See www.rnw.nl/english/print/73299 … amateur archaeologist Pieter Stoel has found splinters and cores of flint that are thought to date back 370,000 years ago. They were sucked out of a sump pit at a depth between 27 and 36m (in the Netherlands). On the opposite side of the North Sea basin, at Pakefield in Suffolk, 225km from Woerden, a similar discovery has been made, suggesting people walked across the North Sea sea bed, which was dry land during the Ice Ages (but drowned during the interglacials). What is interesting about this, and not mentioned, is that sea levels are supposed to have risen and fallen during the interglacials and glacials – but did they really?
Still within the Ice Age environment – a story at www.eurekalert.org March 27th, reiterates the idea that religious beliefs are the basis of Palaeolithic art in the caves of south west Europe. This idea began with anthropologists and the article provides an interesting but brief history of European cave art and the way in which archaeology found it difficult to accept a Palaeolithic date because it was too spectacular – and too perfect to have been executed by primitive people. Archaeologists haven’t changed a lot then.