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.

Scottish history from Scottishweb -

Scotland’s history is dotted with battles and skirmishes around these fortifications, some of which have had a massive impact on the future of Scotland as a nation. There is one place however that stands out as a landmark both in its physical appearance and on the pages of Scottish history: Dunadd hill fort in Argyll, Scotland.

Dunadd could be regarded as the crowning place for the original Kings of Scotland. This fist of stone on the edge of Crinan Moss in Argyll, near the village of Lochgilphead, is believed to be the “capital” of the ancient kingdom of Dalriada. It makes for a perfect defensive position, prominating from a flat moss all around. The sides of the hill are terraced in such a fashion as to protect the small fort on the top.

It was built around 500AD at a time when Fergus MacErc and two of his brothers led a Scottish invasion from Ireland and established their kingdom of Dalriada with Dunadd as its seat. In climbing the hill its easy to appreciate how well defended it is. Several obstacles must be surmounted before reaching the top, which at the time was a solid built stone fortification.

On the slope near to the summit there are rocks containing what appear to be a carved out human footprint and a stone basin. There is also a slab of stone with a carved wild boar on it, as well as an inscription in Ogam writing. Its said that the would be king would place his foot in this stone ‘footprint’ during the crowning ceremony. This ritual was certainly a large influence on the Lords of the Isles, who based their ceremonial inaugurations on the said rituals at Dunadd.

Many items have been found in the three times the site has been officially excavated. Items such as beautiful broaches, quern stones and fine examples of metal working all tie in with the theory about Dunadd being the seat of the King.

However – to the north was still the kingdom of the Picts. Many years of Viking battering on the Pictish nation had taken its toll, and by 843 with Dunadd being an established political centre, Kenneth MacAlpin, the king of the Scots based at Dunadd, attacked the Picts in an attempt to gain rule over the Pictish kingdom.

He enjoyed success in his efforts and united the two kingdoms under his rule, thus becoming the first true king of all Scotland. As in the Huntingdon Chronicle – ” And so he was the first of the Scots to obtain the monarchy of the whole of Alba, which is now called Scotia “

Dunadd is an enchanting place and it is still easy to imagine the small hill teaming with people and life. It must have been a busy place in its day, and the remains of the work endured by its inhabitants remains there for us to see over a thousand years later.

The whole Kilmartin area is fascinating and littered with prehistoric and historic monuments. From castles and standing stones to brochs and burial sites, one could spend many days in the same area.

Scotland was born here -

From wikipedia -

Dunadd Hill Fort

Dunadd, ‘fort on the [River] Add’, is an Iron Age and later hillfort near Kilmartin in Argyll and Bute, Scotland, a little north of Lochgilphead (NR 836 936). At one time an island, it now lies inland near the River Add. The surrounding land, now largely reclaimed, was formerly boggy and known as the Mòine Mhòr ‘Great Moss’ in Gaelic. This no doubt increased the defensive potential of the site.

Originally occupied in the Iron Age, the site later became a seat of the kings of Dál Riata. It is known for its unique stone carvings below the upper enclosure, including a footprint and basin thought to have formed part of Dál Riata‘s coronation ritual. Though it is an assumption only and not attested in contemporary written sources, similarly as the legend saying that Dunadd was the first location of Stone of Scone in Scotland. On the same flat outcrop of rock is an incised boar in Pictish style, and in inscription in the ogham script. The inscription is read as referring to a Finn Manach and is dated to the late 8th century or after.

Dunadd is mentioned twice in early sources. In 683 the Annals of Ulster record: ‘The siege of Dunadd and the siege of Dundurn [a hillfort near Loch Earn]‘ without further comment on the outcome or participants. In the same chronicle the entry for 736 states: ‘Óengus son of Fergus, king of the Picts, laid waste the territory of Dál Riata and seized Dunadd, and burned Creic [location unknown] and bound in chains two sons of Selbach king of Dál Riata], i.e. Dúngal and Feredach . .’.

The site was occupied after 736, at least into the 9th century. It is mentioned twice in later sources, suggesting that it retained some importance. In 1436, it is recorded that “Alan son of John Riabhach MacLachlan of Dunadd” was made seneschal of the lands of Glassary; the chief place of residence of the MacLachlans of Dunadd lay below the fort. In June 1506, commissioners appointed by James IV, including the earl and bishop of Argyll, met at Dunadd to collect rents and resolve feuds.

The site is an Ancient Monument, under the care of Historic Scotland, and is open to the public (open all year; no entrance charge).

Because Dunadd is mentioned in early sources, and is readily identifiable, it has been excavated on several occasions (1904-05, 1929, 1980) and has one of the most important ensembles of finds from any early medieval site in Scotland. These include tools, weapons, quernstones, imported pottery and motif-pieces and moulds for the manufacture of fine metalwork (especially jewellery).

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.

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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.

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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 BBC (published 18th July 2007) -

Some event, or combination of events, resulted in a huge lake breaching the chalk ridge between what is now Dover and Calais. Scars from the torrent are still evident in sonar images of the Channel floor today, presented (right) as a processed 3D perspective view.

Britain became separated from mainland Europe after a catastrophic flood some time before 200,000 years ago, a sonar study of the English Channel confirms.

The images reveal deep scars on the Channel bed that must have been cut by a sudden, massive discharge of water.

Scientists tell the journal Nature that the torrent probably came from a giant lake in what is now the North Sea.

Some event – perhaps an earthquake – caused the lake’s rim to breach at the Dover Strait, they believe.

Dr Sanjeev Gupta, from Imperial College London, and colleagues say the discharge would have been one of the most significant megafloods in recent Earth history, and provides an explanation for Britain’s island status.

“This event, or series of events, that caused [the breach] changed the course of Britain’s history,” Dr Gupta told BBC News.

“If this hadn’t happened, Britain would always have been a peninsula of Europe. There would have been no need for a Channel Tunnel and you could always have walked across from France into Britain, as early humans did prior to this event.”

Tremor trigger?

The idea of a great flood stems from scientists’ understanding of northern Europe’s ice age past.

It is believed that hundreds of thousands of years ago, when ice sheets had pushed down from Scotland and Scandinavia, there existed a narrow isthmus linking Britain to continental Europe.

This gently upfolding chalk ridge was perhaps some 30m higher than the current sea level in the English Channel.

Palaeo-researchers think it bounded a large lake to the northeast that was filled by glacial meltwaters fed by ancient versions of the rivers Thames and Rhine.

Then – and they are not sure of the precise date – something happened to break the isthmus known as the Weald-Artois ridge.

“Possibly this was just the build-up of water behind. Possibly something triggered it; it’s well known today that there are small earthquakes in the Kent area,” explained Imperial’s Dr Jenny Collier.

Re-routing rivers

Either way, once the ridge was broken, the discharge would have been spectacular.

The Imperial College and UK Hydrographic Office study used high-resolution sonar waves to map the submerged world in the Channel basin.

The images detail deep grooves and streamlined features, the hallmarks of landforms that have been gouged by large bodies of fast-moving water.

At its peak, it is believed that the megaflood could have lasted several months, discharging an estimated one million cubic metres of water per second. And from the way some features have been cut, it is likely there were at least two distinct phases to the flooding.

“I was frankly astonished,” said Dr Collier. “I’ve worked in many exotic places around the world, including mid-ocean ridges where you see very spectacular features; and it was an enormous surprise to me that we should find something with a worldwide-scale implication offshore of the Isle of Wight. It was completely unexpected.”

The researchers tell Nature that the ridge breach and the subsequent flooding would have helped reorganise river drainage in northwest Europe, re-routing both the Thames and the Rhine.

Fossil filling

The megaflood theory has been around for some 30 years; but the sonar images represent the clearest narrative yet for the story.

Previous studies of prehistoric animal remains from the past half-million years have already revealed the crucial role the English Channel has played in shaping the course of Britain’s natural history.

The Channel has acted as a filter through time, letting some animals (including humans) in from mainland Europe but not others.

And even when water was locked up in giant ice sheets and sea levels plummeted, the Rhine and the Thames rivers would have dumped meltwater into a major river system that flowed along the Channel’s floor.

Scientists can see all of this influence written in the type and mix of British fossils they find at key periods in history.

Professor Chris Stringer is director of the Ancient Human Occupation of Britain (Ahob) project, which has sought to fill out the details of the British Isles’ prehistory.

“The timing and method of formation of the Channel has been a long-running argument – after all, it really makes Britain what it is today, geographically,” he commented.

“The evidence presented in this paper is spectacular. It certainly explains and reinforces the picture the Ahob project has been putting together of the increasing isolation of Britain from Europe after 400,000 years ago.”

From the BBC (published 26th September 2006) -

A study of prehistoric animals has revealed the crucial role of the English Channel in shaping the course of Britain’s natural history.

The Channel acted as a filter, letting some animals in from mainland Europe, but not others.

Even at times of low sea level, when Britain was not an island, the Channel posed a major barrier to colonisation.

This was because a massive river system flowed along its bed, UK researchers told a palaeo-conference in Gibraltar.

Today the English Channel is 520km long, 30-160km wide, about 30-100m in depth and slopes to the south-west.

Even now, the bed of the Channel is incised by a network of valleys, the remains of the river system, which may have been cut by catastrophic drainage of meltwater from further north.

“It would have been an incredible barrier at times of high sea level, but it would also have been a formidable barrier at times of low sea level for populations trying to move south to north,” said Chris Stringer of London’s Natural History Museum.

Professor Stringer presented the results here at the Calpe conference, a meeting of pre-history experts from all over the world.

The big flood

The evidence comes from the Ancient Human Occupation of Britain Project (AHOB). This five-year undertaking by some of the UK’s leading palaeo-scientists has reassessed a mass of scientific data and filled in big knowledge gaps with new discoveries.

Chris Stringer’s co-researchers Andy Currant, Danielle Shreve and Roger Jacobi have been studying how the mammal fauna of Britain has changed over the last 500,000 years.

During that period, animals have colonised, abandoned and re-colonised Britain many times as the climate shifted from warm to cold and back to warm.

The Channel is thought to have formed during a cold period 200,000 years ago or more.

Meltwater from an ice sheet formed a lake, which then overflowed in a catastrophic flood – cutting through a chalk ridge that previously connected Britain to France.

Changes in climate were accompanied by changing sea levels. At the height of an ice age, these would have been low. During interglacial periods, when the climate was warm, sea levels rose.

But even when water was locked up in the ice sheets and sea levels plummeted, the Rhine and the Thames rivers dumped meltwater into a major river system that flowed along the floor of the Channel.

Unusual collections

This means that once the Channel formed, there was never again a simple land crossing to be made from northern France to Britain.

“We find we’re getting only a selection of the mammals during the British interglacials that there are in mainland Europe,” said Professor Stringer.

For example, at one pre-historic site, researchers found hippopotamus and fallow deer; but unlike mainland Europe at the time, there were no horses and no humans.

“This suggests that the Channel, or the Channel river system, is acting as a filter to prevent the movement of some of these [mammal] forms into Britain,” Professor Stringer added.

Once sea levels rose high enough for Britain to be an island, the select fauna that had made it across from mainland Europe could develop in extraordinary ways.

During one warm stage, about 80,000 years ago, fossils from Banwell Cave in Somerset show Britain was populated by some very unusual animals. These included reindeer, bison, and a giant bear similar to a polar bear.

Interestingly, there are no hyena fossils at Banwell Cave, as there were in mainland Europe. Instead, it appears, their role in the food chain may have been taken up by wolves.

“The wolves were developing much larger jaws. Their teeth show incredible signs of breakage and wear as if they’re chomping bones like hyenas,” said Professor Stringer.

The mammals at Banwell seem to be the kinds of animals normally found today in cold regions. But they lived in Britain during a warm stage and seemed to be adapting to their new environment.

The team thinks the antecedents of these animals must have arrived in Britain when the climate was cold. But when conditions warmed up, sea levels rose and isolated Britain, marooning this cold-adapted fauna in a warm land.

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.

Rev. Dr William Stukely’s image of the serpentine Avebury Complex, published in 1743

From pages of the website, Avebury – A Present from the Past -

Situated in southern England in the county of Wiltshire the village of Avebury is close to two small streams….the Winterbourne and the Sambourne which unite to form the source of the River Kennet. After being re-inforced by a number of springs this beautiful English river rapidly gains in stature as it passes through the North Wessex Downs on its way to Reading where it eventually flows into the River Thames of which it has become the main tributary. The waters of the Kennet therefore pass through London before reaching their ultimate destination in the North Sea.

Around 4,500 years ago, when the site of England’s capital was a thinly inhabited marshland, the area around Avebury almost certainly formed the Neolithic equivalent of a city. By coincidence this waterway has become a link between the two largest cultural centres of their day to have ever existed in the British Isles. As London now contains most of England’s largest buildings Avebury is the location of the mightiest megalithic complex to have ever been constructed in Britain. This henge with its enormous ditch, bank, stones and avenues survives in a much depleted state but the nearby Silbury Hill which is the largest man-made mound in pre-industrial Europe still dominates the surrounding landscape. The two largest surviving British long barrows of West Kennet and East Kennet are also prominent a short distance away and in recent years the remains of two massive palisaded enclosures have also been found. The quote that antiquarian John Aubrey made of Avebury……”it does as much exceed in greatness the so renowned Stonehenge as a Cathedral doeth a parish church” recognises the true importance of what has now been largely absorbed into the modern landscape of Wiltshire. If we could return to the time when the Romans occupied the British Isles it is a sobering thought that we would have to go back as far again to find an Avebury that was already several centuries old.

The history of the modern village is inevitably linked to the prehistoric monuments that surround it. Abandoned for several thousand years the land around the stones became occupied oncemore when people of the Saxon period began to settle in the area. Their arrival and subsequent development of the present village was to have a dramatic effect on the history of the stones. The relationship between the local inhabitants and the monuments has now added an unfortunate dimension to the Avebury story that helps make it one of the most fascinating historical sites to be found in the British Isles if not the world.

It remains a magical place as so many who have been there will agree. A visit to Avebury is a very personal event. It still seems to retain, somehow, the spirits of all those who laboured in its creation or whatever it was that led them to create it. If you have never been there a visit will not be an empty experience. You will come away with a head full of questions and probably a realisation that somewhere over the years modern society has lost something important.

[...]

Trying to successfully solve the riddle of Avebury’s purpose is much of what attracts us to it in the first place. I wonder if it would appeal to us in quite the same way if we knew, beyond doubt, the solution to the riddle. Throughout Europe are many magnificent cathedrals which are equally as awesome in conception, construction and demanding of manpower as anything our Neolithic forefathers have left us. However we know what cathedrals are, how they were built and the motive for building them, but apart from being some of the most wonderful examples of what religious belief can drive us to achieve they contain no mysteries. Avebury, though, in common with all of the many megaliths of the Neolithic period, is something that lies outside of our experience, its purpose still demanding an explanation by our modern, scientific minds. These days my personal attitude towards it is merely one of delight that it exists. I’m certain that the people who built it had a perception of life and sensitivity to nature that is now quite alien to us. I like to imagine that they were also very altruistic, a trait that the love of money has largely eradicated from our modern world. Considering these points I now accept that the 4,500 years of history since has probably rendered us incapable of finding a path that would lead us to the correct explanation of Avebury’s many enigmas. Our minds are now, in a sense, corrupted with such a mass of knowledge that seeing the world through the eyes of the Neolithic people exceeds even our imaginations……We can go a short way but I think their motivation will always remain beyond our comprehension.

It seems amazing to me that we now consider ourselves to be living in the space-age yet we show a total disregard for the awesome beauty of the night sky by first filling the atmosphere with the by-products created by our insatiable desire for power and transport and then floodlighting the resulting pollution with an, often as not, waste of that same power we didn’t need in the first place! We now need to travel to the remote areas of the world to obtain a sense of what our ancestors once took for granted and perhaps appreciate the huge influence the ever-changing and complex sky must have had on their lives. It therefore seems natural to assume that Avebury’s builders would have been motivated to somehow encode all manner of astronomical alignments into their creations and almost impossible to believe that they wouldn’t. In reality, though, any evidence that celestial events were the primary influence on the construction of the megaliths remains elusive. However such evidence isn’t totally absent as rudimentary alignments exist at the coves which are orientated towards the solstices. There can be no great surprise in this for at a time when clocks and calendars didn’t exist the extreme positions of the sun would have been the events that marked out each year for our ancestors. Some researchers claim significant alignments in the inner circles and evidence that lunar cycles have a strong influence on the monuments but with so much missing it is difficult to advance things beyond theories. The trouble with lines is that they all point to something and the number of permutations that can be derived from the positions of celestial objects and the stones at Avebury allow many options for imaginative research!

Despite our assumption that we are something apart from the animal world the ever increasing contamination of the internet is unfortunate evidence that procreation and its attendant activity remains the fundamental force that drives us all. The part it played in the lives of Avebury’s builders must have been no less influential so it would be surprising if there wasn’t a sexual component evident in the enigma they have left behind. Indeed this is an aspect of the monuments that is obviously represented and must be considered as one of the primary motives for their construction.

It has been suggested that Silbury Hill is a representation of the huge pregnant belly belonging to a massive Earth Goddess figure….an idea that seems to fit the general ethos of the monuments.  Quite how the megalith builders perceived death still seems vague….Even including the long barrows its signature on Avebury’s Neolithic monuments remains ill-defined and difficult to interpret.

From the website, retrobhikku

When theorising about Avebury it is very easy to ignore the huge timespan over which the monuments were built and developed. Six hundred years cover the period from the initial building of the Cove in the Northern Inner Circle to the the final form of the henge when the avenues were added. At a time when the average lifespan barely exceeded 40 years it would seem far more likely that Avebury’s construction was a process of evolution rather than the result of some “grand plan” the result of which would never be seen by its conceivers. It can’t be discounted that the henge and avenues may have been “operative” in some rudimentary form ( ie.wooden posts) before being consolidated later by the erection of the stones, but any evidence that this was the case has yet to be found.

Many researchers become consumed by the positions of stones but ignore trying to explain the purpose of the immense ditch and bank which must originally have been truly awesome. It is also easy to ignore the existence of the hundreds of other megalithic structures that were constructed throughout the British Isles during the same period and to view Avebury in isolation. So much of what existed in the Neolithic period has now disappeared but each year pieces of the jigsaw are being rediscovered. Despite its importance amazingly little of the henge has ever been investigated and the surrounding fields must still hold many secrets. There is always the chance that something relating to the monuments might yet be found that dramatically alters ideas about them.

The quest for the “Holy Grail” of solving the Avebury mystery will no doubt continue far into the future as it seems a part of human nature to believe only what we want to believe and no matter how seemingly perfect a solution there will always be those who will remain convinced that it was something else. Each “solution”, convincing or not, though, adds something to our knowledge of Avebury and it will be a sad day if we stop searching for the truth about this wonderful place……. Perhaps the only truth now is that it is what each of us wants it to be and therein will always lie the power it has to capture our minds.

[...]

Whereas Stonehenge has long been one of Britain’s most famous pre-historic sites, Avebury was to remain relatively unknown until recent times. This is easy to understand when one realises that much of the monument we see today had disappeared until Alexander Keiller resurrected it from the obscurity into which time and human behaviour had driven it. Stonehenge has stood upon Salisbury Plain always obvious to the eye and defiant of the weather but Avebury’s magnificence lay hidden, vandalised and ignored. Keiller’s achievement has allowed it to oncemore assume its rightful role as one of the most important ancient sites in the British Isles.

The Ringstone by Moonlight

Whatever drove our ancestors to such stupendous efforts in creating the Avebury monuments is perhaps beyond the understanding of our space-age minds but those of us who are captured by the incredible legacy they have left can share one thing with its creators – it fulfils a need. In a world that forces us along at a pace few of us want to go it provides an escape from the modern madness we have created for ourselves. It reminds us that there was a time, before money was invented and the destruction of the planet began, that we could achieve great things by mutual consent.  We can indulge ourselves in a great variety of theories to explain its mysteries and as such it has become many things to many people, but no matter how diverse our ideas it remains one thing to us all……..a place to dream.

An excerpt from the book, The Great Cosmic Mother by Monica Sjoo Barbara Mor, copied from the website, Son Eagle Metaphysical -

Avebury, on the Wiltshire Downs in the south of England, was the sacred center of megalithic culture in Britain. Avebury’s stone circle is the largest yet found in England. It dwarfs Stonehenge. (There are seventy-seven other stone circles, or henges, dating from the late Neolithic and early Bronze Age.) Avebury was built by pre-Celtic people, living in a farming community circa 2600 B.C.

For thousands of years before its construction, the entire landscape of the surrounding area, stretching for about 37 miles, had been seen as the outline of the body of the Goddess. Every hill, mound, stone, and long barrow was believed to form part of her maternal body. The three stone circles at the causewayed camp at Windmill Hill nearby predated Aye- bury by more than six hundred years.

Willow-rag tree at Swallowhead Spring, by Graham Harvey

The Avebury monuments, which include Silbury Hill and West Kennet long barrow, form a “condensed sequence of visual sculpted images within the center of the larger and more ancient presence. They express together journeys of cosmic range and the entire yearly agricultural cycle within the space of three fields.”

The monuments are aligned within the “pubic “triangle of two rivers meeting. These rivers were seen as superhuman bloodstreams gushing from the earth womb of the Goddess.

Here, every year anew, the Goddess was born, grew into maiden and lover, became mother, and finally the old hag of death. The temples were her seasonal reality, and the people moved with her from place to place in rhythm with the changing farming year.

Our solar year is divided by solstices and equinoxes, but in the ritual 1 calendar the quarter-days in between were used as the major days and nights of celebration. To the ancients, the lunar and solar manifestations of these days were equally important. The celebration nights fall in early August, November, February, and May on the appropriate lunar phase nearest to the solar quarter-day. These are the witches sabbats of Lammas, Samhain, Imbolc, and Be]tane. At the August (summer) and February (winter) quarter-days/nights the moon and sun rose and set in alignment with the axis joining the two sacred springs at Avebury.

Avebury circle originally had 98 stones, some up to 18 feet high, enclosing an area of 28 acres. Two smaller circles stand within the large outer one. The earthworks surrounding the horseshoe or circular space are bounded by a ditch, with a bank beyond. Using only red-deer-antler picks and shovels made of ox shoulderhlades, the people raised the earth-bank nearly 50 feet above the ditch bottom, stretching almost a mile in circumference.

Two serpentine stone avenues led into the circle. They were 1miles long, 50 feet wide, and were defined by 100 pairs of stones set at intervals of 80 feet. In shape, the stones were broad-hipped and long forms of the Goddess, alive and powerful in her stance.

The Christian church began its long fight against the Avebury stones in 634, smashing them or exorcising them with the sign of the cross. Both inner circles were destroyed sometime after 1700, and many of the other stones were demolished or simply buried. This was at the height of the witch-hunts, and these ritual stones of the Goddess-just like her priestesses, the witches-were actually “tortured”and “exorcized” by Christian priests: the stones were burnt, chipped, mutilated. The institution of private property finally brought about the end of the sacred stones, with the enclosure of common land by private, wealthy farmers. The emergence of the landless proletariat and the modern notion of individual progress at the expense of the community fittingly coincided with the fall of the Great Mother at Avebury.

Of the original stones in West Kennet avenue, 72 were left in 1722; by 1934 only four were still standing, with nine left fallen. In 1937 a Scots industrialist bought up the land, restored the ditch and earthworks (which had been serving as a rubbish dump!), and dug up and reinstalled 43 of the buried megaliths.

The long Avebury avenues represented the bisexual Snake/Dragon Goddess, female and male in one. The West Kennet avenue originated, at the serpent’s tail-end, from the “sanctuary”, once a circular temple-labyrinth of complex timber structures covered with a conical roof. This might have been the puberty temple, where young women of the community were initiated into the mysteries of farming, sexuality, and childbirth in the springtime season of ploughing and preparation of the seed bed. The young women reentered her womb within the sanctuary, which is Silbury Hill at a different season.

Here the Goddess is the hibernating spring-quarter serpent, just reawakening from her long winter death/sleep. On February 1, at lmbolc, the “Feast of Lights” was celebrated, torches carried processionally in the night to help the Goddess return from the underworld and to be reborn again.

At the tail-end of Beckhampton stone avenue, with its more phallic- shaped stones, was the male counterpart to the “sanctuary, doubtless a temple for male initiation.

Avebury circle is where the young women and men met, after dancing and winding their way up the avenues in imitation of the serpent, at midnight of the waxing moon of the May quarter-day. This stone circle forms both an enlarged cunt and a great head, the inner circles forming the lunar and solar eyes. It is also a world island surrounded by the cosmic ocean, and its hidden power and secret is the sacred underground water that seeps into the ditch in the spring. Here the unborn fetuses dwell.

Avebury henge was the Goddess of Love incarnate, the proper place of conception. Here was celebrated the communal yearly May festival- wedding in orgiastic rites, the entire community dancing with upraised arms on the outer banks, in imitation of the horned new moon. This was Beltane.

The maiden becomes a mother, and so the next stage of the cycle was centered at Silbury Hill, the pregnant womb of the Goddess, “the Creation Cone.” Here, as already described, the people gathered on the summit on The Goddess at Avebury in Britain the night of the full moon at Lammas, the August quarter-day/night, to watch the harvest child being born.

With oncoming winter, the Goddess becomes the Lady of the Tombs, the Hag of Death, the Mother of the Dead. Her dwelling is now at West Kennet long barrow, where she retreats into the underworld after Samhain, or Hallowmas. This barrow is 340 feet long and shaped in her gigantic image. The image of the Silbury Mother is repeated within the chambers that represent vagina, birth passage, and uterus-but here is made hollow to receive the dead, who were buried within her in fetal position. The 30 chamber stones of West Kennet might form a lunar monthly count. There is no water associated with this barrow, no spring, no stream; all is dryness and barrenness. There are only rivers of stone.

West Kennet long barrow was built in 3500 B.C. It is a Stone Age horned grave/tomb/womb/temple, and it is older than Avebury and Silbury Hill. The people were buried within it collectively, without distinction of class or hierarchy. It was ritually frequented by the living as well as by the dead.

Megalithic culture is far older than was once supposed. Traces of a megalithic farming community have been found in County Tyrone, Ireland, dating from 4500 B.C. Patriarchal Bronze Age culture was first brought to Britain circa 2000 B.C. by the taller, warlike, and aggressive Beaker people.

In 2600 B.C., the entrance to the West Kennet long barrow was sealed off with huge megaliths (great stones). These stones form the body of an ox. The Goddess was moon and ox, one and bisexual. She is the Ox-Lady. She emerges miraculously out of death through the sacred bull. There was continued veneration of the tomb during late Neolithic culture. On Sam- ham in November-the winter quarter-day-a winter eve ox was sacrificed here on the night of the no-moon. The ox was ridden by the Queen of Death, and this ox is miraculously reborn with the spring.

The Winter Goddess lived on in folk memory as Black Annis. She was remembered as a great mountain builder, and was a gigantic hag. There are also sacred hills in Ireland named for her: the Paps of Annu, or Annu’s Breasts.

Pervading all the earthworks and stoneworks of Avebury was the desire to be close to the earth. The people drew strength from her in birth, in life, and in death. The monuments could clearly not have been built with slave-labor, but were the love-labor of farmers, women and men, who were in tune with great psychic-physical powers. To carry through such a task, they lived a peaceful existence. Perhaps natural magic-energy was released from the earth, and used on an everyday basis by the people.

Ancient myths of the dragon-serpent guarding a mysterious and symbolic treasure perhaps refer to lost secrets of crop fertility-a hidden power running in fertility currents through the countryside. The story goes that anyone who tastes the dragon’s blood becomes at one with nature, and forever understands the songs of birds. Perhaps this is the bloodstream of the Mother gushing from the earth at sacred wells.

The ancients knew that some wells and stones, drunk or touched or embraced in a certain way, and at certain times of the year, could regenerate and revitalize people and animals. Sacred stones seem to contain and emit a force that periodically waxes and wanes. Beneath each “active” standing stone, there appears to be a crossing of underground water streams, The movement of water through a tunnel of earth-particularly through clay soil-creates a small electrical field, for which the stone acts as an amplifier. When this energy/power emerges from the ground, it does so in the form of a spiral ascending in seven coils, the lowest two beneath the ground. This is not a stable phenomenon, but waxes and wanes, changing polarity every month. After waning it dies away for a few days, and then waxes in the opposite direction; it cyclically increases and decreases until the end of the lunar phase.

The study of the moon’s orbit was essential to megalith builders-the people of the moon, the stones, and the Serpent Goddess. The stones might also have functioned as a means of communication over long distances, since the magnetic force that activates the stones also links them in a continuous chain of vibrations. The ley-lines, paths for the force, interlock in a cobweb of stones, circles, mounds, and harrows all over the earth.

But the stone circles would not have been fully activated unless the calendrical events were accompanied by human rituals and dance, sometimes sacrifice, which focused the forces and fixed them in the stones.

Fire, like water, was essential to the workings of the monuments and their hidden power. At May Day/Night was the moment when Beltane fires were lit from hilltop to hilltop, to celebrate the coming of the new moon. On May Day the people drank from the sacred well and circled it nine times.

The May Day sunrise links Avebury in a direct line with Glastonbury Tor some 40 miles away. Glastonbury looks as human made as Silbury Hill, but it was actually shaped by volcanic rock violently thrown into the sky, in an otherwise flat and marshy land. Glastonbury’s spiral path, however, was molded by human hands; it is a three-dimensional labyrinth, rising up the Tor in seven circuits. Nearby is sacred Chalice Well, anciently called “Blood Well” because of its miraculously healing red-stained waters.

Not far from Glastonbury is Wookey Hole, an ancient cave where the rites of the Winter/Death Goddess were probably enacted. According to the myth, in this cave lived a terrible and bloodthirsty “witch” who demanded human sacrifice. She was supposedly finally exorcized by a Christian monk from Glastonbury.

The persistent British myth of the slumbering giant Albion, and the return of King Arthur and the Golden Age, is really the legend of the reemergence of the Goddess and her people, the Great Mother and cosmic harmony we lost with Avebury. Today we live truly in the mythic “wasteland” of patriarchy, awaiting her rebirth and return with the spring of reemerging women cultures.

This from today’s Guardian -

A marathon year of mountain night-walking has led to a rare set of photographs which chart the effects of light pollution on some of Britain’s wildest places.

Bright clusters of streetlamps and house lights dot the unusual images of the English Lake District, with the wider orange glow of major towns such as Barrow-in-Furness diffusing the night sky behind.

The pictures were taken by Blackpool photographer Henry Iddon, who perched on fell tops throughout the night to capture the effects of artificial light at different times and seasons. They go on display this week at the Wordsworth Trust gallery at Dove Cottage, Grasmere, but are also being studied by carbon footprint specialists.

Dr Phil Leigh of the Crichton Carbon Centre said: “In every one of these pictures, we see the imprint of man’s high carbon lifestyles. As well as depriving people of the stars at night, this obvious light is a sign of the needless damage man is doing to the environment.”

Iddon followed in the footsteps of the celebrated mountain walker and photographer W A Poucher, a research chemist at Yardley’s who sometimes wore his company’s foundation cream to cope with hours in the wet and cold waiting to take the perfect picture. But Poucher seldom photographed at night and, in the 1950s, lacked the sophisticated cameras of today.

Lord Smith of Finsbury, chair of the Wordsworth Trust and former Culture Secretary, said that the photographs achieved the unusual feat of seeing one of Britain’s most exhaustively recorded landscapes through new eyes. He said: “They show us the bright, glowing, night-time impact of humankind, but set within the immensity of the broader landscape.

“No-one can look at them without being moved to ponder on the relationship of reverence and of interdependence that we ought to foster with the natural world around us.”

· The exhibition Spots of Time is open, free, at the Wordsworth Museum in Grasmere until the end of August. It takes its title from a passage in Wordsworth’s The Prelude.

Britain Rocks, Britain’s foundations

Ice’s shaping of the landscape

Taming the Wild

Redressing the balance in modern times

The village, located 1.75 miles (2.8 kilometers) from the famous stone circle, includes eight wooden houses dated back to around 2500 B.C. The remains of a cluster of homes include the outlines of floors, beds, and cupboards. Tools, jewelry, pottery, and human and animal bones were also found. The excavated houses formed part of a much bigger settlement dating back to the Late Stone Age, according to project leader Mike Parker Pearson of England’s Sheffield University. “We could have many hundreds of houses here,” Parker Pearson added. “Our dates for the building of Stonehenge are identical to the dates for this very large settlement.” The village stood next to a newly revealed stone avenue, partly visible in the excavation ditch at top right, which once led from a large timber circle to the nearby River Avon.

A major prehistoric village has been unearthed near Stonehenge in southern England.The settlement likely housed the builders of the famous monument, archaeologists say, and was an important ceremonial site in its own right, hosting great “feasts and parties” (see a photo gallery of the Stonehenge village).

Excavations also offer new evidence that a timber circle and a vast earthwork where the village once stood were linked to Stonehenge—via road, river, and ritual. Together, the sites were part of a much larger religious complex, the archaeologists suggest.

This map shows the location of Durrington Walls and its position in relation to Stonehenge. The latest excavations in the area suggest Stonehenge formed part of a much larger ritual complex that was spread across the surrounding landscape. The newly found avenue at Durrington Walls connects the monument to the River Avon, which in turn links to another avenue downstream, which leads to Stonehenge. Mike Parker Pearson of the Stonehenge Riverside Project argues that the course of the river between the two ancient monuments symbolized the passage to the afterlife. Durrington Walls was used for feasts and rituals that celebrated life, while Stonehenge was both a memorial and final resting place for the dead, the archaeologist speculates.

(See also: “Stonehenge Didn’t Stand Alone, Excavations Show” [January 12, 2007].)

“Stonehenge isn’t a monument in isolation. It is actually one of a pair—one in stone, one in timber [animated map showing the sites],” said Mike Parker Pearson, leader of the Stonehenge Riverside Project, a joint initiative run by six English universities and partially funded by the National Geographic Society. (National Geographic News is part of the National Geographic Society.)

The Late Stone Age village—the largest ever found in Britain—was excavated in September 2006 at Durrington Walls, the world’s largest known “henge,” a type of circular earthwork. A giant timber circle (photo) once stood at Durrington, which is 1.75 miles (2.8 kilometers) from the celebrated circle of standing stones on Salisbury Plain.

At Durrington the archaeologists discovered foundations of houses dating back to 4,600 years ago (photo)—around the time construction began on Stonehenge.

Excavations revealed the remains of eight wooden buildings. Surveys of the landscape have identified up to 30 more dwellings, Parker Pearson said.

“We could have many hundreds of houses here,” he added.

The initial stone circle at Stonehenge—the so-called sarsen stones—has been radiocarbon-dated to between 2600 and 2500 B.C.

Stonehenge, on Salisbury Plain in southern England, is perhaps the world’s best known prehistoric monument, attracting nearly a million visitors a year. The Stonehenge Riverside Project is a joint initiative run by six English universities with the aim of understanding how the iconic structure relates to the broader landscape and surrounding Stone Age sites. Recent excavations suggest Durrington Walls closely mirrored Stonehenge, having its own impressive standing circle made of timber and an avenue that linked it to the River Avon. Stonehenge is aligned with the sunset on the winter solstice, whereas Durrington Walls’ large timber circle was aligned with the sunrise on the same day, scientists say. “Stonehenge isn’t a monument in isolation. It is actually one of a pair—one in stone, one in timber, with this shared relationship with the river, each with their solstice-aligned avenues and circles,” said archaeologist Mike Parker Pearson, leader of the project.

The dates for the village are “exactly the same time, in radiocarbon terms, as for the building of the sarsens,” Parker Pearson said.

Six of the houses so far unearthed measured about 250 square feet (23 square meters) each and had wooden walls and clay floors. Fireplaces and furniture—such as cupboards and beds—could be discerned from their outlines in the earth, Parker Pearson said.

Two more dwellings were uncovered away from the main settlement, to the western end of the henge.

Found by Julian Thomas of Manchester University, these additional buildings were surrounded by a timber fence and a substantial ditch.

Two of the eight Stone Age buildings uncovered near Stonehenge were set apart from the main settlement, surrounded by a timber fence and a substantial ditch. The sites of the two houses—one of which is pictured above—were discovered by Julian Thomas of Manchester University, who says there is evidence for three or four other, similar structures nearby. The excavation team speculates that these imposing buildings may have been the dwellings of chiefs or priests who lived separately from the rest of the community. Another theory is that the buildings were uninhabited and used only for rituals, because the dig team found no traces of household items inside them. “They may have been more like shrines or cult houses” where people went to invoke the spirits of ancestors, Thomas said, “or to conduct negotiations of some kind or to have out-of-body or trance experiences.”

There is evidence for at least three other such structures in the same area, Thomas said.

“Cult Houses”

The project team says these imposing buildings to the west may have been the homes of chiefs or priests (photo) who lived separately from the rest of the community.

Another theory is that the buildings were used only for rituals, as hardly any trace of household waste has been found inside them.

“They may have been more like shrines or cult houses,” Thomas said. People may have gone to them “to invoke the spirits of ancestors” or “to have out-of-body or trance experiences.”

The main group of houses were clustered along an impressive stone avenue discovered by the team in 2005.

Measuring some 90 feet (27 meters) wide and 560 feet (170 meters) long, the avenue linked the site of the former massive timber circle at Durrington to the River Avon. The road mirrors a similar avenue at Stonehenge that connects to the Avon downriver of Durrington.

The team says this and other parallels between the two monuments indicate that they formed a much larger religious complex. People moved between the two sites via the river during important ceremonies, the archaeologists suggest.

Stonehenge’s avenue, the team notes, is aligned with the summer solstice sunrise. Durrington’s avenue lines up with the summer solstice sunset.

Likewise, Stonehenge is aligned with the winter solstice sunset, whereas Durrington’s large timber circle was lined up with the winter solstice sunrise.

“Durrington is almost a mirror image of its stone counterpart at Stonehenge,” Parker Pearson said. “You can pretty much overlie the plan of Stonehenge on the timber circle and see they’re the same dimensions.”

A reconstruction made in 2005 depicts one of two timber circles first discovered 40 years ago near Stonehenge. The timber circles were uncovered at Durrington Walls, the prehistoric earthwork that is the site of the newly discovered Stone Age village. The dig revealed that two timber circles once stood within Durrington Walls around 2500 B.C., the same period in which Stonehenge was built. At the south of the Durrington site, archaeologists found evidence of five concentric rings measuring 130 feet (40 meters) across and a smaller circle with two timber rings to the north. Mike Parker Pearson of the Stonehenge Riverside Project believes Durrington Walls and nearby Stonehenge were intimately connected. Parker Pearson believes that the wooden and stone circles represented the domains of the living and the dead, respectively.

After the initial construction of Stonehenge, the Late Stone Age, or Neolithic, village became a place where people stayed during ritual feasts, Parker Pearson believes.

Describing the settlement as a “consumer site,” he says its residents weren’t involved in usual day-to-day activities.

“There are a few tools for scraping hides and that sort of thing. But it’s completely different from any other Neolithic settlement assemblage we’ve ever looked at before,” he said.

Large quantities of pottery fragments and animal bones found at Durrington appear to support this idea. Prehistoric pigs’ teeth from the site suggest the animals were slaughtered when they were nine months old, which would put their butchering during the winter solstice period—perhaps just in time for feasting.

Stone Age Party

People came from all over southern Britain “to feast and party,” Parker Pearson said.

Ongoing isotope analysis of human teeth recovered from the settlement may show that visitors traveled from even farther afield, he added.

Tests carried out in 2002 on nearby buried human remains from around 2300 B.C. suggested that people from the foothills of European Alps also came to the Stonehenge area.

Parker Pearson says that the latest finds indicate that Durrington and Stonehenge represent the domains of the living and the dead, respectively—Durrington’s temporary wooden circle symbolizing life, and Stonehenge’s permanent megaliths symbolizing death.

After big feasts at Durrington, he theorizes, worshippers proceeded down the avenue there, depositing human remains in the River Avon. The river then carried the remains downstream to Stonehenge.

“My guess as to what’s being thrown in is cremation ashes or human bones or perhaps even whole bodies in cases,” Parker Pearson said.

“We think the river is acting like a conduit to the underworld.”

Evidence of prehistoric pyres has been found along the course of the river. This suggests that worshippers traveled on foot or by boat to Stonehenge, perhaps to bury their dead, Parker Pearson adds.

“The theory is that Stonehenge is a kind of spirit home to the ancestors,” he said.

Stonehenge archaeologist Joshua Pollard, of Bristol University, agrees that there does appear to be a strong link between Neolithic standing stones and the human dead.

“Stonehenge is remarkable for the sheer quantity of human remains buried there,” Pollard said.

Manchester University’s Thomas is less sure about the exact nature of the ritualistic connection between Durrington and Stonehenge. But he said that their complementary relationship and connection to the River Avon is “immensely important.”

“Rather than just focusing on Stonehenge as something in isolation,” he said, “we’re seeing the way in which it relates to a whole landscape.”

James Owen in London
for National Geographic News

January 30, 2007

Print from a chapter on the history of ancient Britain in the 1799 publication, A Museum for Young Gentlemen or Ladies Or a Private Tutor for Little Masters and Misses.

From the BBC History website, by Dr Francis Pryor -

Reconstruction of a Homo sapiens hunter ©

The British Isles have been populated by human beings for hundreds of thousands of years, but it was the introduction of farming around 7,000 years ago that began a process of radical change.

The dawn of farming

Human beings have been living in the part of northern Europe that is today called Britain for about 750,000 years. For most of that time, they subsisted by gathering food like nuts, berries, leaves and fruit from wild sources, and by hunting.

Over the millennia there were phases of extreme cold, when large areas of Britain were covered in ice, followed by warmer times. Around 10,000 years ago, the latest ice age came to an end. Sea levels rose as the ice sheets melted, and Britain became separated from the European mainland shortly before 6000 BC.

‘The introduction of farming was one of the biggest changes in human history.’

The people living on the new islands of Britain were descendants of the first modern humans, or Homo sapiens, who arrived in northern Europe around 30,000 – 40,000 years ago. Like their early ancestors they lived by hunting and gathering.

The introduction of farming, when people learned how to produce rather than acquire their food, is widely regarded as one of the biggest changes in human history.

This change happened at various times in several different places around the world. The concept of farming that reached Britain between about 5000 BC and 4500 BC had spread across Europe from origins in Syria and Iraq between about 11000 BC and 9000 BC.

Neolithic revolution?

The change from a hunter-gatherer to a farming way of life is what defines the start of the Neolithic or New Stone Age. In Britain the preceding period of the last, post-glacial hunter-gatherer societies is known as the Mesolithic, or Middle Stone Age.

It used to be believed that the introduction of farming into Britain was the result of a huge migration or folk-movement from across the Channel. Today, studies of DNA suggest that the influx of new people was probably quite small – somewhere around 20% of the total population were newcomers.

‘Farming took 2,000 years to spread across the British Isles.’

So the majority of early farmers were probably Mesolithic people who adopted the new way of life and took it with them to other parts of Britain. This was not a rapid change – farming took about 2,000 years to spread across all parts of the British Isles.

Traditionally the arrival of farming is seen as a major and rapid change sometimes called the ‘Neolithic revolution’. Today, largely thanks to radiocarbon dates, we can appreciate that the transition from hunter-gatherer to farmer was relatively gradual.

We know, for example, that hunters in the Mesolithic ‘managed’ or tended their quarry. They would make clearings in woodland around sources of drinking water, and probably made efforts to see that the herds of deer and other animals they hunted were not over-exploited.

The switch from managed hunting to pastoral farming was not a big change. The first farmers brought the ancestors of cattle, sheep and goats with them from the continent. Domestic pigs were bred from wild boar, which lived in the woods of Britain.

Neolithic farmers also kept domesticated dogs, which were bred from wolves. It is probable that the earliest domesticated livestock were allowed to wander, maybe tended by a few herders.

Sheep, goats and cattle are fond of leaves and bark, and pigs snuffle around roots. These domestic animals may have played a major role in clearing away the huge areas of dense forest that covered most of lowland Britain.

Burial and belief

Stonehenge stone circle, near Amesbury, Wiltshire

Neolithic farmers also brought with them the first seed grains of wheat and barley, which had been bred many millennia earlier from wild grasses that grew in region of modern-day Iraq.

Initially, cereals were probably grown in garden plots near people’s houses. Once harvested, the grain needed to be stored and protected from natural pests and from raiding parties.

This tended to encourage a more settled way of life than that of the Mesolithic communities, who would move around the country on a seasonal pattern, following the animals, birds and fish they hunted.

‘The ‘henge’ monuments, like Stonehenge, incorporate lunar and solar alignments.’

In many cases the earliest Neolithic sites (approx 4000 – 5000 BC) occur alongside late Mesolithic settlements, or in areas that we know were important in post-glacial times.

From the start of the fourth millennium BC (about 3800 BC), we see a move into new areas that had not been settled or exploited previously.

This period, sometimes referred to as the Middle Neolithic, also witnesses the appearance of the first large communal tombs, known as long barrows, or mounds, and the earliest ceremonial monuments, known as ’causewayed’ enclosures.

Here people from communities in a particular region would gather together, probably at regular intervals, to socialise, to meet new partners, to acquire fresh livestock and to exchange ceremonial gifts.

During these ceremonies, rituals took place which often involved the burial of significant items, such as finely-polished stone axeheads, complete pottery vessels, or human skulls.

Some of the great ceremonial monuments of the Middle Neolithic, such as the so-called ‘passage’ graves, were aligned according to the position of the sun during the winter or summer solstice.

The long passage of a passage grave could be carefully positioned to allow the sun on the shortest few days of the year to shine directly into the central burial chamber. Passage graves were also constructed to provide good acoustics, and it seems most probable that they were the scenes of ritual or religious theatrical performances.

The so-called ‘henge’ monuments, like the famous Stonehenge, seem to have developed out of the causewayed enclosures from around 3000 BC.

They also incorporate lunar and solar alignments which are seen as a means of uniting the physical and social structures of human societies with the powers of the natural world.

The Bronze Age

Neolithic houses were usually rectangular thatched buildings made from timber with walls of wattle (woven hazel rods) smeared with a plaster-like ‘daub’ (made from clay, straw and cow dung).

Some of the larger buildings were the size and shape of a Saxon hall and may well have been communal. Most others were smaller and would have been adequate for a family of six to ten people.

‘The appearance of metal marks an important technological development, especially in the control of fire.’

Neolithic houses are far more commonly found in Scotland and Ireland than in England or Wales, where communities may have retained a more mobile pattern of life, involving fewer permanent buildings.

The first bronzes appear in Britain in the centuries just before 2500 BC, which is the usually accepted start date for the Bronze Age.

On the European mainland the arrival of bronze was preceded by copper tools of the Chalcolithic or Copper Age, but in Britain tin and copper appear at about the same time as bronze.

Although the appearance of metal marks an important technological development, especially in the control of fire, it does not seem to bring a big change in the way that people lived their lives in the Early Bronze Age.

Henges, for example, continue in use, but the larger communal tombs, such as long barrows and passage graves, are replaced by smaller round barrows.

Many of these contain an initial or ‘primary’ burial, often of an important man or woman, who may be buried with distinctive and highly decorated pottery known as ‘Beakers’, together with bronze or tin metalwork such as daggers or axes. Sometimes fine goldwork rings, bracelets and earrings adorned the bodies.

In many instances the round barrows of the Early Bronze Age (2500-1500 BC) continue in use, as smaller or ‘satellite’ burials and cremations are dug into the main primary mound.

These places were clearly important gathering places for people and they were often carefully placed in the landscape either to be seen over a large area, or to mark the beginning or end or a community’s land-holding or territory.

Houses in the Early Bronze Age were usually round with a conical roof and a single entrance.

Accelerated change

The Ringlemere gold cup, found in Ringlemere, Kent

The Middle Bronze Age (1500 – 1250 BC) marks an important period of change, growth and probably of population expansion too. There was a fundamental shift in burial practice away from barrow burial, towards cremation in large open cemeteries where ashes were placed in specially-prepared pottery urns.

Settlements consisted of round houses which were often grouped together, possibly for defence, but possibly too because people preferred to live near one another.

During this period we find an increasing number of metalwork hoards, where dozens, sometimes hundreds of spearheads, axes and daggers were placed in the ground – often in a wet or boggy place, a practice that would continue right through the Iron Age.

‘The Late Bronze Age saw the start of the so-called ‘Celtic’ way of life.’

Certain hoards found in south western Britain contained large numbers of fancy bronze ornaments, such as elaborate dress-fasteners, rings, pins, brooches and bracelets.

The Middle Bronze Age also sees the first field systems in Britain, indicating growing pressure on the land as the numbers of people and animals increased.

The Late Bronze Age (1250-800 BC) is marked by the arrival of new styles of metalwork and pottery, but otherwise life continued much as before. Horse-riding became more popular and Late Bronze Age swords were designed as slashing weapons – resembling the cavalry cutlass.

Houses were still round, a pattern that would continue into the Iron Age, but a number of large hall-like rectangular houses are also known.

The field systems of the Middle Bronze Age continued in use and were enlarged. In the uplands of Britain the Late Bronze Age saw the first construction of a few hillforts and the start of the so-called ‘Celtic’ way of life.

Find out more

Books

A Landscape Revealed: 10,000 years on a Chalkland Farm by Martin Green (Tempus Books, 2000)

The Age of Stonehenge by Colin Burgess (Dent, 2002)

Prehistoric Orkney by Anna Ritchie (Batsford Books, 1995)

Avebury: The Biography of a Landscape by Joshua Pollard and Andrew Reynolds (Tempus Books, 2002)

Hengeworld by Mike Pitts (Arrow Books, 2001)

Understanding the Neolithic by Julian Thomas (Routledge, London, 1999)

Ancestral Geographies of the Neolithic: Landscapes, Monuments and Memory by Mark Edmonds (Routledge, London, 1999)

The Significance of Monuments by Richard Bradley (Routledge, London, 1998)

The Passage of Arms: An Archaeological Analysis of Prehistoric Hoards and Votive Deposits by Richard Bradley (Cambridge University Press, 1990)

Related Links

Articles

• The Amesbury Archer: The King of Stonehenge? – http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/archaeology/excavations_techniques/king_stonehenge_01.shtml
• The Practice of Human Sacrifice – http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/british_prehistory/human_sacrifice_01.shtml
• Bronze Age Britain – http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/british_prehistory/bronzeageman_01.shtml
• Native Tribes of Britain – http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/british_prehistory/iron_01.shtml

Multimedia Zone

• Skara Brae Gallery – http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/british_prehistory/skara_brae_gallery.shtml

Timelines

• British History Timeline – http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/launch_tl_british.shtml
• Ages of Treasure timeline – http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/archaeology/excavations_techniques/launch_tl_ages_treasure.shtml

BBC Links

• Bronze Age perfume ‘discovered’ – http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4364469.stm
• Fresh Bronze Age treasure find – http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/north_east/3532395.stm

External Web Links

• British Museum – http://www.thebritishmuseum.ac.uk/pee/peehome.html
• The Dover Bronze Age Boat – http://www.dover.gov.uk/museum/boat/