 1862.

Experts now agree that Downe Bank is indeed the species-rich setting that inspired Darwin’s conclusion of On the Origin of Species where he refers to an ‘entangled bank’.

High Elms

This large estate of about 370 acres of woodland and species-rich chalk grassland is now a Local Nature Reserve. The land once belonged to John Lubbock, the renowned biologist and politician, who Darwin encouraged as a boy to study the local wildlife. He helped Darwin illustrate his great barnacle work and later wrote a book on the social insects.

Keston

Darwin used this area in his earthworm research, investigating their presence and absence in different parts of the heath.

Darwin also spent much time observing round-leaved sundew at Keston Bog. He noticed how insects became stuck to the leaves of sundew, which led him to investigate how it trapped and digested insects, pioneering work which led to the publication of Insectivorous Plants in 1875.

Keston Ponds were the most likely source of the mud from which Darwin germinated plants in a sequence of experiments into the geographical distribution of freshwater plants.

• Malvern, Worcestershire

Darwin had several long stays at this spa town between 1849 and 1851, and again in 1863.

Malvern spa

Darwin stayed at The Lodge on Worcester Road and took daily water cure treatments at Dr Gully’s hydrotherapy facility. This therapy involved cold showers, wet wraps, steam baths, strict diets and long walks in the countryside intended to stimulate the circulation and drive out toxins from the blood and organs.

Malvern Priory

His eldest daughter, Annie, was taken to Malvern for treatment in 1851, suffering from a fever, and died there aged 10. She was buried in Malvern Priory.

• Moor Park nr Farnham, Surrey

Moor Park was a water cure establishment that Darwin visited often between 1857 and 1859.

Moor Park

Darwin referred to Moor Park as, ‘Dr. Lane’s delightful hydropathic establishment’. As well as the water therapy and relaxation, Darwin enjoyed solitary walks around the beautiful grounds.

Although Moor Park House is not open to the public, there is a short heritage trail in the grounds.

• Ilkley, nr Otley, Yorkshire

Darwin was staying in Ilkley and taking water cure treatments when On the Origin of Species was published in November 1859.

Water cure treatments

He finished working on the proofs on 1 October then travelled to Ilkley on 2 October, recording in his diary, ‘I am worn out & must have rest…’ Darwin and his family stayed here at Wells Terrace while he took water cure treatments, which included cold water baths.

• Oxford

Oxford was the location of the infamous debate on evolution and religion in 1860.

Oxford University Museum of Natural History

In June 1860 the newly opened Oxford University Museum of Natural History hosted one of the most famous debates in scientific history. It was the ‘great debate’ between Samuel Wilberforce, Bishop of Oxford and Thomas Huxley, the biologist and writer.

They argued furiously about Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection and the questions it raised about man’s place in the natural world and religious belief. Darwin himself was not well enough to attend the debate but Huxley was nicknamed ‘Darwin’s bull-dog’ for his ardent defence of Darwin’s work.

Today the Museum displays a statue of Darwin and some of the crabs he collected during his voyage on the Beagle.

From The Times -

Horses were moved over long distances in pre-Roman Britain, recent analysis has shown. Previous theories that horses were bred on specialised ranches are now joined by evidence that animals may have been traded to southern England from as far away as Wales or Scotland.

The absence of young horses’ bones from some Iron Age sites, such as the Gussage All Saints settlement in Dorset, suggested that they had bred elsewhere; the capture and breaking of wild animals, perhaps similar to the feral herds of the New Forest and Dartmoor, seemed a likely source. The high proportion of stallion bones, as at Danebury hillfort in Hampshire, was also an argument for non-controlled herds, since a domesticated herd needs few stallions and many mares.

On the other hand, Julius Caesar’s claim that the Iron Age ruler Cassivelaunus had 4,000 chariots, and thus 8,000 chariot horses, at his disposal led the late Peter Reynolds to infer that horse breeding was a large operation, carried on at what were effectively stud farms. The presence of foal bones at only a few Iron Age sites supports such a breeder-customer model.

Analysis of horse teeth from two Iron Age sites near Winchester now indicates that breeder and recipient may not have lived close together, although the sample is as yet too small for firm conclusions to be drawn. One tooth each from the Rooksdown and Bury Hill sites, dating to the later centuries BC, were assayed for strontium-isotope content, examining the ratio between strontium-86 and strontium-87, which varies with the local geology, soil and groundwater content, and which is fixed in the tooth enamel through the early years of life as the teeth form.

Reporting in Archaeometry, Dr Robin Bendry and colleagues note that comparison with the teeth of domestic food animals from the sites, which could be assumed to be locally bred, and also human burials from Winchester, showed that the Bury Hill horse had been bred locally, although whether it was tamed or domesticated was not indicated. The Rooksdown specimen, however, showed a different pattern: possible areas for its origin include Devon and Cornwall, Wales, parts of northwest England and Scotland, or even parts of the Continent. The investigators note that similarly distant origins have been documented for humans buried in the Stonehenge area, although almost two millennia older than the Rookswood horse.

“The data show that horses were moved over great distances,” they conclude, “evidence for long-distance movement perhaps through trade or exchange.”

Archaeometry 51: 140-150.

All photographs and text from the Guardian.

A male great bustard makes a courtship display. Great bustards disappeared from the UK in 1832 after game shooters made it extinct. This emblem of Wiltshire and the heaviest flying bird in the world (it can weigh up to 20kg) was reintroduced to Salisbury Plain in 2004, with eggs rescued from farmland in Russia. Great bustards need open grassland and arable fields where they feed on grasshoppers and cereal seeds; Photograph: Erich Kuchling/Rex Features

A beaver swimming in a Scottish river. Beavers were hunted to extinction in the UK by the end of the 16th century for their fur, glands for medicine and because their building of dams interfered with other land uses. Proposals to reintroduce this famous wetland engineer to Knapdale Forest in Scotland began in 1994. This was turned down in 2002 and again in 2005. A licence was granted in 2007 and the first beavers to return to Scotland for 400 years will be released this spring. Other proposals for reintroduction in England and Wales are being considered. The first beavers arrive in Scotland for the reintroduction programme that has started at a secret location. The beavers have all been electronically tagged; Photograph: A.Good/Rex Features

It’s been over 400 years since a wild beaver roamed an English river, but freedom will probably be short-lived for the lone male still at large after escaping – along with two rapidly recaptured females – a few weeks ago from an enclosure in Devon.

Unlike some parts of Europe, where beavers have been reintroduced by being chucked out of the back of a van, the return of once-extinct wild animals to the British countryside is treated with Byzantine feasibility studies, public consultations, legal wrangling, interminable arguments and meticulous planning. For example, it has taken since 1994 to reach acceptance on beaver reintroduction to Knapdale Forest, in Argyll and Bute, Scotland, with the first releases due this spring.

Ecologist and beaver reintroduction specialist Derek Gow, from whose enclosure the three beavers escaped, says: “It has been a long and tortuous process, and the success of reintroductions of beavers will be because of the ability to manage the species and habitats. We are involved in a feasibility study with South West Water. Beavers could help water filtration, removing pollutants and conserving water supply to reservoirs. They are ideal for ecosystem engineering, and they bring real environmental benefits.

“That’s how you sell the idea of reintroduction and persuade landowners. It’s all very well talking about conservation in cosy meeting rooms, but any landowners think conservationists are a devious lot. If we can’t engage with landowners and show them the benefits, reintroduction will be dead in the water. Nature conservationists have to get gritty and realistic.”

Also preaching realism is Tim Coulton, professor of population biology at Imperial College London, although he’s talking about probably the least realistic of the reintroduction targets: the wolf. “The reason for our report [a joint UK and Norway report on wolf reintroduction in Scotland for the Royal Society in 2007] was to look at the effect of wolves on the deer population of Scotland by simulating what had happened elsewhere. The debate on wolf reintroduction had been driven by anecdote and we wanted to inject some science to provide a more informed debate.”

Coulton appreciates that the motivations of many who support animal reintroductions may be aesthetic or romantic, and he does not believe that, even with economic subsidies, there will be strong enough support from sheep farmers for the reintroduction of wolves. However, he does see reintroductions as an important means to an end. “We have to decide what we want from our open spaces – large fields or diverse ecosystems, tourism, water quality,” he says. “Reintroductions can be a tool to achieve these ends. I suspect science rarely drives reintroductions, but it’s the role of science to provide data for a debate and raise warnings, not to decide. That requires a wider public platform.”

Steve Carver, senior lecturer in geography at Leeds University and a coordinator of the Wildlands Network, agrees. “Reintroductions must have grassroots support and cannot work as an authoritarian, top-down process,” he argues. “The reintroduction of the white-tailed eagle on Mull [in Scotland] has developed an industry around wildlife watching. People need to see the benefits of re-wilded landscapes.” He says different landscapes need different policies, with subsidies for restoring habitats.

The current reintroductions, and many of the candidates for a future return, do not require landscape-scale ecological restoration for their success. For example, the red kite has the highest population for 200 years in the UK. White-tailed eagles too can float over the existing landscape without its modification, while wild boar have introduced themselves to the English countryside very successfully, and great bustards like Ministry of Defence grassland and arable fields on Salisbury Plain, Wiltshire.

The most iconic candidate for reintroduction, the lynx, could also arrive without any landscape restoration. This big cat seems happy to live in broadleaved woodland or conifer plantations, and it is estimated that the Scottish Highlands could support a population of 400 lynx. Its selling point is that it would keep down roe deer numbers, as well as foxes, the notorious predators of ground-nesting birds.

Carver says: “The reintroduction of lynx will depend on the success of the beaver, so I’m hopeful that, within 10-15 years, they may be reintroduced. Personally, I’d be happy going to my grave knowing they were back.”

Behind the reintroduction and the re-wilding agenda there is an important shift going on in the conservation world. “Traditional conservation has potentially seen its day,” Carver claims. “The old guard was focused on sites and species, and managed reserves for one species, not the whole landscape. There’s a reason for rarity. If we lose a few species, does it really matter if they’re common in other locations? The new paradigm in conservation is about habitats, landscapes and whole ecosystems.”

Facing a list of 1,149 priority wildlife species and 65 priority habitats that need concerted action to save them, the government’s chances of fulfilling its commitment to stop the loss of biodiversity before 2010 is hopeless. A new target of 2020 is being proposed, but that is likely to be just as hopeless. As traditional conservation becomes more difficult, with less money available and less public support in the current financial climate, the reintroduction of charismatic fauna offers conservation bodies a chance to engage with the public in ways that obscure species of plants and invertebrates in isolated nature reserves unfortunately don’t.

Defining moment

As well as this utilitarian approach to the value of animal reintroductions as economic tools, and the enhanced products and services of ecosystems, Andy Evans, head of the RSPB’s terrestrial research section, says: “There is a moral imperative to correct anthropogenic harm and a moral obligation to maintain habitats, and to improve them from damage caused by, for example, agriculture. Conservation, which has always been scale-dependent, is facing a defining moment.”

Ecologist and author Peter Taylor says: “The reintroduction of charismatic species is also a way of re-wilding the human mind, engaging people with nature on a deeper psychological level. But these reintroductions won’t happen unless all the community is involved, including hunting, shooting, fishing and farming interests.

“This kind of conservation is not helped by the dead hand of computer simulations, government consultations and accounts of the lynx being good for eco-tourism. In early natural history, there was a spiritual connection with nature. As a scientist, I think we need to reclaim something lost from scientific conservation. The lynx, the beaver and wild boar have become iconic emblems for that.”

Comeback contenders

Lynx
The Eurasian lynx, a secretive, powerful cat, is the most likely mammal predator to be reintroduced to the UK – although many say it is already here.

A Eurasian lynx mother sits in the grass while her two pups play in their outdoor enclosure in Germany. This secretive, powerful cat with tufted ears and a short tail weighing 25kg survived in Britain until 180AD. The Eurasian lynx is the most likely mammal predator candidate for reintroduction, although many say it is already established in some areas. It is estimated that the Scottish highlands could support a population of 400 lynx, where they would control roe deer and foxes; Photograph: Ronald Wittek/Corbis

Beaver
Hunted to extinction here by the end of the 16th century. A proposal launched in 1994 to reintroduce it to Knapdale Forest, Scotland, was turned down in 2002 and again in 2005. A licence was granted in 2007 and the first beavers to return to Scotland will be released this spring.

White-tailed eagle
By 1916, this huge bird, sometimes called the sea eagle, became extinct here through persecution. It was reintroduced to Scotland from Scandinavia in 1975 and there are now 42 breeding territories there. A study is being carried out on proposals to reintroduce it to East Anglia.

A white-tailed eagle seen in Scotland. In 1700 there were 200 pairs but by 1916 this huge bird, sometimes called the sea eagle, became extinct after persecution in the UK. It was reintroduced to Scotland from Scandinavia in 1975 and there are now 42 breeding territories there. A feasibility study is being carried out on proposals to reintroduce it to East Anglia;Photograph: /RSPB

Great bustard
Last year saw the first egg laid by a great bustard – the heaviest flying bird in the world – in the UK for 175 years. It was reintroduced to Salisbury Plain in a project that began in 2004 with eggs rescued from farmland in Russia.

Pictured here is the first female great bustard to lay eggs in Britain in 175 years; Photograph: HO/AFP

Wild boar
After an absence of 400 years, they have reintroduced themselves by escaping from boar farms damaged in the 1987 storm. Now well-established in south-east England and the Forest of Dean.

After an absence of 400 years, wild boar have reintroduced themselves by escaping from boar farms damaged by the 1987 storm. There are now populations in south-east England and the Forest of Dean; Photograph: Solent News/Rex Features

Grey wolf
The last wolf in the UK was killed in Scotland in the 17th century. Experience in other countries shows that reintroduction would help to regenerate vegetation and woodland.

The last wolf in the UK was killed in Scotland in the 17th century. According to recent population modelling if wolves were reintroduced to Scotland, their population would stabilise at 25 wolves per 1,000 square kilometres. Although wolf populations would have an impact on the high red deer population, experience in other countries shows the wider effect would be to regenerate vegetation and woodland, benefiting wildlife and helping to restore ecosystems; Photograph: Robert Pickett/Pickett

Large Blue butterfly
One of the most vulnerable butterflies in the world, it became extinct in the UK in 1975, but was reintroduced to Dartmoor in 2000 from Sweden.

The large blue butterfly became extinct in the UK in 1975 but was reintroduced to Dartmoor in 2000 from Sweden. This is one of the most vulnerable butterflies in the world. It lays its eggs on wild thyme, then the caterpillars are adopted by red ants who take them into their nests, where the butterfly caterpillars become predators of ant grubs before pupating and emerging as spectacularly bright blue adults; Photograph: Emma Daniel/PA

Once upon a time, when Saint Columba was traveling through the country of the Picts to meet the Pictish King in Inverness, he had to cross the River Ness. When he reached the shore there was a group of people, Picts and Brethren both, burying an unfortunate man who had been bitten and mauled to death by a water-monster. Columba ordered one of his people to swim across the river and retrieve the man’s boat, that was adrift, so that he might cross.

On hearing this, Lugneus Mocumin stripped down to his tunic and plunged in to the water. The monster saw him swimming, and having tasted blood, broke the surface of the water and made for him. Everyone who was watching was horrified, and hid their eyes in terror.

Everyone except Columba, who raised his holy hand and inscribed the Cross in the empty air. Calling upon the name of God, he commanded the savage beast, saying: “Go no further! Do not touch the man! Go back at once!”

Lugneus brought the boat back, unharmed and everyone was astonished. And the heathen savages who were present were overcome by the greatness of the miracle which they themselves had seen, and magnified the God of the Christians.

- adapted from the Serene Dragon and Green Canticle websites.

*

Loch Ness through Fire, by Citril.

Celtic Christians valued the natural environment for its own sake. They valued times of quiet in solitary and often wild places, where they could read Scripture, meditate and pray.

Because they lived close to the natural environment, it is not surprising that Celtic Christians discovered the immanence of God. Their poetry often echoes those Psalms which speak of God in nature (Ps. 19, 89, 98 ) suggesting a similar spiritual process at work.

The following extract of a poem in the Celtic psaltery is attributed to St. Columba in Iona:

“Delightful it is to stand on the peak of a rock, in the bosom of the isle, gazing on the face of the sea.

I hear the heaving waves chanting a tune to God in heaven; I see their glittering surf.

I see the golden beaches, their sands sparkling; I hear the joyous shrieks of the swooping gulls.

I hear the waves breaking, crashing on the rocks, like thunder in heaven. I see the mighty whales…

Contrition fills my heart as I hear the sea; it chants my sins, sins too numerous to confess.

Let me bless almighty God, whose power extends over the sea and land, whose angels watch over all.

Let me study sacred books to calm my soul; I pray for peace, kneeling at heaven’s gates.

Let me do my daily work, gathering seaweed, catching fish, giving food to the poor.”

- a psalm of St Columba from Green Canticle.

*

A depiction of Saint Columba in about 565AD, urging Picts on Iona to become Christian, from The Independent.

Many legends have gathered about Columba, but there is also some historical data concerning his many works in the writings of Bede and Adamnan.  According to one story, Saint Patrick of Ireland foretold Columba’s birth in a prophecy:

He will be a saint and will be devout,
He will be an abbot, the king of royal graces,
He will be lasting and forever good;
The eternal kingdom be mine by his protection.

Columba was a man of tremendous energy with a vigorous personality. Born Colum MacFhelin MacFergus,1 in Ireland in 521 A.D., the great-great-grandson of Niall of the Nine Hostages, an Irish king, on his father’s side;2 while Columba’s mother was also descended from a king of Leinster and was related to the royalty of Scottish Dalriada.3 Columba, who had the potential to become a king in Ireland, instead, chose to give his full service to the mission of the King of heaven.4 Early in life Columba showed scholarly and clerical ability. He entered the monastic life, and almost immediately set forth on missionary travels. Even before ordination in 551, he had founded monasteries at Derry and Durrow, and is said to have founded as many as 300 churches and monasteries during his lifetime.5

Columba had a love for literature, and tradition asserts that, sometime around 560, he became involved in a dispute with his mentor, Abbot Finnian, over a manuscript Columba copied at the scriptorium—intending to keep the copy. Abbot Finnian disputed Columba’s right to keep the copy. The dispute eventually led to the Battle of Cul Dreimnhe in 561, during which many men were killed—perhaps 3000.6 As penance for these deaths, Columba suggested that he work as a missionary in Scotland to help convert as many people as had been killed in the battle.

He exiled himself from Ireland, and in 563, Columba and a dozen companions set out for northern Britain, where the 5th century Picts had lost territory to the previous Irish kings, and were still generally ignorant of Christianity. The religion of the Picts—Druidism fok law —were the beliefs which prevailed in the rest of Britain and Celtic Gaul.7 Historian Adamnan records that Columba’s efforts at conversion were strenuously opposed by the diabolical arts and incantations of the Druid priests. Fountains were particular objects of veneration, as well as heavenly bodies and oak trees, a superstitious awe which many fountains and wells are regarded with today—likely a remnant of the ancient Pictish religion. Druidism acknowledges a Supreme Being, whose name was synonymous with the Eastern Baal, and was visibly represented by the sun and sun-worship. Many of the antiquities scattered across north Scotland, such as stone circles, monoliths, sculptured stones, etc., are believed to be connected with the Druid religion.8

Columba was kindly received by Conal, king of British Scots, and allowed to preach, convert, and baptize. He was also given possession of the isle of Iona, where, according to legend, his tiny boat had washed ashore. (The island was known by the simple name “I” changed by Bede into “Hy” and Latinized by the monks into “Iova” or “Iona.”)9 Here Columba founded the celebrated monastery which became a school for missionaries and the center for the conversion of the Picts, as well as the only center of literacy and education in the region, at that time. Says the historian Bede, “The monastry of Iona, like those previously founded by Columba in Ireland, was not a retreat for solitaries whose chief object was to work out their own salvation; it was a great school of Christian education, and was specially designed to prepare and send forth a body of clergy trained to the task of preaching the Gospel among the heathen.”10 From Iona Scotland, his disciples went out to found other monasteries to the west in Ireland, and to the east the famous Lindisfarne monastery in Northumbria, among others.

As a close advisor to the Gaelic king Conal11 of Dalriada, Columba served as a diplomat to neighboring kingdoms in Ireland and Pictland. (Dalriada was a Gaelic kingdom that extended on both sides of the North Channel: in the northwest of Ireland, and western Scotland. One of the little known facts about Scotland is that the county of Argyll received extensive immigration from the Irish of northern Ireland, known as “Scoti” and had become an Irish, i.e. “Scottish” area. Despite heavy onslaughts from the Picts, the Dalriada of the Scottish mainland continued to expand. From 574 to 606, Dalriada was ruled by one of its most dynamic and successful kings, Aedan mac Gabran. In the mid-800′s, King Kenneth I. MacAlpin brought the Picts permanently under Dalriadic rule. Thereafter, the whole country was known as “Scotland;” thus was the end of the Picts of the ancient British Isles.)12

Attended by his disciples, Columba made long journeys through the Highlands of Scotland, as far as Aberdeen, spreading the light of faith in God and instructing the people in the truths of the Gospel. For thirty years, he evangelized, studied, wrote, and governed his monastery at Iona. He supervised his monks in their work in the fields and workrooms, in their daily worship and Sunday Eucharist, and their study and teaching.

There are many stories of miracles performed through Columba during his work with the Picts. Columba perceived that by converting King Brude, one of the known leaders of the ancient Picts, it would lead to the success of bringing over the whole nation to the worship of the true God. So he visited the pagan king Bridei (or Brude), king of Fortriu, at his base in Inverness,13 where it is said that the king had the gates locked against Columba. But that when he arrived at the king’s castle, Columba made the sign of the cross and the gates opened of their own accord. King Brude was so impressed that he opened his home—and soul—to Columba, becoming a devoted follower of Jesus Christ.14

Among the many accomplishments of Columba, he was also an impressive sailor.15 Columba was known for his joyous love of life.16 As well as a man of action, Columba was also a poet, whose Latin and Gaelic poems reveal a man very sensitive to the beauty of his surroundings.17 He is also credited with transcribing 300 books personally.18 At the height of the Iona monastery, it produced The Book of Kells, a masterwork of Irish Celtic symbols, art and literature. The community Columba founded at Iona became the center for an early renaissance where books, art, music and culture were preserved at the on-set of the Christian destruction in Dark Ages from Rome.19 To keep a succession of the teachers of Christianity, Columba established a monastery in every district of the Pictish territories,20 and from these monasteries, for many ages, came men of authenticity who watered and tended the good seed planted by Columba.

Columba had great influence among the neighboring princes, and they often asked for his advice. They submitted to him their quarrels, which were frequently settled by Columba.21

Columba died peacefully in 597, while working on a copy of the Psalter. He had put down his pen, rested a few hours, and at Matins was found dead before the Altar, a smile on his face. He is quoted by his biographer Adamnan as having said, “This day is called in the sacred Scriptures a day of rest, and truly to me it will be such, for it is the last of my life and I shall enter into rest after the fatigues of my labors.”22

For many years after his passing, Columba’s influence was felt in the Celtic lands and abroad. Columba’s mission at Iona led to the conversion of Scotland and of the north of England.23 Columba’s life contributed to Ireland becoming one of the monastic hubs of Europe, with the culture of Ireland dominated by monasteries and monastic leaders. Other Irish monks became missionaries and converted much of northern Europe to Christianity.24

1 Saint Columba. www.geocities.com/c_brundage/saints/col2.htm?200718
2 Columba: Early life in Ireland. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columba
3 Saint Columba. www.geocities.com/c_brundage/saints/col2.htm?200718
4 St. Columba or Columcille 521-597. www.cin.org/columba.html
5 Saint Columba. www.geocities.com/c_brundage/saints/col2.htm?200718
6 St. Columba. http://www.catholic.org/saints/saint.php?saint_id=419
7 General History of the Highlands – The Druids: www.electricscotland.com/history/genhist/hist17.html
8 General History of the Highlands – The Druids: www.electricscotland.com/history/genhist/hist17.html
9 General History of the Highlands – St. Columba: www.electricscotland.com/history/genhist/hist18.html
10 General History of the Highlands – St. Columba: www.electricscotland.com/history/genhist/hist18.html
11 General History of the Highlands – St. Columba: www.electricscotland.com/history/genhist/hist18.html
12 Dalriada. www.lyberty.com/encyc/articles/dalriada.html
13 Columba: Scotland. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columba
14 Saint Columba. www.geocities.com/c_brundage/saints/col2.htm?200718
15 St. Columba or Columcille 521-597. www.cin.org/columba.html
16 Saint Columba. www.geocities.com/c_brundage/saints/col2.htm?200718
17 St. Columba or Columcille 521-597. www.cin.org/columba.html
18 Columba: Scotland. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columba
19 Who is Saint Columba? www.columba.org/about/qanda.html#whois
20 General History of the Highlands – St. Columba: www.electricscotland.com/history/genhist/hist18.html
21 General History of the Highlands – St. Columba: www.electricscotland.com/history/genhist/hist18.html
22 Episcopal Book of Prayer on Lesser Feasts and Fasts.
23 St. Columba or Columcille 521-597. www.cin.org/columba.html
24 Medieval Sourcebook: Rule of St. Columba 6 th Century. www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/columba-rule.html

- from the St Columba Retreat House website.

From the Bradshaw Foundation -

An extraordinary collection of mammoth remains and flint tools unearthed in a Norfolk quarry may be evidence of the first Neanderthal hunting camp discovered in Britain, scientists said yesterday.

The 50,000-year-old fossils and artefacts, among the best preserved in this country, are casting important new light on the lifestyle of Homo neanderthalis (Neanderthal man), the cousin of modem human beings that lived in these islands in the last Ice Age. A 12-week archaeological dig at a gravel pit has revealed a pile of at least seven tusks up to 8ft long, large teeth and partial skeletons from at least four mammoths, together with eight Neanderthal flint hand-axes, teeth from a woolly rhinoceros and reindeer antlers.

The close proximity of the Neanderthal tools and the animal remains – one hand-axe is actually inside a mammoth skull still attached to a tusk – suggests that the site was a hunting hide where the hominids ambushed their prey, or a scavenging ground where the kills of predators, such as sabre-toothed cats and bears, were butchered and eaten. Either way, the discoveries will help scientists to piece together new details of the Neanderthal way of life, solving puzzles about their diet and behaviour.

The Norfolk site contains a network of watering holes, which would have been an ideal spot for either activity. There are no Neanderthal bones or teeth, but their presence has been confirmed from the age of the dig and the style of the hand-axes. Andy Currant, curator of fossil mammals at the Natural History Museum, said that there was clear evidence of Neanderthal activity. “You don’t get piles of tusks like this unless someone has gathered them up,” he said. “It has to be deliberate. The hand-axe was the Swiss Army knife of the middle Palaeolithic. If you’ve got one actually in or on a skull, you don’t have to worry what else you’ve got, there’s butchery going on. I’ve never seen anything like this in Britain.” David Miles, chief archaeologist for English Heritage, which funded the dig, said: “This is as good an example of a Neanderthal kill site as you will find. This site is not just of national but of international importance.”

The best evidence for Neanderthal hunting comes from Germany, but the Norfolk hand-axes offer the strongest indication yet of such hunting in Britain, Mark White, a Palaeolithic archaeologist from Durham University, said: “It is valid to speculate that the Neanderthal had gone to this watering place because they knew they would find prey to kill.”

Bill Boismier, of the Norfolk Archaeology Unit, who led the excavation team, said that the absence of cut marks on the bones, together with large numbers of carcass beetle fossils found, made scavenging more likely, although they did not rule out a Neanderthal kill. The excavations are the first to be supported with a grant from the Aggregate Levy Sustainability Fund, which distributes money raised by a tax on gravel quarries to environmental and historical projects in such areas.

Neanderthal Man was present in Europe and Asia from about 130,000 years ago to, about 30,000 years ago, when it was supplanted by modern man, Homo sapiens. Woolly mammoth grew to about the same size as a modern Asian elephant, standing between 8ft and l0ft high at the shoulder and weighing between four and six tonnes when fully grown.

A report by Imogen Mowday on the Bradshaw Foundation website -

A bout-coupe style handaxe lodged against fragments of a Woolly Mammoth’s tusk.

These images were taken at a newly discovered Neanderthal (Homo neanderthalensis) site in East Anglia dating from approximately 60,000 [sic] years ago. Archaeologists continue to work there and are revealing what may be the most important Palaeolithic site in Britain since evidence of Homo heidelbergensis, dating from circa 500,000 years ago, was discovered in Boxgrove in the 1990s. This new site has so far revealed over a dozen bout-coupe style handaxes, one of which is shown in photograph number one lodged against fragments of a Woolly Mammoth’s tusk. The clear association of Neanderthal handaxes with a range of Glacial animal, insect and plant species makes this site the first of its kind to be found in the U.K.

Woolly mammoth, bears, reindeer and frogs, and hundreds of flint flakes and tools. The exciting discoveries were made during the draining of a lake for gravel extraction. A local archaeologist who is a highly skilled flint-toolmaker (a knapper), was monitoring the gravel extraction to ensure that no archaeology was damaged or not recorded. The site first became clear to him when two large mammoth tusks protruded out from a layer of peat. Immediately work ceased and archaeologists began to record in fine detail the thousands of fragments of animal bones ranging from woolly mammoth to bears, reindeer and frogs, alongside many hundreds of flint flakes and tools.

A Neanderthal trap to kill or scavenge off large mammals. It has now become clear that the remains were deposited within ponds, which would have been set against a tundra backdrop: an environment containing little tree cover and perhaps a permanent layer of permafrost. These watering holes would have provided a perfect arena for Neanderthals to trap and kill large mammals, or to scavenge off the corpses of animals left by other carnivores. Future examination of all the flint tools and animal bones may be able to clarify whether the Hominids were hunting, scavenging or both. Already some bones appear to have fractures indicative of hominids smashing them for marrow extraction, as the rich fats and nutrients contained within would have been essential for survival in a cold climate.

Neanderthal behaviour

The site will undoubtedly greatly aid our understanding of Neanderthal behaviour. As David Miles, chief Archaeologist for English Heritage, expressed it: “We may have discovered a butchery site, or, what would be even more exciting, first evidence in Britain of a Neanderthal hunting site, which would tell us much about their social abilities”. Not only may we learn about the way in which Neanderthals behaved in order to obtain food, the discovery of mammoth tusks in a concentrated area may indicate that the Neanderthals used them to construct shelters or territorial markers. Therefore the site’s finds may ultimately allow us to make suggestions about the symbolic behaviour of Neanderthals and allow them to be viewed as highly intelligent sentient beings, finally removing any old views depicting them as “primitive”.

From Fathom.com -

At Lynford, a site in Norfolk, there is evidence of an association between Neanderthals and mammoths. This is a very exciting site that has only been excavated in the last few months, by the Norfolk Archaeology Unit. It has revealed wonderful remains of several mammoths, and numerous small hand axes made by Neanderthals dating from about 50,000 years ago. One of the research questions to be addressed is that none of the mammoth bones so far seem to have cut marks on them. So is this association accidental? Perhaps these hand axes were being used to butcher other animals elsewhere on the site and were then mixed in with the mammoth remains? Or perhaps the Neanderthals were indeed hunting, or at least scavenging, the mammoths. AHOB is involved in this rich vein of current research.

From the Bradshaw Foundation -

Research in East Anglia, and a new analysis of bones found two decades ago in a Somerset quarry, show that human beings have been living in Britain for up to 200,000 years longer than has generally been thought. Mankind’s ancestors may have migrated here as long as 700,000 years ago.

Until now, the oldest evidence of early human beings, or hominids, in Britain came from about 500,000 years ago, the date attributed to Boxgrove Man, a member of the species Homo heidelbergensis whose remains were unearthed at Boxgrove in West Sussex in 1993.

The first results of the Ancient Human Occupation of Britain project, however, indicate that the first Britons are almost certainly much older. Animal remains found at a hominid settlement on the East Anglian coast have been dated to 700,000 years ago, indicating that “Anglia Man” is at least that old. A re-examination of animal bones and artefacts unearthed in the 1980s at Westbury-sub-Mendip, in Somerset, have shown evidence of early human activity 100,000 years before Boxgrove Man.

The revised date for Westbury alone, however, is being hailed as one of the most exciting developments in British archaeology and palaeontology since the Boxgrove finds.

“The evidence is starting to mount in favour of hominids having been here for a long time before Boxgrove,” said Professor Chris Stringer, head of human origins at the Natural History Museum, and director of the Ancient Human Occupation of Britain project. “We don’t yet have the hominid fossils, as we do for Boxgrove Man, but there are firm hints that settlement goes back as far as 700,000 years.”

Andy Currant, from the museum’s department of palaeontology, said: “We are getting big surprises. The dates are massively earlier than what we thought they were, by an order of 100,000 years.”

Human remains, such as the tibia and teeth found at Boxgrove, have yet to be unearthed from older periods, but cut marks on animal bones and flints shaped into primitive hand-axes have been found at the new sites. Both are firm indicators that mankind’s ancestors were present, because no other animal could account for them. At Westbury, for example, there are bones belonging to rhinoceroses, hyenas, wolves, bison and cave bears showing straight cut marks that could have been made only by butchery with a sharp cutting implement, along with shaped flints that have been newly identified as hand axes.

The dates involved are much too early for carbon dating – effective only to about 40,OOOBC – but scientists have been able to calculate good approximate ages from the known ages of animal fossils found at the sites.

In particular, the research centres on teeth belonging to a genus of prehistoric watervole, known as mimomys. About 700,000 years ago these voles had rooted molars, similar to those of human beings, which grow once then get worn down through adult life. But by 500,000 years ago, the animals had evolved rootless molars that continue to grow – an advantage to creatures that eat tough vegetation.

The voles found at Boxgrove are from the later era, but the East Anglian ones have primitive molars, dating the site definitively to at least 700,000 years ago. Those at Westbury are of an intermediate form. “The dating still involves some guesswork, but the best estimate is about 600,000 years ago,” Professor Stringer said. Simon Parfitt, a fossil mammal specialist at the museum and at University College, London, who analysed the vole fossils, said; “We can put everything in a relative order, and Westbury could be 100,000 years earlier than Boxgrove. The Bast Anglian finds go as far back as 700,000 years.”

The species of hominid which inhabited the sites remains unknowable without direct fossils. Professor Stringer said the most likely candidate is an earlier variety of Homo heidelergensis. It was also possible they were examples of Homo antecessor, a potentially new species found at Atapuerca in Spain and the oldest known European hominid.

Homo heidelergensis, as known from Boxgrove and continental sites, had a slightly smaller skull than modern man, but was more heavily built, at about 14 stone in weight and 6ft to height “In my view, it’s a direct ancestor of Homo sapiens,” Professor Stringer said.

The Ancient Human Occupation of Britain project, which was started last year with a grant from the Leverhulme Trust, is also examining human habitation in Britain since Boxgrove and aims to shed light on when, how and where hominids lived in these islands. A key question will be an investigation of a 100,000-year period in which early human beings appear to have been absent, probably because of climate change.

The Ancient Human Occupation of Britain study has brought together researchers from many different disciplines with the aim of building up a comprehensive history of human habitation in England and Wales. As well as archaeologists and palaeontologists, it involves geologists, geographers and specialists on fossil mammals. Geological data, for example, gives a good guide to dates and to local temperatures during particular epochs, while mammalian remains can be important for judging human lifestyles.

From the BBC (published 4th June 2002) -

The discovery of stone tools and animal bones in Eastern England has made scientists think humans may have been present in Britain 200,000 years earlier than previously thought.

Research at two coastal sites, one of them at Happisburgh, Norfolk, showed humans could have settled in the country 700,000 years ago.

Experts previously thought the earliest humans arrived 500,000 years ago.

The animal bones show markings which could only have been made by human chopping activity.

Human evidence

Professor Chris Stringer, head of human origins at the Natural History Museum, said: “The evidence is being examined by a lot of people… but it’s building into an exciting picture.”

Further analysis at Westbury-sub-Mendip in Somerset, where animal bones and teeth were discovered in the 1980s, now shows evidence of human activity 600,000 years ago.

The finds form part of the Ancient Human Occupation of Britain (AHOB) project which began last November.

It combines specialists from universities and museums but also relies on the work of amateurs in local areas.

From Showcaves.com -

Goat’s Hole Cave, better known under the name Paviland Cave, has its important entry in science history. It is the place where for the very first time the discovery of fossil human remains is recorded. Rev. William Buckland discovered in 1823 a skeleton, and he was the first who recognized that is was a remain of a former time, and wrote about it. Subsequently the new sciene archeology developed, so this is the birth place of a new science.

However, each birth is connected with pain, and the discovery of William Buckland is connected with complete error: he misjudged both its age and its sex. [...] Buckland believed the skeleton was from Roman times. And as it was discovered with decorative items, including perforated seashell necklaces and ivory jewelry, he thought it was a woman. The person was covered by red ochre, so soon it was commonly known as Red Lady of Paviland.

Modern archaeology identified the Red Lady of Paviland as a man, no older than 21, who lived 29,000 years ago (26,350 ± 550 BP, OxA-1815) at the end of the Upper Paleolithic Period. The skeleton was found along with a mammoth’s skull, which has since been lost. The formal burial ceremony, the number and kind of items, suggest he was a tribal chieftain. This is the oldest known burial in the UK and western Europe.

When the man was buried, the cave was about 120km from the sea. The cave was overlooking a plain similar to present day Siberia with tundra vegetation. The ice sheet of the Devensian Glaciation, the last ice age, advanced towards the site, and the weather was cold, 10°C in summer, -20° in winter.

From British Archaeology (published Oct 2001) -

Goat’s Hole cave, Paviland, on the Gower Peninsula in South Wales, has long been renowned as the site of one of the best-known prehistoric burials in Britain – the notoriously misnamed ‘Red Lady of Paviland’ which was discovered in 1823. Yet it has taken archaeologists nearly two centuries to unravel the mysteries of this remarkable site, with the definitive report published only last year.

The story begins not in 1823 but during the previous year, when Daniel Davies and the Rev John Davies, respectively surgeon and curate at Port Eynon on the south coast of Gower, explored the cave and found animal bones, including the tusk of a mammoth. The Talbot family of Penrice Castle was informed and Miss Mary Theresa Talbot, then the oldest unmarried daughter, joined an expedition to the site and found ‘bones of elephants’ on 27 December 1822.

William Buckland, Professor of Geology at Oxford University and a correspondent of that well-connected family, was contacted. He arrived on 18 January 1823 and spent a week at Goat’s Hole – a week in which his famous discovery took place. He later wrote:

[I found the skeleton] enveloped by a coating of a kind of ruddle . . . which stained the earth, and in some parts extended itself to the distance of about half an inch [12mm] around the surface of the bones . . . Close to that part of the thigh bone where the pocket is usually worn surrounded also by ruddle [were] about two handfuls of the Nerita littoralis [periwinkle shells]. At another part of the skeleton, viz in contact with the ribs [were] forty or fifty fragments of ivory rods . . . [also] . . . some small fragments of rings made of the same ivory and found with the rods . . . Both rods and rings, as well as the Nerite shells, were stained superficially with red, and lay in the same red substance that enveloped the bones. (Buckland, Reliquiae Diluvianae, 1823)

In the field, Buckland had identified the skeleton as male, suggesting that the bones were those of a Customs Officer murdered by smugglers. By the time of publication later that year, however, the gender had changed with a new and better story.

The ochre-stained skeleton had become a ‘painted lady’ who serviced the needs of the Roman soldiers garrisoned in the camp on the hill above the cave. It was a good story. But by the early years of the 20th century, it could be seen not to add up: the burial was male, the mammoth ivories were Palaeolithic and not modern products made from fossil ivory as Buckland had claimed, and the camp was an Iron Age promontory fort.

Buckland had found a burial, representing a single event in the human history of the site, but found no more than a few flints, even though the site has since yielded thousands. Indeed, in subsequent excavations the site was to produce diagnostic or dated material – flint, ivory and bone artefacts, and the burial itself – spanning more than half a dozen Palaeolithic events over at least the period 35,000-11,000 BP (before present). Buckland did not know this. What he did know, as Dean of Westminster and Curate at Christchurch – or strictly speaking what he believed – was that the bones of such animals as mammoth and woolly rhino found in the cave could not be contemporary with the burial since such species, he thought, had not made it onto the Ark and so had been drowned in Noah’s, or an earlier, flood. His belief in such a deluge is shown by the title of his book, Reliquiae Diluvianae (‘Evidence of the Flood’).

He therefore regarded the ‘Red Lady’ as intrusive, a reasonable inference given the intellectual context of his day and the undeveloped nature of archaeological excavation as a technique. But did he really miss the flints because of his mindset? The answer may be yes, but Buckland’s elevation drawing of the site suggests that the burial may have lain at the lowest level then exposed. The many thousands of lithics, now interpreted as earlier than the burial, were not found until 85 years later through the excavations of William Sollas, also holder of Oxford’s Chair of Geology.

The ‘Red Lady’ would now be interpreted as a ceremonial interment of the Gravettian period of the Palaeolithic (c 28-21,000 BP), such as are now known across Europe from Paviland to Moscow and south to Portugal. But at the time when the ‘Red Lady’ was unearthed she – or rather he – was not only the first such burial to be found but also the first human fossil ever to have been recovered anywhere in the world.

The radiocarbon dating technique was not invented until the late 1940s, so neither Buckland nor Sollas could have known the true age of the interment. Sollas did, however, work on the assumption that the burial was Palaeolithic. He confirmed the burial site by finding a spread of ochre associated with ivory rods parallel to the cave wall, and added to our understanding of how the body – which was incomplete at the time of discovery probably because of marine erosion – had been interred.

The bones were deeply stained with red ochre, and the grave goods – ivory rod and bracelet fragments, and perforated periwinkle shells – were all similarly stained. In addition, small limestone blocks may have been placed at the head and feet. Perhaps, too, the skull of a mammoth found nearby may have been part of the grave furniture – this was the interpretation of the Abbé Breuil who had joined the Sollas expedition in the role of lithics analyst. Sollas correctly identified the body as that of a man.

Sollas’s fieldwork at Paviland in 1912 had been prompted by a visit to Oxford of the French scholar Emile Cartailhac, then preparing his magnum opus on the caves of Grimaldi in Liguria. Cartailhac dated these burials as Upper Palaeolithic and suggested that the mode of burial at Paviland was comparable. It was not until the 1960s, however, that an attempt was made to date the burial scientifically, when Kenneth Oakley published a radiocarbon determination made on the actual bones of the ‘Red Lady’.

The result of 18,460 ± 340 BP coincided with the peak of the last Ice Age when the edge of the ice lay only an hour’s walk north of Goat’s Hole. The date conjured up a picture of great charm and power, with a later suggestion that the body could have been transported from somewhere further south to a distant, venerated site at the edge of the ice for a summer burial when temperatures rose.

Things were beginning to hot up, however, for John Campbell’s 1977 study of the Goat’s Hole lithic assemblage showed convincingly that it belonged to the later part of the Aurignacian period of the Palaeolithic (c 40-28,000 BP) and was perhaps 30,000 years old. He suggested, however, that the burial might be younger, specifically Gravettian, on the basis of the dating of comparable European ivory bracelets.

At much the same time, hitherto little known material from Belgium was being studied by Marcel Otte and became widely known through his publication of a synthesis on the earlier Belgian Upper Palaeolithic. This was complemented, in 1980, by Roger Jacobi’s ground-breaking study of the British Upper Palaeolithic. Jacobi undertook a rigorous analysis of both the ‘Red Lady’ burial and human presence at Goat’s Hole and concluded that parallels could be found within the Belgian Aurignacian for the ivory artefacts associated with the interment and that the ‘Red Lady’ was therefore likely to be of that age.

He dismissed the 18,460 bp date on the grounds that human presence was simply lacking from north-western Europe at this time. Jacobi pointed also to continental parallels to artefacts termed ‘leaf points’ that should be contemporary with or, even, predate the Aurignacian and reaffirmed the presence there of a flint ‘Font Robert’ Gravettian spearpoint and of Late Upper Palaeolithic artefacts that related to the recolonisation of the British peninsula after the peak of the last Ice Age sometime after 13,000 bp.

In other words, it was quite clear by 1980 that Goat’s Hole had been the scene of a number of apparently discrete phases of human presence spread over 20,000 or more years of the Palaeolithic. But all this knowledge depended largely upon typological parallels and on one very suspect radiocarbon date.

The stage was clearly set for a scientific re-evaluation of Paviland. In 1989, a new and far more plausible result of 26,350 ± 550 BP was produced by the Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator on bone powder residual from the original Oakley sample. Because contamination of ancient samples normally results in ages that are too young, it was reasonable to assume that the ‘Red Lady’ died around 26,000 years ago in radiocarbon years (calendar years are possibly several thousand years older than radiocarbon years at this date). Even so, this dating was at least a couple of millennia too young for the Aurignacian.

Could he be yet older? A visit that I made myself to the site in 1989, following a massive storm that had exposed apparently in situ deposits, convinced me that further work would be useful. There the matter rested, however, until 1995 when I received an unexpected letter from Erik Trinkaus revealing that he had made a comprehensive study of the ‘Red Lady’ skeleton some years previously. Since then, Erik had been sidetracked into Neanderthal studies to the great benefit of palaeoanthropology. But now he was once more involved with the study of anatomically modern humans and the ‘Red Lady’ paper was just awaiting a publication outlet. This was the final spur to action.

The new study began with a radiocarbon dating programme and resulted in the dating of some 40 radiocarbon samples of fauna, artefacts and the bones of the ‘Red Lady’ himself. The skeleton was re-dated to 25,840 ± 280 BP and an age of the order of 26,000 years confirmed. None of the ivory or shells associated with the ‘Red Lady’ was dated because of problems of potential contamination by preservatives, but charred bone dates are earlier and centre on 28,750, and so are plausibly Aurignacian.

Of the ivory pieces, 75 per cent are ornaments, virtually all associated with the burial of the ‘Red Lady’, although the well known perforated ivory pendant made from a growth in a mammoth’s tusk is later at 24,000 BP. Bone artefacts include three bone spatulae dated to 23,000 BP. The latest phase of human presence with a firm radiocarbon date is represented by ivory-working of 21,000 BP.

At the time when the young man was ritually interred, there is no substantive evidence in this remote part of Europe for a human presence that was other than episodic. Indeed, faunal compositions and densities probably oscillated over time and space. Human presence in the British early Upper Palaeolithic may plausibly be linked to a ‘biomass expansion’, an overall increase in the availability of animals and other forms of food, centred on the 29th millennium. The coincidence of the dating of burnt bones to this period, combined with the presence of burnt Aurignacian artefacts, supports this as the most likely time for Aurignacian presence at Paviland. Radiocarbon dating of an Aurignacian bone spearpoint to around 28,000 bp at nearby Uphill lends additional weight to this interpretation.

Gravettian visitation is attested by a scatter of large tanged points occurring across southern Britain, including Paviland. Such points are generally dated to 28-27,000 BP, although their use may possibly extend down to the time of the ‘Red Lady’ burial.

As part of the radiocarbon dating process, the ‘stable isotope values’ of carbon and nitrogen within the bone sample were measured. These values provide important information about ancient diets and show that the ‘Red Lady’ had a penchant for seafood – either collected when living on the coast then 100 kilometres distant, or in the form of salmon fished out of the palaeo-Severn, which bears from Paviland are also known (from stable isotope values) to have eaten.

The ‘Red Lady’, when alive, was a healthy young adult male – aged 25-30, about 5′ 8″ (1.74 metres) in height, and possibly weighing about 11 stone (73 kg) – but less robust than might be expected for this period. Whilst the earliest anatomically modern humans in Europe were characterised by tropically-adapted body proportions, arising from their African ancestry, this is not reflected in the skeleton of the ‘Red Lady’, probably because the Paviland individual was a product of perhaps 10,000 years of evolution of modern humans within Europe.

Molecular biologist Bryan Sykes has shown that the ‘Red Lady’ skeleton has a DNA sequence corresponding to the commonest extant lineage in Europe. As such, the Paviland evidence lends support to the argument that the roots of modern Europeans lie not with Neolithic farmers but with the ingress into Europe of human populations who were to replace the Neanderthals.

Restudy of the Goat’s Hole lithic collections has confirmed material ranging from about 40,000 BP to about 13,000 BP (including Mousterian, leaf point, late Aurignacian, early Gravettian, Creswellian, and Final Upper Palaeolithic phases), although the earliest and latest phases are not dated by radiocarbon. Aurignacian finds form the dominant element. These artefacts were made from a range of imported and local raw materials. It is interesting that analysis of the ochres is consistent with a local origin, probably within Gower.

Clearly, the people responsible for the interment possessed considerable local as well as more far-flung knowledge. Preferential use of imported flint for ‘busqué burins’, a specialist kind of engraving tool, and blade blanks, suggests the import to the site of curated items. A type of Aurignacian inversely retouched scraper is special to the site and may reflect the long term isolation of a social group.

The ceremonial burial of the ‘Red Lady’ involved the interplay of art and consciousness which combine in an act that is simultaneously creative and symbolic. The rite possesses features replicated, in regionally changing modes, across Europe in other ceremonial Gravettian burials. These include an extended burial position, positioning of the corpse along the cave wall, the presence by the grave of large herbivore remains, the placing of stone slabs at head and feet, the use of ochre, the deposition of personal ornaments, and the possibility that the body may have been headless when interred. No head was found at Paviland, and other headless Gravettian burials are known.

In chronological terms, Paviland is early in the European series of burials and is actually the earliest with a firm radiocarbon date measured directly on human bone. These burials are resonant of a complex early European society in which status may have been inherited rather than acquired by merit – as evidenced by several very rich child burials elsewhere.

In the ancient world, the sacred and profane were inextricably intertwined. Paviland cave was occupied by the hunters of the Gravettian mammoth steppe as a functional shelter; but there may also have been an aura of sanctity attached to the place, explaining the burial here of the ‘Red Lady’. We may wonder whether one reason for visits to Paviland, as the climatic downturn accelerated and the British peninsula was increasingly abandoned, may have lain in its status as a special place.

From wikipedia -

The Red Lady of Paviland is a fairly complete Upper Paleolithic-era human male skeleton dyed in red ochre, discovered in 1823 by Rev. William Buckland in one of the Paviland limestone caves of the Gower peninsula in south Wales, dating from c29,000 BP.^[1]

When Buckland first discovered the skeleton, he misjudged both its age and its sex. As a creationist,^[2] Buckland believed no human remains could have been older than the Biblical Great Flood, and thus wildly underestimated its true age, believing the remains to date back to the Roman era. Buckland believed the skeleton was female in large part because it was discovered with decorative items, including perforated seashell necklaces and ivory jewelry. These decorative items combined with the skeleton’s red dye caused Buckland to mistakenly speculate that the remains belonged to a Roman prostitute or witch.

Later that year, writing about his find in his book Reliquiae Diluvianae (Evidence of the Flood), Buckland stated:

“[I found the skeleton] enveloped by a coating of a kind of ruddle … which stained the earth, and in some parts extended itself to the distance of about half an inch [12 mm] around the surface of the bones … Close to that part of the thigh bone where the pocket is usually worn surrounded also by ruddle [were] about two handfuls of the Nerita littoralis [periwinkle shells]. At another part of the skeleton, viz in contact with the ribs [were] forty or fifty fragments of ivory rods [also] some small fragments of rings made of the same ivory and found with the rods … Both rods and rings, as well as the Nerite shells, were stained superficially with red, and lay in the same red substance that enveloped the bones.”

The “lady” has since been identified as a man, probably no older than 21. His are the oldest anatomically modern human remains found in the United Kingdom, as well as the oldest known ceremonial burial in Western Europe. The skeleton was found along with a mammoth‘s skull, which has since been lost. Scholars now believe he may have been a tribal chieftain. Tests made in the 20th century suggested he lived about 26,000 years ago (26,350 ± 550 BP, OxA-1815) at the end of the Upper Paleolithic Period: however, a more recent examination of the remains by Dr Thomas Higham of Oxford University and Dr Roger Jacobi of the British Museum suggests they may be 4000 years older. ^[3]. Although now on the coast, at the time of the burial the cave would have been located approximately 70 miles inland, overlooking a plain. When the remains were dated to some 26,000 years ago it was thought the Red Lady lived at a time when an ice sheet of the most recent glacial period, in the British Isles called the Devensian Glaciation, would have been advancing towards the site, and that consequently the weather would have been more like that of present day Siberia, with maximum temperatures of perhaps 10°C in summer, -20° in winter, and a tundra vegetation. The new dating however indicates he lived at a warmer period. Bone protein analysis indicates that the “lady” lived on a diet that consisted of between 15% and 20% fish, which, together with the distance from the sea, suggests that the people may have been semi-nomadic, or that the tribe transported the body from a coastal region for burial. Other food probably included mammoth, the woolly rhinoceros and reindeer.

When the skeleton was first found, Wales had no museum in which to keep it; instead, it was housed at Oxford University, where Buckland was a professor. In December 2007 it was loaned for a year to the National Museum Cardiff. Subsequent excavations of the area in which the skeleton was found have yielded more than 4,000 flints, teeth and bones, and needles and bracelets, which are on exhibit at Swansea Museum and the National Museum in Cardiff.

From the BBC (published Oct 2006) -

The cave skeleton was found by clergyman William Buckland

A world famous archaeological find – a 26,000-year-old skeleton discovered in the Paviland cave on Gower – is set to return to Wales.

The skeleton, known as the Red Lady of Paviland, was discovered in the 1820s and taken to Oxford University.

The National Museum of Wales said a deal had been struck in principle with the university to borrow the remains.

It said the skeleton would be on display for a year as part of its centenary celebrations in 2007.

Last month, druid Chris Warwick spent a weekend in the cave where it was found to campaign for the return of the bones.

The Dead to Rights group, set up by Mr Warwick, said the removal of the skeleton was a “desecration” of a sacred site, and has previously called for the bones to be reburied in the cave.

The remains have been on display at Oxford University

The skeleton was discovered by the Reverend William Buckland, also a palaeontologist, who removed the bones.

As the skeleton was stained with red ochre and elaborately buried with artefacts, Buckland misinterpreted the find as a young female prostitute from Roman times.

But the body turned out to be that of a young man, who was many thousands of years older, and had been buried with great dignity and ritual.

The skeleton is set to feature in a new archaeology gallery at the museum called Origins: In Search of Early Wales

The museum’s director general Michael Houlihan said: “The national museum is delighted with this decision as it will provide an excellent focus for the opening of this exciting new gallery.”

However, Mr Warwick still insists he wants the bones returned to the cave saying something is “amiss” with the cave since the bones and artefacts were removed.

From About.com, by K. Kris Hurst -

The early Mesolithic archaeological site of Star Carr is probably one of the best known sites in England, occupied intermittently for about 300 years, beginning about 10,700 years ago. The site lies within the Vale of Pickering in east Yorkshire in what would have been at the time a swamp fringing a lake. Star Carr was an engineering marvel for its hunter-gatherer inhabitants, the settlement built atop a man-made platform of brush wood, stones and clay, set to stabilize the surface.

Artifacts recovered at Star Carr included over 200 barbed spearpoints, elk antler mattocks, bone scrapers, and masks or headdresses made from red deer antlers. Animals represented in the faunal collections included red deer, roe deer, wild oxen, elk, wild pig, and waterfowl, but a curious lack of fish or molluscan remains, given its location.

From the Times Higher Education (published 2000) -

One of the seats of Stone-Age civilisation in the British Isles has just become even older. Experts have been able to date the settlement of Star Carr, where the first evidence of wood-working and possible animal husbandry has been discovered, with unprecedented precision.

It emerges that the inhabitants of Star Carr, in the Vale of Pickering, Yorkshire, lived in a lakeside settlement dating back 10,970 years, just 600 years after the ice sheets retreated following the abrupt end of the last Ice Age.

Petra Dark, an archaeologist at Reading University, said: “It is even older than we thought and for the first time for any Mesolithic site, we now know the exact length of the interval between the occupation and climate warming.”

In a forthcoming paper in the journal Antiquity, Dr Dark said that a new assessment of tree-ring data in Germany had added 200 years to the age of the site.

Excavations at Star Carr over the past two decades have revealed evidence that nearby reedbeds were annually burned, implying a deliberate management policy that may have been intended to entice animals to the lakeside where they could be easily hunted.

Evidence of a plank-built jetty was found, representing perhaps the first use of such sophisticated woodwork in the British Isles.

From Wikipedia -

Star Carr is a Mesolithic archaeological site in North Yorkshire, England. It is around five miles south of Scarborough (grid reference TA02798100).^[1]

It belongs to the early Mesolithic Maglemosian culture, evidence for which is present across the lowlands of Northern Europe, and is a Maglemosian type site.^[1] It was occupied from around 8770 BC until about 8460 BC, possibly with a period of abandonment between 8680 BC and 8580 BC.^[2] It was discovered in 1947 during the clearing of a field drain.

Star Carr’s main feature is a birch brushwood platform which stood on the edge of former Lake Pickering.^[3] The platform would have been laid down to consolidate the boggy water’s edge.

Hearths found further away from the water indicate temporary settlement. It was visited seasonally by Mesolithic hunters chasing red and roe deer, elk, aurochs and wild boar.^[2] The original analysis of the animal bones led to the suggestion that the site was occupied during the winter season. New work has proved this to be wrong, and has shown that hunters visited the site in early summer, to take immature deer that had lost maternal care. A few visits may have been made later in the summer^[4].

The mud of the lake has preserved items dropped into it and the hunter’s tools such as flint scrapers used to clean animal skins and worked bone and antler have been found. The most striking examples are 21 perforated part skull and antlers of red deer.

A fragment of a wooden oar implies that the people who occupied the site also built boats, probably coracles or simple canoes used to travel or fish. Beads made from stone and amber suggest personal adornment. Remains of a dog are indication of the animal’s domestication during this period.

The flint came from the Yorkshire Wolds further south. A type of axe, new to Britain, was made from it at Star Carr. It was sharpened during its life by simple transverse blows which made it more adaptable.

The most famous find is the top part of a stag skull, complete with antlers. The skull had two holes perforated in it and it has been suggested that it was used as a hunting disguise, or in some form of ritual or story-telling..

Excavations at Star Carr are currently being undertaken by a team from the University of Manchester, led by leading expert Dr. Chantal Conneller. During August 2008 extensive excavations will be undertaken, extending the trenches dug by Grahame Clark, who remains an authority on the site.

References

1. ^ ^{a b} “Star Carr“. Pastscape.org.uk. Retrieved on 2008-01-15.
2. ^ ^{a b} Scarre (2005), p. 397.
3. ^ Scarre (2005), p. 396.
4. ^ Legge and Rowley-Conwy 1988

Bibliography

• Scarre, Chris (ed) (2005). The Human Past: World Prehistory & the Development of Human Societies, Thames & Hudson. ISBN 0-500-28531-4.
• Legge, Anthony J.; Peter Rowley-Conwy (1988). Star Carr Revisited; a Re-analysis of the Large Mammals, Birkbeck College. ISBN 0-7187-0876-8.

From British Archaeology -

Fading Star

Star Carr is one of the truly great sites of ancient Britain. It has been revisited by archaeologists (the then young editor among them) more than any other excavation. So how is it that in five years it may be gone? Nicky Milner – deep in her own revisitation – explains.

Star Carr, near Scarborough, North Yorkshire has captured the imaginations of archaeologists since the first significant excavations in 1949–51. In the 1940s the British mesolithic (then thought to have lasted 3,000 years, now dated to 10–4,000BC) barely registered in prehistoric narratives. Grahame Clark, however, realised the importance of hunter-gatherers in European prehistory. He hoped the promise of organic remains likely to be preserved in the wet peat at Star Carr would add a new dimension to an era represented by little more than a few enigmatic flint artefacts.

It did. In fact the range and quantity of finds, including red deer skull frontlets turned into headdresses, and antler points made for spears or harpoons along with manufacturing blanks and raw antlers, remain outstanding in Europe. Star Carr has been described as a “type site”. It never fails to appear in text book accounts of the mesolithic. It has had a huge number of research articles written about it, it is constantly being reinterpreted and further excavations were undertaken in the 1980s by the Vale of Pickering Research Trust.

So, why carry out more excavations there?! Well, despite all these years of research there are still many important unanswered questions about Star Carr. And now we have discovered that the site is under serious threat and may soon be lost forever.

Over the last 20 years or so the Vale of Pickering Trust has been working hard to picture the ancient landscape. Today the area is farmland, but some 11–12,000 years ago Star Carr would have been on the edge of a lake. The lake turned to peat through prehistory, but augering and measuring the peat’s depth have revealed the mesolithic land surface and lake edges. Test pits dug around much of the lake edge have also discovered a number of other early mesolithic sites.

What this work has shown is that Star Carr is not a “type site” within this landscape: it is unique. None of the other early mesolithic sites has the same kind of artefact assemblage. At Star Carr 192 barbed antler and bone points have been found (which is over 97% of the total number found in Britain!). Only one other broken barbed point has been found on the lake, at No Name Hill. The antler mattocks, stone axes and beads made of shale, animal teeth and amber found at Star Carr have also not been found on the other sites around the lake. As if that was not enough, Clark’s antler headdresses find parallels on only three sites on the continent, each with one example. Star Carr has 21.

This work around the lake has allowed new interpretations to be put forward. For instance, Richard Chatterton, Joshua Pollard, Chantal Conneller and Tim Schadla-Hall have all considered the unusual range and quantity of material culture at Star Carr, and have suggested that these objects may have been the focus of ritual deposition into the open water. They also identify the social significance mesolithic people attributed to animals, particularly in this context red deer, as the motivation behind the unusual depositionary practices. Yet technological analysis highlights the range of activities at Star Carr and the network of connections with other sites in the area. These authors have not tried to replace the other functional interpretations, such as butchery site or hunting base camp, with “ritual site”.

New questions

The original excavations and the monograph have been heralded as being of a high standard for their time, but there are certain questions which have been thrown up by the new interpretations which cannot be answered with present data.

Environmental investigations were carried out during the original excavations, but they did not provide detailed information on the archaeological contexts. Through the work in the 1980s it is now thought that much of the area excavated by Clark may have been open water at the time of occupation. This also raises questions about the brushwood, which Clark interpreted as a living platform. It is now believed it lay beneath the artefact layers and was perhaps a natural wood accumulation. The site stratigraphy is far from clear because there are very few section drawings.

Another area of intrigue is the wooden platform found during palaeoenvironmental investigations in the 1980s. This platform, unlike the brushwood one, shows clear evidence of working, and according to ancient wood specialist Maisie Taylor is the earliest evidence for carpentry in Europe. To date we know very little about it, how it relates to the archaeology found in Clark’s trenches, its extent and where it leads to.

Another major question is “how big was Star Carr?”. There seems to be a general impression that Clark’s excavations encompassed most, if not the whole of the site, but it now seems that he uncovered only some of the lake edge deposits. The fieldwork carried out in the 1980s suggested that the site was larger and there was a dry land element.

Another important issue is the timing of activities. From the distribution and typology of barbed points, Clark suggested there were two phases of occupation; he estimated that Star Carr was used over 25 years. Work in the 1980s by Petra Dark on pollen and burning of reed swamp has suggested that the site has a much longer history and that it was probably occupied, intermittently, over about 230 years.

New work

Three years ago, we revisited Star Carr again and fieldwalked it. What was immediately apparent was that the land had been affected by peat drainage. What had in the past appeared as a totally flat field (seen in some of the earlier fieldwork photographs), now rises and falls. What would have been dry land on the lake edge in the mesolithic stands proud of what would have been the lake, and we estimate that the peat has shrunk in some places by several metres.

The fieldwalking provided some interesting data. A peninsula to the east of the original excavations produced large quantities of flint, and some test pitting suggested that plough damage was occurring. The following year we excavated a line of test pits down the peninsula. This revealed substantial concentrations of knapped flint, in some areas up to 139 pieces per square metre. This suggests that the original excavated area constitutes less than 5% of the total occupation!

Fieldwork continued last summer, when we excavated two larger trenches to determine whether the archaeology continued in the lake margins to the east of the earlier excavations. We also wished to elucidate the stratigraphy of the sediments, and observe the effect of drainage and the state of peat.

Trench 21 was fairly shallow, and produced flint but no organic material. Trench 22, however, was much more like both Clark’s trenches and the 1980s excavations. It contained considerable quantities of wood. Maisie Taylor suggests this represents a natural accumulation of brushwood, similar to that discovered by Clark. However she also found several distinctive triangular chips which are a characteristic of mesolithic woodworking. This activity may have been connected with the manufacture of the timber platform discovered in the 1980s, which lies only 12m to the west of this trench.

We also found several pieces of antler, one of which has clearly been worked: a strip has been removed to make a barbed point. What is more, burins and other flint tools were found beside it. These finds show that activities occurred further around the lake edge than had been previously thought; there may be other concentrations of activities elsewhere still to be explored. The antler has now been dated to roughly 8700BC, which falls towards the end of the period of occupation and coincides with Petra Dark’s later phase of reed swamp burning, demonstrating a long tradition of antler working at the site.

What was really shocking, however, was the state of the antler. It had lost almost all of its mineral content and was flattened in section, unlike the solid antler found in Clark’s excavations. Specialists who visited the site and saw this, along with the state of the peat and the wood, suggested that any antler, bone and wood that still survives will probably disappear within the next five to 10 years. Research at York University by Matthew Collins and his team is showing that bone can rapidly decay in a mere couple of years if contained in peat where the water table fluctuates seasonally. It is possible that this may be happening in some areas of the Star Carr site.

The future of Star Carr

The arguments for further work at the site could not be clearer. Less than 5% of the site has been excavated and there is still much to learn:
• What was the nature of the dry land area? Were there structures, hearths and other activities? What does the flint distribution tell us? How far does this occupation area extend? Could this represent large group gatherings?
• What was the nature of the lake edge deposits? What exactly was the context of deposition – were objects being placed in open water or reed swamp? How did the hydrology of the lake work – were some areas seasonally flooded? Where did the timber platform lead and why was it constructed? Why is the accumulation of brushwood there? How far does it stretch? What is the distribution of lake edge activities such as antler working? Why were artefacts being deposited at the lake edge?
• How can we understand the temporality of activities at the site? Did they change over time?
• Why is this site so different to other sites around the lake? Why have other sites like this not been found in Britain? How does this site compare to other sites on the continent?

Our plans are to continue excavating. This year we hope to investigate a larger area of the original dry land to look for evidence of occupation and activities, and to assess the extent of the plough damage. We also intend to excavate nearer to Clark’s trenches at the lake margins, to further investigate the deposition of bone and antler, to monitor the degradation of the peat and the conditions for organic survival, and to examine the stratigraphy and nature of the lake edge deposits and the brushwood accumulation in more detail. We are lucky to be collaborating with a wide range of specialists who are providing support and expertise on subjects that include wood, pollen, sediments, macro-plant remains, insect remains and conservation.

But time is running out. Although Star Carr has been studied for over 50 years, we may have less than five years before much of the waterlogged remains deteriorate completely.

There have been criticisms by some that Star Carr has not just informed, but also prejudiced and biased our understanding of mesolithic Britain, and that perhaps this site has been studied too much already at the expense of other sites.

It is certainly true that Star Carr has dominated our narratives of the period. But these have drawn on a very small area of the site, creating a biased understanding. It is important that we try to understand much more in order to correct previous misapprehensions. It is also important that Star Carr is not seen as a “type site”, but is acknowledged as having a unique character, at least within the Lake Flixton landscape.

We aim within the next five years to rescue much of the remaining archaeology and address many of the new research questions that have been posed. And we hope that the site will continue to stimulate interest and debate for generations of archaeologists to come.

The new excavations are a joint project between the Universities of York, Manchester, UCL and Cambridge supported by the Vale of Pickering Research Trust, the British Academy and the McDonald Institute, Cambridge. See www.york.ac.uk/depts/arch/Projects/StarCarrWebsite/index.htm. Nicky Milner directs a new MA in mesolithic studies at the University of York.

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