Permanent Settlement in Mesolithic Britain

[bicicleur 2]

Aberdeen and LeBrok are absolutely correct. This practice of subsequent groups re-using sacred sites is quite common. One of my favorite sites in Rome is the Basilica of St. Clement. It's always part of any walking tour that I recommend. The top level is a Basilica built in 1100 A.D. Below that is a 4th century Basilica that was converted out of the home of a Roman noble. Below even that is a temple to Mithras.
http://www.basilicasanclemente.com/index.php/tour/video

In the near east, archaeologists spend their whole lives excavating tells, digging tunnels down through civilization after civilization, and often, the sacred sites are always in the same place, even though the gods change.

Sometimes the people are newcomers, sometimes not, but they build their sacred precincts in the same location.

there are more recent examples, after the fall of byzantium, the Aya Sofia was converted into a mosque, while in Andalucia, after the Reconquista, mosques were converted into churches
in these examples, the wholy places were converted to make it clear to everyone who were the new rulers

 

[Aberdeen]

They said 8820-6590BC, plus they never said these Mesolithic wooden posts were erected at the same site as stone henge, just both are in Amesbury England. Wikpedia mentions that in 8,000BC there were wooden posts erected in west-east alignment(not a henge) in Britain, but was not in the Salisbury Plain like Stone henge, and it was not until the Neolithic that the Salisbury plain was cleared of it's forests by farmers. Wikpedia also says there are known similar structures known from Mesolithic Britain, except some in Scandinavia. The people who built stone henge were apart of a culture that took up much of western Europe at the time, and it probably has nothing to do with these Mesolithic woodon posts.

I'm not sure what you're talking about. The wooden henge at Amesbury is only two miles from Stonehenge.

www.stone-circles.org.uk/stone/woodhenge.htm

Are you saying that the building of Stonehenge so near the wooden henge is a coincidence that had nothing to do with the continued occupation of Amesbury? Woodhenge and Stonehenge appear to be part of a ritual landscape that was used and reworked for thousands of years, all while people continued to live in the nearby village of Amesbury. Some of the more recent discoveries have to do with the human settlement that was there long before any of the ritual structures were created, but I find it odd that anyone would suggest that the ritual structures are unrelated to a nearby ongoing permanent settlement.

 

[Maleth]

Okay, if that was just something random that didn't have anything to do with the thread or the comment by LeBrok that you were replying to, perhaps you could have mentioned that. And I'm not certain why you think that Britain's separation from the rest of Europe about 8000 years ago wouldn't have prevented the Stonehenge site from continuing to be occupied. The rise in ocean level that made Britain an island obviously didn't prevent people from living on that island. So the comment still kind of mystifies me.

I sincerely think you are making a fuss about this and not sure exactly why. So let me explain just one more and the last time.

a) Lebrook made a comment - (quote Lebrook) might be the oldest continuous settlement ever ) end Lebrook
b) I am understanding that this comment means oldest continuous settlement in the world (maybe he is referring just to Britian? not sure but I am assuming he means world wide)
c) I replied as you can see that if Britain was gripped in a tundra climate, there would be other places in euroasia that would be in a better position to be continuously occupied for a longer periods + sharing dna information (which is not always readily available on the net) (I still do not know what you find wrong in that as its always an interesting subject....at least for me)
d) no one suggested that its not possible to have a continued settlement in this particular areas, in fact there are other areas in Britain that excavation prove a continuous settlements for thousands of years. Its in relation to the climatic conditions.

Is it anymore clear now?

 

[Aberdeen]

I sincerely think you are making a fuss about this and not sure exactly why. So let me explain just one more and the last time.

a) Lebrook made a comment - (quote Lebrook) might be the oldest continuous settlement ever ) end Lebrook
b) I am understanding that this comment means oldest continuous settlement in the world (maybe he is referring just to Britian? not sure but I am assuming he means world wide)
c) I replied as you can see that if Britain was gripped in a tundra climate, there would be other places in euroasia that would be in a better position to be continuously occupied for a longer periods + sharing dna information (which is not always readily available on the net) (I still do not know what you find wrong in that as its always an interesting subject....at least for me)
d) no one suggested that its not possible to have a continued settlement in this particular areas, in fact there are other areas in Britain that excavation prove a continuous settlements for thousands of years. Its in relation to the climatic conditions.

Is it anymore clear now?

No, it's not clear at all what any of those assumptions have to do with Y haplotype R1b, but whatever.

It is a fact that Amesbury has been continuously occupied for over 10,000 years - the archeological evidence is there. As Angela pointed out, there are older continuously occupied sites in the Middle East, so it isn't the oldest continuously occupied site in the world, but it is really impressive to me that Amesbury has been occupied continuously for so long.

 

[MOESAN]

Fire Haired14 (glad to read you again):
just a point: even if not the proof of en homogenous ethnic group the megalithism could be the mark of an ethnic elite? (not affirmation, only supposition)OK for Y-G (sensible, not sure) and Y-I2a (quasi sure)
concerning the general question of site and occupation, continual occupation is not proof of overlating same population : as say someones, very often good situated sites in History were occupied by different waves of people without any close links between them: in the middle of the III° century BC, Stonehenge region saw the arrival of Beakers: they were intruders and apparently took the strong side over the "autochtonous" ones (megalithers that were surely not autochtonous), and without exterminate them, took nevertheless the better places - do we say that the Danau river is a quiet place occupied from the daybreak of the world by a single native population?

 

[epoch]

There were something in between. Not fully HGs and not complete farmers yet.
Even today's farmers go hunting sometimes but it doesn't make them HGs.

Not to mention the amount of fish we eat that is wild.

 

[epoch]

I completely lost the link but I somewhere read that samples from mesolithic bones from France found only a couple of miles inland showed that the sample did not eat any fish of shell fish from the seas. Apparently mesolithic shell middens were found along the coast which made the authors conclude that mesolithic HGs were quite immobile.

 

[Keegah]

Strange. I'd always read that the advantage bestowed on the Indo-Europeans by their agricultural and thus more technologically advanced lifestyle was one of the main reasons they were able to subjugate the "original" Europeans so easily. If the indigenous Europeans - or at least the Britons - had an agricultural society, I'm curious why they weren't better equipped to repel their invaders. Europe certainly wasn't short of natural resources that could be used by an indigenous sedentary civilization, as history has shown.

Unless the Indo-Europeans settled in Europe more or less peacefully, I suppose. Though that doesn't explain why R1b is so dominant in Western Europe.

 

[Aberdeen]

Strange. I'd always read that the advantage bestowed on the Indo-Europeans by their agricultural and thus more technologically advanced lifestyle was one of the main reasons they were able to subjugate the "original" Europeans so easily. If the indigenous Europeans - or at least the Britons - had an agricultural society, I'm curious why they weren't better equipped to repel their invaders. Europe certainly wasn't short of natural resources that could be used by an indigenous sedentary civilization, as history has shown.

Unless the Indo-Europeans settled in Europe more or less peacefully, I suppose. Though that doesn't explain why R1b is so dominant in Western Europe.

If you want to understand why the IE folk would have been able to conquer the farmers so easily, try an experiment. Take a stone tipped spear and go into battle against someone who's wearing bronze armour and carrying bronze weapons. Oh, and he's going to be riding in a horse drawn chariot - with scythe blades protruding from the spokes of the chariot. Assume you're a peaceful farmer and your opponent has spent his whole life learning how to kill folk. Any bets as to who's going to win that clash?

 

[motzart]

Britain was inhabited by I2a1 WHGs before EEFs ever showed up. I2a1c (formerly I2a3) (+L233) is an I2a1 clade found predominantly in southern England, the only inhabitable area of the British Isles during the LGM. My Ancestors

 

[Fire Haired14]

Britain was inhabited by I2a1 WHGs before EEFs ever showed up. I2a1c (formerly I2a3) (+L233) is an I2a1 clade found predominantly in southern England, the only inhabitable area of the British Isles during the LGM. My Ancestors

I agree I2a1c was probably a popular Y DNA haplogroup of Mesolithic Brits. It is pretty interesting that you have I2a1-P37.2 which has been found to be the main(or sole) Y DNA haplogroup of Mesolithic northwest Europeans and you have mtDNA H1c which was found in early farmers in Sweden. You are a great example of how modern Europeans are mainly a mix between stone age near eastern farmers and north Eurasian hunter gatherers.

 

[motzart]

If you want to understand why the IE folk would have been able to conquer the farmers so easily, try an experiment. Take a stone tipped spear and go into battle against someone who's wearing bronze armour and carrying bronze weapons. Oh, and he's going to be riding in a horse drawn chariot - with scythe blades protruding from the spokes of the chariot. Assume you're a peaceful farmer and your opponent has spent his whole life learning how to kill folk. Any bets as to who's going to win that clash?

great map here on the spread of the chariot

Basically matches the Kurgan map