At https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/11000-year-old-submerged-stone-wall-discovered-off-germany-was-once-used-to-trap-reindeer … It is probably guesswork that it was used to trap reindeer but what other animal could it have been – red deer are a bit large to box behind a low wall. Most of the wall will have been destroyed by tides and time. Never the less, the similarity between this animal trap and similar ones discovered in Arabia that were used to trap herds of gazelle, the hunters picking out the mature males and releasing the young ones and a certain amount of females, is quite staggering. I think they have also found similar animal traps in the Great Lakes region of North America – and from about the same point in time. How did these ideas spread so far and wide?
The stone wall was discovered by accident, located off the coast of what is now Germany. The location was part of Dogger Land – dry land up to around 8200 years ago. The wall is now 70 feet below sea surface, 6 miles east of Revik in the Bay of Mechlenberg. The location has helped to preserve it, we are told, as it is protected from the worst of North Sea stormy weather. The wall has been dated to 11,000 years ago, at the very start of the Holocene. The date may be revised later. Have to wait for that one.
Meanwhile, over at https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2024/02/240206151349.htm … a mortuary practise known as Thailand’s Iron Age log coffin culture, has been subject to DNA testing of some of the skeletal material. It was a culture that was visible in NW Thailand between 2300 and 1000 years ago. Individuals were buried in large wooden coffins on stilts, very often in caves and rock shelters. DNA has been analysed from 33 people from 5 different sites in highland Pang Mapha. There seems to have been a fair amount of genetic relatedness.
Pang Mapha is limstone karst country in southern China and this part of Thailand, and no doubt in what used to be known as Burma. There is a proliferation of caves and fissures, hence the innovative use of them. The DNA show links to two farming groups with an origin in southern China. One, the Yangtze river valley group and two, the Yellow River valley people, also in China. Admixture with local pre farming groups was also a genetic factor – but probably earlier than the wooden coffins.
At https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2024/02/240208121958.htm … we have the headline – Scandinavias first farmers slaughtered the hunter gatherer population that was there before them – around 6000 years ago. Note the word slaughter. Why would they do that? The implication is that hunter gatherers died out around 6000 years ago, approximatly 4000BC. The authors, as they do, totally ignore catastrophism – and we have a very nice catastrophe dated around 4150BC on tree rings. The same catastrophe led to the abrupt appearance of the first farmers into Britain – using a land bridge, or island hopping, possibly in the Kent region. They rapidly colonised the upland zone all the way north to Scotland. They only stopped when they ran out of land to till. The same thing happened in Scandinavia. They could not go any further once the land ran out. What on earth might cause such trepidation? Well, we have the well documented evidence of landscape fires at periodic intervals in the early to mid Holocene. Archaeologists classified this as evidence the first farmers used slash and burn methodlogy – chopping down trees and forests and then moving on once the nutrients had been used up. However, the first farmers targeted loess areas [sometimes known in the UK as brick earth deposits]. These did not necessarily strictly follow river valleys such as the Danube but included former terraces of those river valleys situated above the current line of the river. Hence, we have brick earth in the Thames and Lea valleys that was used much later by market gardeners. Burnham Beeches also has brick earth deposits, and has not been farmed – or at least in recent times. It sits well above and out of site of the Thames. In other words, the early farmers targeted a particular kind of soil that they knew contained lots of nutrients. In those days they could not go out and buy a bag of Growmore or Fish Blood and Bone. The slash and burn methodology is a theory. Once you embrace the idea of periodic catastrophes during the Holocene the idea becomes less likely – but may have played a minor role.
What I am suggesting is that the early farmers of both Scandinavia and Britain probably entered a region depleted of its population – by landscape fires with a source in cosmic bombardment by meteors. They too may have fled – or were simply depleted. This would be why their DNA ceases in males – but seems to survive in the female line. A vestige of the earlier inhabitants survived.