So hard not to give up.
]]>
Image Source - my own, taken today, of a flint blade from an old finds box. Thetford Forest. It would have been recorded as a snapped blade, possibly transitional Mesolithic-Neolithic. Now in the 21st Century I understand that this blade was strictly, Mesolithic. I no longer believe there was transition.
I've written a novel. The story provided me with an escape from unbearable life. The tale has two primary settings, both circa 6,000 years ago. One in what is now South Iraq on the edge of the marshes where civilisation starts to take shape, and the other in South East Britain, as Mesolithic hunter-gatherers meet Neolithic farmers. It is a little play on parts of the Genesis story.
I was cut off from all Nature. I am only just now starting to reconnect. It will be a very long healing experience if I decide to maintain it. Because I'm running short of hope. I had very little access to data. I had to scrap around in order to attempt any understanding of how the Mesolithic British may have experienced life, and was left with little more than contemplation. This is how I reconstructed a fictional South-eastern British environment 6,000 years ago:
Birch scrub advanced first. Followed by pine, yew, and other evergreens. This is the Age of Star Carr. The tundra grasslands receded with this rapid advance. Temperatures increased annually. Waters began to rise.
The birch grew taller. Alder joined them. Willow and holly. Followed by oak. Lime and hazel arrived on the British peninsular of North West Europe. Wych elm, hawthorn, blackthorn then ash. In South Eastern Britain, it was the lime which dominated as the most common tree.
Tree biodiversity was actually quite limited in Late Mesolithic Britain. Because the North Sea (Doggerland), and the English Channel, flooded with thawed out glacial waters to make Britain an island, before more species could shift across any land-bridge.
I suspect that the term temperate rainforest should be reserved for the wetter parts of the British Isles. Particularly for the west. Across the drier south-east of Britain, I propose that it would be better to describe it as wildwood. Even here I suspect that the ecology was incredibly rich, with mosses, lichen and fungi. Some areas of the wildwoods were kept quite open by the actions of large wild bovines that generated their own woodland pastures. Others were more dense.
The British canopy was not continuous. Breaking it were small glades, and some larger plains. These were kept open by browsing and grazing herbivores that herded in the open - aurochs, red deer, bison, roe deer. A distinct ecology existed on these small scrubs and prairies.
Equally there were lowland marshes and fens of reed bed with water-logged islands of alder carr. Often, belts of these ran up the riparian terraces of river valleys to provide rich habitats for birds, beavers, and pig. The rivers were clean, and ran naturally within their floodplains except for the works of beavers. Upper stretches of chalk streams would have been choked by Summer watercress. Alder and willow trees dominated the riparian belts. Banks were not cut, and rivers wider, bordered by the roots of alder, or by gravel shores. They often flowed around riverine islets and over gravel banks. Water channels changed their many courses through the marshes of deltas.
Bird-life was devoid of some species that have adapted to and follow human agriculture, but could have included some surprise species no longer in the British Isles such as black woodpecker, black stork, and European eagle owl. These in addition to species such as titmice, woodcock, wood pigeon, tawny owl, bustards, and cranes. Goshawks would have been a widespread raptor across the forests, and white tailed eagles not an uncommon site.
Mammalian predators included wolf, brown bear, lynx, fox, badgers and martens
We know that they appear from genetics to be dark skinned and possibly with light coloured eyes. That is just a fine detail. To those people that make a deal out of it, I ask why? And I love the reconstructions of western hunter-gatherers by Tom Björklund.
What was the environment in South East Britain, 6,500 years ago? How had they adapted to the changed environment? Their ancestors had survived the Ice age mammoth steppe. They had survived so long on the tundra. What challenges had the Holocene's new forests thrown at them? Their ungulate prey species had dispersed from herds in the open, and into the woods. There, they were more difficult to locate, and could quickly disappear into cover. They had less need to form large herds. Temperate forests release a lot of their calories only during the autumn. To survive, Mesolithic hunter-foragers needed to be exceptionally intelligent. They needed to break up into smaller bands, and adapt to a forest way of life
It was probably easier to travel by waterway whenever possible. Although upper rivers might be seasonally clogged by growth, and beaver dams a trial. Watercraft include dugouts, but also canoes of bark or animal skin. It would have been the way to travel.
During this travelling, few people would have been encountered. The bands dispersed in order to make best use of resources. Human population was likely very sparse across Britain.
Late Spring. Wild greens, pignuts, tubers, flowers, cat-tails, buds, even young tree leaves of elm and hawthorn. Slow game - birds eggs and chicks. Possibly European pond turtles. Roots such as those of cat tail could be dried and ground into flour.
Summer. I have my fictional hunter-foragers moving to the coast during summer, where they meet up with other bands for sports and social networking. There they could have foraged sea beet, sea lettuce, samphire, buckthorn berry, and shellfish. Mussels, oysters, clams, cockles, razor shells, whelks, crabs. Perhaps hunted seals on the beaches and sea flats. Cetaceans would have been vastly more abundant in the seas, and whales would beach, providing opportunities. Sea canoes might have provided the opportunity to fish with nets, or to hunt small cetaceans. Late summer inland, and wild berries - raspberry, mulberry, sloe, brambleberry, elderberry, buckthorn, hawthorn. Early fungi such as puffballs, parasols, chicken-of-the-woods.
Favoured prey species for hunting would have been the red deer, also roe deer, wild boar, aurochs (enormous wild cattle), European bison if they remained, tarpan / wild horse, fox, badger, beaver, etc. Bird species on the menu probably included geese, ducks, cranes, swans, bustards, wood pigeons, turtle doves, woodcock, snipe, etc. My savages had the domestic dog, but it is a laika-type, that does not bark. It is useful for tracking prey by scent. Dogs also provide companionship and warmth in a den.
The belief system that I designed for my fictional savages was animist. The sense of self, and of afterlife, is projected onto everything natural - prey, trees, tools, the forest, and otherwise. Areas of natural resources became sacred. My fictional savages had female shamans, and were matrilineal. Celebrations and feasts would be frequent. They would engage in sports. I also suggested some ritual cannibalism, if only to prevent the ghosts of enemies from extracting revenge on the living. I portrayed them as very egalitarian, with little personal property, and no chieftains. But they had different roles for either gender, and the elders were respected.
My fictional savages have a totem-identity, but I'm not sure that would have been the case. Again, my choice was to tie them to local nations set into a larger territory called a wilderness. These nations I divided into smaller more practically sized family bands. None of this is based on any strong anthropological evidence, and was entirely my own creativity. In reality, bands could have had a wider more homogeneous identity, and ranged wider across the British Isles, free of tribal territorial restrictions. Yet I see this as leading to conflict.
Birth rate in my savages was controlled by extended nursing and delayed weaning in comparison to the Neolithic farmers. This reduced fertility. Otherwise competition would grow for limited natural resources, and local prey extinctions. Conflict between bands would follow as an ultimate population control.
Have I romanticised my Mesolithic Britons? Absolutely I have. I am envious of their freedoms, their relationship with Nature. I see progress as degenerative.
The final in my series exploring the hunter-gatherer cultures of modern humans within Western Eurasia. First I briefly looked at Apidima fossils as evidence that modern traits had been in Europe from an early date. With the Aurignacians, I investigated the earliest known modern human culture in Europe. With the Gravettians, I learned about how hunter-gatherers adapted in the lead up, and into the Last Glacial Maximum How they divided into the Solutrean Culture of Iberia and France in the west; and with the Pavlovian and Epigravettian Cultures of Italy, Czech and the East. With the Magdalenians I discovered how they burst back following Last Glacial Maximum, and through the warmer Bølling–Allerød interstadial.
Above image is my own. Years ago, I recorded several flint microblade waste cores, of which the above wasn't the most regular or impressive. But it's a photo that I could still resource. These artefacts, along with a tranchet axe-head and a few microliths that I recorded, were Mesolithic. I thought that it would be nice if I could bring this series to a close with something, a bit more personal.
The WHG displayed higher affinity for ancient and modern Middle Eastern populations when compared against earlier Paleolithic Europeans such as Gravettians. The affinity for ancient Middle Eastern populations in Europe increased after the Last Glacial Maximum, correlating with the expansion of WHG (Villabruna or Oberkassel) ancestry. There is also evidence for bi-directional geneflow between WHG and Middle Eastern populations as early as 15,000 years ago.
Image Source. Bison Licking Insect Bite; 15,000–13,000 BC; antler; National Museum of Prehistory (Les Eyzies-de-Tayac-Sireuil, France).
The Magdalenian Culture of Palaeolithic Europe follows the big freeze of the Last Glacial Maximum and dates from 17,000 to 12,000 years ago. Climatic conditions continued to remain grim, but a warmer interstadial known as the Bølling–Allerød, lasted between 14,690 and 12,890 years ago. The Magdalenian first appears in France, where it is contemporary with the Epigravettian Culture of Italy and further east. The founder population of the Magdalenian descends from earlier West European groups, including West Gravettian / Solutrean, and Western Aurignacian.
Image Source. Photo by Karl Steel (Flickr).
Magdalenian yDNA haplogroups so far discovered are I, and one HIJK
Magdelanian mtDNA haplogroups all U (several U8b and one U5b).
One cluster at El Muron was found to be related to West European Aurignacians of the Goyet caves of Belgium, from 20,000 years earlier, supporting that the Magdalenians were descended from earlier Upper Palaeolithic hunter-gatherers of western Europe. However, later Western Hunter-Gatherers of the Mesolithic, were closer related to the more south eastern groups of the Epigravettian Culture.
Image Source. Flint blades from Grottes de Labastide.
Long, regular blades were struck from prepared, carinated cores. Later phases are associated with harpoons made of antler, ivory, and bone. Main prey species on the Continent was reindeer, although other groups such as those in Britain, focused on tarpan (horse). Red deer and ibex were also targeted. One study found little evidence of salmon nor saiga antelope in the diet of a Magdalenian woman. Another study has found evidence of consumption of wild plants and bolete mushrooms.
This study found that the diet of Magdalenians was more varied, with more abrasive foods than those of earlier hunter-gatherers in Europe.
Image Source. Reproductions of some Lascaux artworks in Lascaux II.
Kent's Cavern
Image Source. Gough's Cave skull potentially evidencing cannibalism
The Cannibals of Gough's Cave.
Just as the climate began to improve circa 14,700 years ago, some Magdalenians sheltered in Gough's Cave Somerset. Batons and tools were left within, along with horse bones and human remains. Tarpan seem to have been their main prey, and they may have been following the horse herds north into Britain as the climate improved. The human bones had been treated in much the same way as the bones of food prey. Cut marks and incisions suggest that they were stripped of flesh, and this discovery has led to much debate about possible cannibalism. Human crania appear to have been modified into drinking cups:
'The skulls were scrupulously cleaned of soft tissue shortly after death. Marks show cutting of the lips, cheeks and tongue, and extraction of the eyes.
Then the bones of the face and the base of the skull were carefully removed. Finally the cranial vaults were meticulously shaped into cups.'
It has been suggested that a British Late Magdalenian Culture existed, called the Creswellian Technology, dating 12,000 to 10,000 years before present that is similar to a Hamburgian Culture on the Continent.
Image Source. The Venus of Brassempouy.
The Gravettian overlaps the late Aurignacian, dating from circa 33,000 years ago, and surviving until 20,000 years before present. This included the coldest peak of the last Ice Age, the Last Glacial Maximum around 24,000 years ago until 18,000 years ago. These really were Ice Age Europeans. Travel as far north as Britain must have taken place during warmer intervals. Otherwise the Gravettian is found in a band across Western Eurasia, which stretches from Portugal and the Basque region, through France, Germany, Czech republic, as far east as Georgia and South Russia.
Image Source. Female face. Ivory carving, Dolní Věstonice.
A previously unknown population replacement event that was archaeologically invisible, occurring during the peak of the Ice Age. This DNA was then passed on via the Solutrean people to the following Magdalenian people.We identify a genetic ancestry profile in individuals associated with Upper Palaeolithic Gravettian assemblages from western Europe that is distinct from contemporaneous groups related to this archaeological culture in central and southern Europe4, but resembles that of preceding individuals associated with the Aurignacian culture. This ancestry profile survived during the Last Glacial Maximum (25,000 to 19,000 years ago) in human populations from southwestern Europe associated with the Solutrean culture, and with the following Magdalenian culture that re-expanded northeastward after the Last Glacial Maximum. Conversely, we reveal a genetic turnover in southern Europe suggesting a local replacement of human groups around the time of the Last Glacial Maximum, accompanied by a north-to-south dispersal of populations associated with the Epigravettian culture.
For their last journey, the individuals have been richly equipped with headdresses made of the teeth of the arctic fox (Vulpes lagopus), wolf (Canis lupus), and unidentified large predators. In the mouth of DV15, a mammoth ivory disc was placed.
Image of the Lion Man. The Oldest Portable Art: the Aurignacian Ivory Figurines from the Swabian Jura (Southwest Germany). Harald Floss
The Aurignacians were not the first Europeans. With the previous post on the Apidima 1 skull fragment from Greece, dated to circa 210,000 years ago, I established that humans with modern Homo sapiens features may well have been wandering in and out of parts of Europe for a very long time. Neither was Apidima 1 the first European. Earlier humans, including Neanderthals had been around Europe for a very long time. Before them, earlier hominins, such as Homo heidelgergensis; and Homo antecessor who left artefacts and footprints on a Norfolk beach, some 800,000 to 900,000 years ago. Recently, stone tools found in Ukraine during the 1970s have been dated to 1.4 millions years of age, and may be associated with an Homo erectus type hominin.
Not the first Europeans, but here in this post I am going to investigate the earliest modern human artefact culture that we currently know to have established itself in Europe, and even in Britain. I'm going to discuss the Aurignacians.
Image. Animation and Graphic Narration in the Aurignacian. Marc Azéma
Recent arrivals into Europe, with connections to present day West Eurasian populations, and they had some recent Neanderthal ancestry mixed into modern.Here we present genome-wide data from three individuals dated to between 45,930 and 42,580 years ago from Bacho Kiro Cave, Bulgaria1,2. They are the earliest Late Pleistocene modern humans known to have been recovered in Europe so far, and were found in association with an Initial Upper Palaeolithic artefact assemblage. Unlike two previously studied individuals of similar ages from Romania7 and Siberia8 who did not contribute detectably to later populations, these individuals are more closely related to present-day and ancient populations in East Asia and the Americas than to later west Eurasian populations. This indicates that they belonged to a modern human migration into Europe that was not previously known from the genetic record, and provides evidence that there was at least some continuity between the earliest modern humans in Europe and later people in Eurasia. Moreover, we find that all three individuals had Neanderthal ancestors a few generations back in their family history, confirming that the first European modern humans mixed with Neanderthals and suggesting that such mixing could have been common.
The Proto-Aurignacian and the Early Aurignacian stages are dated between about 43,000 and 37,000 years ago. The Aurignacian proper lasted from about 37,000 to 33,000 years ago. A Late Aurignacian phase transitional with the Gravettian dates to about 33,000 to 26,000 years ago.
Image. Recorded Aurignacian sites in Britain. Coastline would have been far further out than in the above image. The North Sea was dry, and Britain connected to the continent.
The Timing of Aurignacian occupation of the British Peninsula. Edinburgh Research Explorer 2012. Dinnis.R
A study of flint burins to type in comparison with sites in Belgium and France. Occupation of the British peninsular would have been impossible for long periods. The conclusion:
British Aurignacian burins busqués are technologically indistinguishable from those found in Belgium and at Abri Pataud in southern France c. 32 000 14C BP, or c. 37 000 cal BP. Therefore, the Aurignacian can be considered to have appeared in Britain at this same time. The proposed c. 32 000 14C BP appearance of burins busqués accords with the few radiocarbon dates from other sites which directly date Aurignacian occupation of Britain. Morphologically similar lozangic-type osseous points are also present at Abri Pataud and in Britain at this time. This period apparently coincides with or closely follows the most significant warm phase during the lifetime of the Aurignacian: Greenland Interstadial 8. An environmental response to this climatic amelioration is therefore a plausible reason for the extension of Aurignacian ranges northwards at this time.
In spite of an overall paucity of material, the presence of two bladelet production techniques suggests that there were at least two Aurignacian occupations of Britain, or that occupation was sufficiently prolonged to encompass the replacement of one by the other. The precise timing of what is interpreted as the more recent of the two techniques – the Paviland burin method – is currently unknown.
Creative Common images from Il Fatto Storico
The age of the hominin fossils from Jebel Irhoud, Morocco, and the origins of the Middle Stone Age. Nature 2017. Richter, Grün, Joannes-Boyau etal.
In conclusion it would appear likely, that the sort of modern features associated with Homo sapiens emerged piece by piece, much earlier than could be credibly imagined by anthropologists back in the 1960s. Modern features developed gradually from as far back as the Middle Palaeolithic. That there is more and more evidence of earlier hominins (of Homo habilis type) exiting from Africa at vastly earlier dates, would support that these early modern humans could have existed and made their way out of Africa towards Apidima.
]]>
Cherry Hinton, Cambridgeshire, James Alexander Cameron on Flickr
Most of our nuclear DNA recombines with every generation. But a yDNA Haplogroup is a genetic marker that follows along the direct paternal line, passed down from biological father to son. Follow it back, and it will follow your father's father's, father's, etc. Most NW European males carry a yDNA haplogroup of R, or I. Sometimes G, J, E. However, I have a variant of L, defined by a mutation coded M20 (L-M20). yDNA haplogroup L is regarded as Non-European and some will insist that it is South Asian. I can reliably trace my own paternal line back to 18th Century Oxfordshire / Thames Valley. yDNA haplogroup L is NOT seen as European. It is seen as an Asian genetic marker. The males of two English families share my own mutations: BROOKER of Oxfordshire and CHANDLER of Basingstoke, Hampshire. My next closest yDNA matches are men from Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, India, and Lebanon.
'In total, 48 individuals from Cherry Hinton were targeted for DNA extraction in this study, including 24 females and 24 males (Table S1). Two of the sampled individuals have been directly radiocarbon dated.'
'Cherry Hinton The settlement of Church End Cherry Hinton (Cherry Hinton) is located around six kilometers southeast of Cambridge. In the late 9th to the mid-10th century, a large thengly (aristocratic) or proto-manorial center was established (92, 93). The associated timber chapel and graveyard were excavated in 1999 by the Hertfordshire Archaeological Trust (subsequently Archaeological Solutions and now Wardell Armstrong) in advance of development of the site in accordance with the appropriate planning regulations'
Cherry Hinton 919 (sk3262) was related to a female (mother, or sister?) number 947 (sk3262) with whom he shared his mtDNA haplogroup U5b3e His yDNA was sequenced as L-B374.
I have proven descent from John Henry Brooker, through genetic matching to support the documentary evidence. I and my sibling share some centimorgans of autosomal DNA with descendants of his sister. Additionally, smaller segments are shared from the prior few generations, to support that this paternal line is biologically true, at least back to Generation 5 (great great grandparent). He was the only one of my great grandfather's not to be Norfolk-born.
If I follow his paternal line (BROOKER) back using traditional genealogical method, I follow it back to the Thames Valley borderlands of rural Oxfordshire and Berkshire. I have good, strong documentary evidence back to my direct paternal line 5 x great grandfather, Edward Brucker, born 1757 at Long Wittenham, Berkshire.
Support for my 6 x great grandfather being a John Brooker born 1722 at Hagbourne, Berkshire in 1722 is pretty good. His father before him I have verified, was another John Brooker born 1691 at Hagbourne. His father was Thomas Brucker, also baptised at Hagbourne in 1658. If biologically true, he would be my 8 x great grandfather and that would place my Y chromosome in Hagbourne, Berkshire in 1658. The Chandlers who share the yDNA descend from a Thomas Chandler who lived in Basingstoke, Hampshire during the late 18th century. At some point prior to that, our two paternal lines must merge.
Anything earlier than 1658 Hagbourne, too much doubt creeps in, but I have candidates stretching back a few generations waiting for more supportive evidence. They are in the Wantage/Uffington area of Oxfordshire. Caution - they may be incorrect. Another candidate in in Whitchurch, Hampshire.
I've researched the BROOKER surname:
Distribution of BROOKER baptisms AD 1550 - AD 1600 by English County. County boundaries modern, but East and East Surrey united for historical purposes. Includes records of derivations of Brooker surname.
During the 16th Century CE, it was not a common surname in Oxfordshire and Berkshire. Its origins are the Sussex / Surrey area. It is possible that I had a Brooker surname ancestor move up through Hampshire into the area. I think that our surname picked up the yDNA in Hampshire, or in a South English port. My favourite hypothesis is that a South West Asian sailor visited, and left a son there early into the Medieval.
This hypothesis might seem unlikely, yet it brings me to:
In 2015, the Peopling of the British Isles (POBI) research group, published this paper:
The Fine-scale genetic structure of the British Population Leslie, Winney etal POBI 2015
It proposed that the Early Medieval migration events commonly known as Anglo-Saxon (a better term to include the 9th Century surge could be Anglo-Danish), has been exaggerated. They concluded that the modern English had only 10% to 40% descent from these Continental immigrants, with the remainder majority reflecting earlier Iron Age / Romano British ancestry.
An independent 2016 investigation by Schiffels, Haak etal looked at ancientDNA from cemeteries in Cambridgeshire. The results supported POBI's conclusion, proposing:
'East English population derives 38% of its ancestry from Anglo-Saxon migrations'
The 2022 study based on hundreds of ancient remains increased the percentage of new arrivals. They conclude that it is higher further east, closer to the North Sea, but declines as an average in Western England. At its peak in Eastern England, they projected that Anglo-Danish accounted for 76% of the genome:
'the individuals who we analysed from eastern England derived up to 76% of their ancestry from the continental North Sea zone, albeit with substantial regional variation and heterogeneity within sites.'
This is a higher estimate than that proposed by the previous two studies.
The Fertile Crescent is the name given to a region of Western Eurasia where a Neolithic Revolution first occurred shortly following the end of the last Ice Age. It was here in SW Asia, that the wild ancestors of domestic cattle, sheep, goats, pigs, barley, emmer wheat, bread wheat, einkorn, barley, rye, peas, and vetch all existed. Where the first stone age farmers (Neolithic) developed an agriculture. It was not the only such Neolithic Revolution, others independently happened in Papua, China, SE Asia, Northern America, Southern America, and Africa. The Fertile Crescent may have been home to the earliest such revolution (perhaps challenged by Papua and China), and most affected the development of western civilisations, with its rich array of domesticated species, that became so critical to their economies.
A few posts ago, I blogged a bunch of notes concerning the Anatolian Epipalaelithic and Pre Pottery Neolithic. Here I continue to develop my personal investigation, with the modification of maps.
Early Fertile Crescent Pre Pottery Neolithic between 13,000 years ago and 10,000 years ago. Focusing on Pre Pottery Neolithic A sites:
The Fertile Crescent as it later developed between 10,000 and 6,000 years ago. This included the birthplaces of Uruk civilisation, Elam civilisation (in what is now Iraq and Iran respectively), and Badarian to Naqadan civilisation in Egypt (leading to Pre-Dynastic Egypt):
Source for both versions: OpenStreetMaps
I find that this helps me to better understand the Eurasian Neolithic and its foundation in SW Asia. The latter map which includes Southern Mesopotamia, and the Nile Valley is more like that which was presented to me when I was young. The former, focuses on the very earliest roots.
This Neolithic then spread into Sudan, across the Iranian Plain to the Indus Valley, into the Balkans, and along the Mediterranean coasts. From a local perspective, it didn't reach the British Isles until circa 6,000 years ago.
Below, the map I recently posted, focusing on the Anatolian Pre Pottery Neolithic A sites:
My earlier Notes on the Anatolian Pre Pottery Neolithic A
I've also watched a very interesting video on the Wadi Faynan WF16 PPN A site in Jordan. Highly recommend the video. It provides evidence that the PPN A may have extend so far south of the Anatolian cluster around Göbekli Tepe.
Image of an LBA socketed axehead from Portable Antiquities Scheme
A research team looking at ancientDNA led by David Reich had already detected a 97% population replacement across Britain at the close of the Neolithic period, circa 2,300 BCE. They proposed that the Earlier, European Neolithic Farmers of Britain, were replaced by a new people, associated with the Bell Beaker artefact culture. These new people had previously been admixed between European Neolithic Farmers living on the Continent, and recently migrants from the Pontic & Caspian Steppes of Eurasia.
Northern Europe has more of this migrant Yamnaya / Steppe ancestry which arrived during the 3rd Millennium BCE, while Southern Europe (peaking in Sardinia, then Iberia) has more residual ancestry from the earlier, European Neolithic Farmers. Yet the South British (English) have rather more Neolithic ancestry than other Northern neighbours. This raised questions concerning where had this DNA come from.
Reich's team speculated on this result, and investigated the remains of ancient DNA further. This was later reported on:
Large-scale migration into Britain during the Middle to Late Bronze Age
https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/183814/2/Manuscript.pdf
In the above paper, the research team suggest a secondary migration event, that followed the Bell Beaker population replacement. They date it to the end of the Middle Bronze Age / start of the Late Bronze Age circa 900 BCE, although proposed that it had slowly been arriving for some time, before a surge of new arrivals to Britain. They do not pinpoint where these immigrants come from, but by their heavier Neolithic ancestry, it is proposed that they had moved up from further south, most probably from France. How many? The study proposes a 50% DNA replacement in Southern Britain, across England & Wales. I think that is probably comparable to the most recent, highest estimates for the much later Anglo-Danish immigration event.
The tabloids of course, reacted:
From this it has further been proposed, that it may have been this forgotten immigration which brought the p-celtic and / or q-celtic languages to Britain. If you subscribe to identifying Iron Age Britons as Insular Celts then this could represent the arrival in Britain.
Personally I feel that what we 21st Century CE people believe to be Insular Celtic, reflects a much longer, older exchange of people and ideas across Britain, Ireland, and the Western Seaboard of Europe during the Bronze and Iron Ages. The Romans did much later, claim more recent Belgae migrations into Britain, some tribes even shared names with tribes in France and Belgium. These could represent a continuation of migration, possibly of elites. Prehistoric Britain was very much in contact with the nearby Continent, and a part of Europe.
Original Nature publication:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-04287-4
On BBC:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-59741723
Earlier Posts:
The Beaker phenomenon and genetic transformation of Northwest Norfolk. A layman's take 2017
Celebrating my Steppe and Beaker ancestors
https://paulbrooker.posthaven.com/celebrating-my-steppe-and-beaker-ancestors
Own Photo.
]]>
Comparing results from actual recorded ancestry, to that predicted by Ancestry.com, 23andme, My Heritage, Living DNA, FT-DNA and more.
This isn't a genuine attempt at a history. It is just me collecting notes in order to start trying to make some sort of sense out of all of the new sites in Anatolia, SE Turkey.
Post glacial cities of Stone Age hunter-gatherers? Evidence of an Ice Age Civilisation? Fred Flintstone metros? The Worlds oldest temple? Proof of alien involvement? Religion came before farming?
I'm just starting to get an image of Anatolia and Levant 13,000 to 6,000 years ago. It is difficult, because there is so much more excavation to undertake. Typically these sites have been discovered only in recent years, and a small percentage of each site has been investigated. Cutting edge archaeology with new excavations each season.
Natufian Culture - Epipalaeolithic hunter-gatherers in the Levant / Syria, were forming larger populations and becoming semi-sedentary, by harvesting wild cereals, and good gazelle / onager hunting situation as climate warmed from Late Glacial Maximum, presenting favourable conditions. The Younger Dryas cold event interrupted, and possibly then stimulated changes in the local economies and settlement patterns.
Following the Younger Dryas climatic event, the focus may have shifted further north into Southern and Eastern Anatolia. Again, hunter-gatherers here could crowd together in either permanent or semi permanent (perhaps bands seasonally) 'settlements'. They again, exploited gazelle, onager, pig, aurochs, wild sheep. Anatolia hills were particularly rich and also presented copious wild cereals for foraging. In order to settle, they learned to store foods.
They built 'communal, 'special use' buildings. These have been popularised as the world's first 'temples'. They created courses and cisterns to collect rain-water. They may have even built sewers. Their communal buildings may at first have been built using low stone walls and posts of timber. Later, the stone pillars carved out of the bed rock, then the tall often sculptured T-pillars. They entered these semi-subterranean buildings through the roof. Celebrated many images of wild species of animals. Some animals appeared favoured at different sites such as scorpions or leopards, or foxes. Skulls and horns of animals often set into walls. There is evidence of vast periods of use if not habitation at these sites. Lots of reuse and modification in the communal buildings, over many centuries.
Some of the people lived around these communal buildings in houses that might also be sunken feature, or stone walled and above ground. Roof access into buildings remained a common feature in SW Asia for thousands of years. Round or oval stone walled with corridors, hearths, quern-stones, other domestic artefacts. Some sites appear to be surrounded by large numbers of houses, that if contemporary, could suggest large settlements. Sometimes they buried their dead were buried underneath the houses. Later, their skulls might be collected (ancestor worship?). Death brought out to join the Living. There is evidence at one site of bead production on a large scale, and of working raw copper to make ornamental pieces. There is evidence of pierced earrings and lip rings. Tentative evidence of fabrics and garments. Obsidian imported hundreds of miles. Organised labour to move heavy pillars.
Were the central communal buildings 'temples'? That depends on definitions of what a temple is. Was it to celebrate a religion? Again, the symbols all over them suggest forms of animism, possibly shamanistic totems? Sometimes phallic, a celebration of male virility within Nature? Were they the cities of an incredibly old civilisation? Although clearly they involved large numbers of people to construct, and we have evidence of domestic housing on some sites, many people could have continued to roam seasonally and follow wild herds, but used the sites as centres for special celebrations. The incredible complexity of some buildings may be down to being used and reused over many generations. But yes, I can see that these sites were urbanising., and large numbers of people residing at least seasonally if not permanently around them. That does not make them true cities such as those of early Sumer in what is now southern Iraq.
Göbekli Tepe still provides no evidence of agriculture and maintains its status as built-by-hunter-gatherers. Although large stone vessels found there could be hinting at improved storage of food. This has caused some controversy. It might be prejudice that dictates that such an economy could not have accomplished such feats. We may need to reassess hunter-gatherer societies across the world. They were clearly able to build large monuments and to create such a culture, organising labour to move, sculpt, and to raise large megaliths.
Yet these sites would have provided an ideal situation for a Neolithic Revolution. It seems very likely that it was on sites such as these, that the Anatolian Neolithic arose. Changes in relationship between these people, and a number of both plant and animal species would seem very likely. We know that by the end of this period, that wheats, barley, rye, lentils, pigs, sheep, cattle, goats had entered agriculture. Then we see urban 'townships' like the beehive settlement of Çatalhöyük. Later, the early cities of Eridu and Uruk on the Tigris / Euphrates floodplain.
The ancestors of the Anatolian Neolithic Farmers? They were certainly among them. If so, were the European Neolithic farmers later descendants?
Later Epipaleolithic
13,500 BCE - 9,800 BCE
Natufian at sites such as Abu Hureyra, Syria and Jericho, Israel, and on the West Bank they hunted gazelle, gathered wild cereals. First evidences of gathering wild grass seeds to grind. They are settling into semi-permanent settlements, until the cold weather interrupts this:
Younger Dryas Climatic Event (COLD)
10,900 BCE - 9,700 BCE
Abu Hureyra I
11,300 BCE- 10,000 BCE
Now in Syria. See Natufian. Sedentary hunter-gatherers. Cultivating rye from about 11,000 BCE? Permanent year round settlement of a few hundred. Small round huts with wooden posts cut into bedrock. Houses subterranean pit dwellings.Climate change of the Younger Dryas impacted, eventually killing off the settlement.
Sayburç
11,000 BCE
SE turkey. Oldest sculptured narrative. The masturbating man being watched by two big cats, while another shakes a snake or rattle at an aurochs bull! On a stone bench.
Boncuklu Tarla
9,900 BCE - 6,000 BCE
SE Anatolia, Turkey. Far to the east of Göbekli Tepe.
Starts in Epipalaeolithic, mainly Pre Pottery Neolithic A/B
Centralised living. 30 houses, 6 public structures. Many beads. During / after Younger Dryas. Many human remains. Beads of raw copper. Central ‘Rectangular temple’ Heads of bulls left inside. 10 m wide = 7 communal buildings.
Bull horns. Limestone blocks. Wall Buttresses. Pre-Pottery Neolithic A. Columns like Göbekli Tepe. Probably religious. First Window. 2012. Small city more than village. Early in excavation. East of other sites in Eastern Anatolia. SE Turkey. Excavations ongoing. Spans Younger Dryas. Occupied until 6,000 BCE. 4000 year long occupation. 100 km from Göbekli Tepe in the east. Discovered 2008. 2012 excavations on. So far 5% / 3 hectares so far investigated! 100,000 beads. Shapes of animals, scorpions, 2000 copper beads / ornaments, scorpions popular. Earrings, lip rings. Earliest Piercings! 7 Communal buildings are subterranean. sunk into the ground, accessed through roofs. Surface houses (domestic) above.
(Buried beneath houses. Couples together in embrace. 3 children together. Remove skulls.) Skulls are used to 7000 BCE in other places. 11,800 year old sewer.
Evidence textiles (weaving). 130 human burials. T pillars Tunics and skirts depicted at other sites? Garments?
Çakmaktepe
9,900 BCE - 8,000 BCE
Nizip, Turkey. Not large 150 metres dia. 2021 ex. Building. Channel encircling. Steps into. Limestone. Building 10 large oval. Postholes. Wooden before T pillars. Seen as a precursor. Climate change. Trees may have become more scarce. No partitions. One building. Stone AND wood before Göbekli Tepe. No small artefacts. Filled in. Oval planned stone walls. Thought tent of animal skins above low stone walls. Pit shelters, semi subterranean.
Karahan Tepe
10,000 BCE - 9500 BCE
Turkey. Excavations: Different constructions to Göbekli Tepe. Carved out of bedrock. Pre-Pottery Neolithic A.
Permanent settlement? Vantage point like Göbekli Tepe. Different climate. Large cistern? Rainwater collection again. Drainage channels. Serpent on bench. Penis room. Penis shaped pillars out of bedrock. Leopard carvings. Fertility, phallic. Head overlooking penis room.
Water channels everywhere. Dwellings proven. Not just ceremonial. A few graves. 5% only again. Benches. Pillars Leopard print on a human. Leopards are very common here.
Totem pole sculpture (stone figure. Man with a leopard on his back. Bones of crocodiles, bears. Here or trade? Obsidian tools - from at least 200 miles away. New pillar like Göbekli Tepe as a human but with 8 finger hands. Lots of flint lithics. Biface.
Jericho
10,000 BCE - 9,500 BCE
Palestine. Natufian Hunter-gatherers settlement.
Pre-Pottery Neolithic A
9,800 BCE - 8,800 BCE
Göbekli Tepe
9,500 BCE - 8,000 BCE
SE Anatolia, Turkey. The big site and showcase. Still no evidence of farming, despite lots of mortar stones. Foxes are common here. Totem pole of several humans on stone sculpture. 3 metre high T pillars.Lots flint-work. H patterns. Water-coursing. A cistern. Vast amounts of grinding stones. Shaft straighteners. Beads.
Special Use Buildings subterranean. Also houses and domestic. A lot of material has been used, moved, reused over a very long period. Contrary to early proposals, there is evidence that the site was not purposely filled in as a closing ritual, but was covered through natural inundation. The infills are multi phase and sedentary. This process had long been happening before the site was finally abandoned by 8000 BCE during Pre Pottery Neolithic B:
Pre Pottery Neolithic B
8,800 BCE - 6,500 BCE
Nevalı Çori
8,400 BCE - 8,100 BCE
SE Anatolia, Turkey. Rectangular houses. Pillars built into dry stone walls. A 'cult-complex'
Çatalhöyük
7,500 BCE - 6,400 BCE
Southern Anatolia, Turkey. Famous beehive settlement. Shrines inside houses. Dead buried beneath. Access through roofs. Urban. Dead buried beneath houses. Later skulls taken. Some plastered. Spinning whorls.
Other sites to be investigated at:
And several more!
Lola, Mesolithic girl on National Geographic
The above is a link to a reconstruction by Tom Björklund of a Mesolithic girl who lived in what is now Denmark. It is a very unique and creative reconstruction, because nothing physical of this girl nicknamed Lola survives into our archaeological record! She is only known by her DNA (and that of recently eaten food) that she left on a lump of birch tree pitch that she had chewed as a gum some 5,700 years ago. But I really like this reconstruction. I think that she makes a beautiful wild child. Straight out of the lines of a novel that I'm trying to write.
Analysis of her DNA strongly suggests brown toned skin, if not dark brown. Her hair dark brown. The DNA supports that her eyes were light coloured. Perhaps blue, blue-green or hazel? I'll return to Lola, but first these features correspond to those suggested by the genomes of other Mesolithic remains scattered around Europe.
Cheddar Man who lived in South West Britain around 10,000 years ago is the best known. The revelation several years ago that the DNA sequenced from his genome, suggests both dark skin and blue eyes caused quite a commotion. A lot of people didn't like it, and accused the geneticists of woke.
We always knew that the earliest modern humans were likely to have plenty of melanin. Subsisting on a hunter-gatherer diet that was rich in dietary Vitamin D meant that there was little adaptive pressure for them to lose this dark skin in a hurry. Just as some hunters in the far north and far south have retained dark skins into recent times. The emphasis to reduce melanin may not have arrived until following major shifts to a poor, agricultural diet in northern zones. The DNA associated with very light skin of modern Western Europeans may not have arrived until quite recently (prehistorically speaking).
We also had Villabruna Man in Northern Italy. His presence and DNA is less known to the general public. But even before the controversy of the Cheddar Man reconstruction, we knew from Villabruna and other remains that he lacked certain genetic indicators of light skin and:
Additional evidence of an early link between west and east comes from the HERC2 locus, where a derived allele that is the primary driver of light eye color in Europeans appears nearly simultaneously in specimens from Italy and the Caucasus ~14,000-13,000 years ago.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4943878/
But one recent study proposes that there were at least two distinct clusters of hunter-gatherers around Europe at the close of the last Ice Age:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-05726-0On the basis of the genetic variation of present-day Europeans, this could imply phenotypic differences between post-14 ka hunter-gatherer populations across Europe, with individuals in the Oberkassel cluster possibly exhibiting darker skin and lighter eyes, and individuals in the Sidelkino cluster possibly lighter skin and darker eye colour.
All of this in upcoming posts!
Daybreak, and a silver mist has descended into the glade. Red deer hinds gather in safety on the edge of the forest clearing to witness the ensuing battle between selfish genes. A pair of magnificent stags face one another in this arena. A few strands of velvet still stubbornly cling onto their antlers early in the season. Their heavy breaths evaporate into the mist. The huge, reigning monarch steps forward and bellows at his younger challenger - who in turn bows his head. But not in submission, as he then rakes his tines of antler through a spongy leaf mould that awaits the first fall of crisp colour. Then he throws back his mighty head in defiance, tossing the stems of burnt bracken through the air.
Burnt bracken. For these two gladiators to be are fixed only on their rut, and are oblivious to all but the quickening of their noble hearts. They neither seek out nor comprehend these small clues as to the origin of this convenient clearing within a wild rain forest. They are unaware that it was not cleared by the usual forces of storm or disease, but through the tranchet sharpened edge of a hafted flint axehead, and via the controlled use of fire. Tools that belong to the two legged predators of their kind. The crowned king and his younger challenger focus on the duel ahead.
A pair of sky-blue eyes, concealed by the leafy cover of a tree-hide, focuses in turn on their movements in the rising mist. These eyes stare out from twisted sprays of pine, woven into the limbs of a lone oak, situated conveniently downwind of the herd. The owner of these starting blue eyes has masked her scent further with a smothering of damp, peaty, leaf mould over her chestnut brown skin. The same dark skin that stretches over her youthful muscles now flexed to the tension of a drawn bow string. She is Ur'salla the Huntress, Ishi of Shurak. Daughter of Ja'ankilla; daughter in turn of Marsalla; daughter again in turn of the legendary Ma'ankilla-of-the-Moon. However, at this moment, as her fingers are ready to release an arrow, she is the Goshawk.
#
Six thousand years pass by:
Most of the new diggers on this archaeological excavation can easily be identified by their shiny new hand tools. But Freya's trowel is special - a scratched antique, its steel edges worn thin, with a wooden handle rubbed smooth, so that it slips into a leather holster on her belt with ease. The trowel is an heirloom, once wielded in some exotic corner of a lost empire, by a great grandmother never met by Freya in life. Later, the trowel of Freya's own grandmother, who was using it at the dig where she met Grandpa. These ancestral memories of ancient soils lend special qualities to Freya's simple hand tool. Almost as though the inanimate thing has a self. Some qualities are not obvious to the senses.
Freya angles the sacred trowel of the grandmother ancestor, and drags it gently over the dampened surfaces of an archaic dirt. Scraping with it another thin skin of soil. Following several more rapid scrapes, she pauses to survey for any sign of ancient human activity. Perhaps a cluster of sturdy stones to indicate the archaeology of a post-hole? Or maybe a patch of darkened soil, stained by the charcoal remains of a primaeval hearth? But no. In
Grandma had warned Freya:
‘Darling Girl, apply for the Roman dig on Hadrian’s Wall. It will be rich in finds!’
Instead, Freya had chosen this East Anglian excavation and with it, the diggers’ poverty of prehistory. More scrapes of her magical trowel and still nothing but more old dirt.
Was that something that the blade just bounced off?
And better.
]]>
Flint flake at Happisburgh. Picked up on the sands being washed away from the famous Palaeolithic deposits in the dunes / sea cliffs. How often do you pick up a hominin artefact last held and made between 850,000 and 950,000 years ago? This will be my oldest ever find.
Beautiful bifaces on display that day:
See page for author [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons. Not actually the Justitia, but the Discovery Prison Hulk also at Woolwich around about the same period.
It's time that I updated what I know about my 3rd great grandfather, David Peach. What I have discovered about his life, since I last posted My transported great great great grandfather, some three years ago.
A group of congregationalists and anti-transportationists in Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania) and Victoria formed this society, with the aim of attracting respectable and hard working new settlers to Van Diemen's Land, through a bounty resettlement scheme. My father's ancestor David Peach, was a transported convict in Van Diemen's Land at this time, serving a life sentence after being found guilty at the Lincoln Assizes, of stealing two steers. This new scheme hoped to attract "men and women who would leaven the labouring classes and become part of a stock that would supply the ever-increasing wants of a new and fertile country". The Society focused on the rural labouring classes of East Anglia.
The Reverend Benjamin Drake sailed from Victoria to Eastern England in order to interview and select suitable migrants for the scheme. Drake visited South-West Norfolk. There he encountered members of my ancestral family from father's side.
My father's family board the Whirlwind
The Riches family had moved to Great Hockham, Norfolk, from the nearby parish of Old Buckenham. Benjamin Riches was an agricultural labourer, born at Old Buckenham in 1779. His wife Elizabeth Riches (nee Snelling) had given birth to at least nine children at Great Hockham between 1805 and 1825.
Drake must have interviewed some of their offspring at Hockham. He offered a bounty resettlement package to Benjamin's son, my 4th great uncle, Henry Riches, his wife Harriet Riches (nee Hubbard), and to their three young sons, George, John, and Henry Riches. They accepted. Not only that, but an offer was made to Henry's older sister Maria Hudson (nee Riches), and to her family. The two families, that most likely had never seen a ship, or had travelled more than a few miles, made their way from Norfolk to Plymouth over the 1854 Christmas holidays. There they were to board a fast clipper ship called the Whirlwind. The clipper embarked from Plymouth on the 4th January 1855, and made a fast 86 day passsage, and arrived at Launceston, Van Diemen's Land on the 5th April. It wasn't all plain sailing however. Read this, it doesn't sound good:
The emigrants have passed through a fearful ordeal. An accident to the rudder compelled the commander to put into Portsmouth, where the necessary repair could have been effected in a few hours, had not the use of the empty government dock been denied by the official personage in charge who eats the salt of that nation whose funds furnished the accommodation.
Scarletina broke out: its victims were removed to an inhospitable hulk, for which the British government charged a high price, forgetful of the first duties of humanity; inclement weather aggravated the disease, which assumed a serious type, and carried off a number of victims. Twenty- three died on the passage, and although the survivors are healthy and robust, the loss of relatives and friends casts a shade of sorrow on the enterprise. We deeply sympathise with the bereaved, and the painful circumstances in which Mr. Drake has been placed must evoke the kindest feelings of his friends. His was no mercenary mission, and though he may not calculate on the gratitude of those he has sought to benefit by a removal from comparative penury to immediate plenty and ultimate affluence, he has earned their respect, and will secure the esteem of the colonists. His position has been one of great responsibility, much risk, incessant anxiety, and no profit. When years have elapsed, he may expect adequate acknowledgment from those he has served, and not till then.
The captain, too, has had his trials: his crew have been in a state of insubordination in consequence of the proper and rigidly enforced rules that excluded the seamen from intercourse with the emigrants, and the sailors have, at the conclusion of the voyage, struck. The misguided men will soon learn that here their misconduct will not be countenanced—that punishment will visit the refractory—that extravagant pay no longer prevails, and that the gold-diggers, on the average, do not make ordinary wages.
We trust the hopes of the emigrants have not been unduly elated, and that they will be prepared to accommodate themselves, as thousands more affluent have done before them, to the exigencies of a new country. The farm labourer and mechanic will not be carried off by force at any wage they may demand: the unmarried females will not be surrounded by sighing lovers, solicitous to make then brides. Australia is a land where privations must be endured, and hard work encountered. At the end of the vista, which is not long, there is settlement and independence to the industrious, the economical, and sober. Every young woman will find a husband in process of time, but before she obtain a good one she must show by her behaviour she deserves him. Everything will be new to the emigrants; they must be surprised at nothing, and become quickly reconciled to the condition of the colony. If they display those qualifications of temper and aptitude which make people uselul they will be appreciated, and experience consideration and kindness from their employers, who will in general promote their welfare to the utmost. We repeat, hard work, frugality, and sobriety for a time will inevitably lead to independence; but those who seek the latter by the shortest line must be prepared to "rough it" for a season.
LAUNCESTON EXAMINER, Tuesday, April 3, 1855.
What intrigues me is that they had a relative already in Tasmania. They must have known about him. He was David Peach, Henry and Maria's brother-in-law. David was married to their sister Sarah Peach (nee Riches). He may have been on the other side of the island. He had been transported to Holbart, then moved to Port Arthur, some 17 years earlier. Did they ever meet? He had been pardoned four years before the Riches arrived, but not granted Leave. It was a Life sentence. Did he manage to communicate with his wife, and daughter that he had left behind? Did they get word of him back to their sister Sarah?
Two years after her husband was transported away, my 3rd great grandmother Sarah, now living in Attleborough, Norfolk, gave birth to a son. She named him David Wilson Peach. I'd hazard to guess that a Mr Wilson was the biological father. However, she named him after her husband - David Peach. She was trapped. She could not remarry (although ironically the transported convicts could). She worked hard the remainder of her life as a washer woman in Attleborough.
My mother's family board the Solway
Several years after the Whirlwind sailed from Plymouth, more of my family entered another ship under the same scheme. My mother's family mainly lived at this time in the area of East Norfolk. However, somehow, two sisters ended up working in service in South West Norfolk. A family friend? A trade fair? They were both born to Thomas and Mary Ann Jarmy, who were parents-in-law of a fourth uncle of mine. The Jarmy family lived for a while in Salhouse, Norfolk. Although located in the Norfolk Broads, to the north east of the City of Norwich, two daughters gained employment in service in households in South West Norfolk. In 1861, Mary Jarmy was a 25 year old cook at the local vicarage in Hockham. Her younger sister Emily Jarmy, lived a few miles away, working as a 15 year old house servant in the household a butcher in East Harling, called Fred Jolly.
In 1861, settlers from local labouring families were selected, although Drake himself was not involved this time. However, Hockham had clearly become known to the Society, as one of their East Anglian recruiting spots. Mary, working in the vicarage was in the perfect place, at the right time. My guess is that she messaged her little sister in nearby East Harling. The recruiters wanted settlers that were "respectable and really useful persons - as far as it is possible to judge". I believe that the father of the two sisters, Thomas Jarmy, a shepherd born 1812 in Salhouse, Norfolk, may have been imprisoned twice for larcony. If this was the case, I'd guess that the sisters were careful to hide this past.
The Solway sailed the two sisters into Melbourne harbour on the 7th March 1862, and then they quickly boarded The Black Swan, which arrived at Launceston, Tasmania, a few days later. En route, it appears that Mary had a friendship with Robert Mickleborough from Old Buckenham, Norfolk. They were to marry in 1862.
Links / Sources
http://www.ayton.id.au/wiki/doku.php?id=genealogy:tasemigrantsbyship
http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~austashs/immig/title.htm
http://belindacohen.tripod.com/woolnoughfamily/id9.html
Here are some of my photos from my 2017 walks. Perhaps some of these landscapes may not have been too dissimilar to the green lanes and landscapes that they knew (albeit without the huge open fields).
William Freeman, bap. Attleborough, Norfolk 1581. 10th great grandfather.
Allen Lampkin, bap. North Creake, Norfolk 1573. 11th great grandfather.
Samuel Sayer. bap. Pulham St Mary, Norfolk 1581. 10th great grandfather.
Agnes Warde, bap. Ridlington, Norfolk 1581. 11th great grandmother
Black and grey realism work by Ross Lee of Ink Addiction tattoo studio in Norwich. This is a partial phase of a full sleeve project on my right arm and shoulder. Hopefully complete by Autumn 2019. If you can't see it - then you're not a NW European prehistorian. It's a British landscape scene, with boulder rocks in the foreground. On those rocks are a series of carvings pecked into rock, during the Later Neolithic and Earlier Bronze Age. They consist of a class of Rock Art markings known as cups and rings, or cup and ring markings.
No-one really knows what they symbolised. I can't think of a more worthy tattoo for a time traveller.
My right arm will eventually be covered with a series of panels displaying cup and ring marks in British landscapes.]]>
Postwick All Saints.
I had to recently confess to another researcher, that I had made an association, between two generations, based only on circumstancial evidence. I had the below image, a marriage between two of my 4th great grandparents at Postwick All Saints in 1825:
William Rose, singleman, groom, of Bradeston, with Elizabeth Wilkinson singlewoman, of Postwick. Bradeston was a parish nearby, between Brundall, Blofield, and Lingwood. Today, it only consists as a hall farm, and as a church, the church of St Michael's and All Angels:
But as for Elizabeth Wilkinson's origins, I couldn't find her baptism online. However, between Ancestry.co.uk, Findmypast.co.uk and FreeReg.org.uk, I did discover that there was a Sarah Wilkinson living in Postwick, that had four daughters baptised there (illegitimate) between 1806 and 1816. Census records suggested that Elizabeth would have been born at Postwick, around 1803. I hadn't seen a lot of Wilkinsons in the area, so I dared to make the assumption, that she was an earlier daughter of Sarah Wilkinson. Naughty I know, but I just felt it so likely.
But then when challenged for the source, I felt that embarrasment of taking a short cut. The problem with Online Genealogy is that it's easy to assume that all records are there. They are not, not even for Norfolk, that has a good online presence in parish records and transcripts. So it was time to get off the computer, and take a look. I did this yesterday.
First two stops were at Postwick and Bradeston churches, to take the photographs for this post, and to get the feeling for them. I was pleased that the marriage recorded that William Rose was of Bradeston, because my William Rose was of Brundall. It's only a half of a mile from Bradeston, indeed, it has been absorbed as a deserted parish, into Brundall. It supported that I had the correct William & Elizabeth Rose, the recorded parents of my 3rd great grandfather Robert Rose, who was baptised at Lingwood in 1829.
Then I drove a few miles to the Norfolk County Archive at County Hall. I soon located the correct microfilm. It covered baptisms leading up to 1813. Perfect. Within five minutes, I located the baptism of my 4th great grandmother at Postwick: " Elizabeth, daughter of Sarah Wilkinson, was born & bapt' February 19th 1803 ":
There she was, and I was correct, she was an earlier daughter of Sarah Wilkinson. Not only that, but further along the roll revealed another two daughters of Sarah. In all, she had six daughters born at Postwick, between 1803 and 1816, all illegitimately. I've seen a single parent family like this before, but on my father's side in Swanton Morley, Mid Norfolk. The full story we will probably never know, and it would be wrong to judge. Very often poor young women suffered from terrible brutality. Sometimes, this may have matured into a level of independence. She may have even had partners, or a long term lover. We don't know. Illegitimacy was far from rare in 19th Century Norfolk amongst the rural poor. But when you see a family like this, you do wonder, at the hardship that the family most likely went through.
On my Ancestry tree, the family now look like this:
Yes, it appears that the mother, Sarah Wilkinson herself was born nearby at Great Plumstead, illegitimate.
While I was looking through the roll of microfilm for Postwick Parish Registers, I spotted more names from my tree. Children being baptised of a William Key and his wife Sarah (née Wymer). William and Sarah Key were again, 4th great grandparents of mine. Actually, I descend from both the earlier mentioned Rose's, and the Wymers twice over - but further back on their lines. A lot of people in early 19th Century Norfolk were distant or even close cousins. I'm afraid that it was true, at least for the rural poor. I'm descended on my mother's side from a Henry & Mary Rose (née Gorll), and a Jacob & Elizabeth Wymer (née Moll), both couples at least twice over. Pedigree folding appears on that side of my tree, in the record.
Looking through the microfilm in the Archive Centre, I recorded three previously unknown children of William and Sarah Key (née Wymer) baptised at Postwick All Saints. I hadn't encountered them online. They were all later births than those that I had previously found online. This lead me to a sad thought. You see, William Key, my 4th great grandfather, took his own life when some of those children were still quite young:
I mentioned his story in an earlier post. His body was fished out of the River Wensum in 1803. The inquest gave a verdict of insanity and suicide. On the way home, I wondered about what happened to those younger children. My 3rd great grandfather, William Key (II) was in his mid twenties, and on his second marriage, after his first wife passed away. But what about his younger siblings, such as Abraham Key - born in 1779, he would have been only six years old when his father drowned.
When I got home, I took a look. This is where Online Genealogy does work - because not only had Abraham survived, but he had moved away from Norfolk, as so many of the rural poor did during the 19th century. He married Ann Goldsmith from Hassingham, and they moved south, to 19th century Southwark, London:
He survived and went on to have sons in London.
But briefly back to Postwick (pronounced locally as Pozzick) for a moment:
I love baptism fonts. You can touch them, and now that your ancestors passed by them, centuries ago. Perfect touchstones for time travellers. My 4th great grandfather, William Key, was baptised here on 27th Aug 1778. My 4th great grandmother, Elizabeth Wilkinson, was baptised here on 19th February 1803. I photographed it, and touched the stone in thought of them, on 15th February 2019.
]]>
Photo above by Tom Lee at Flickr
The first wild buzzard that I ever saw was on Dartmoor. That must have been during the 1980s. A little later, I saw them in Scotland. There were no buzzards in East Anglia when I was a kid. The Victorian gamekeeper had shot and gin trapped them to extinction in SE England.
Move on to the 21st century, and you can see buzzards all over East Anglia. Over fields, woodlands, even marshes. They came back, and they came back in force.
Waterloo Plantation, Hainford.
An attraction to woodlands.
I've not posted much recently, because I've spent my online time doing other things, including reviving a blog dedicated to bikejoring and other dog activities. I'd abandoned it eight years ago, and forgotten all about it. The Bikejoring Blog.
I don't really have any news on population genetics or genetic genealogy, except to say, that I'm growing bored with some aspects of it, and have lost a lot of faith in general DNA testing for ancestry.
On documentary genealogy, yes I still pursue from time to time, and I'm sure that I'll be posting more family history and discoveries soon. I'm still that time traveller. In archaeology - I need to plan and book a place on a dig next year.
I've spent a lot of time training and playing with my pup, Byker:
Indeed exercising the dogs appear to take up an awful lot of my time these days.
When I was age, around 10 - 11 years, I would often visit a private commercial woodland near to where I then lived in Thorpe St Andrews. It was rich in bird-life. I'd see nuthatches, great spotted woodpeckers, treecreepers, long tailed titmice, and blackcaps. The forester would catch me and politely turf me out. He'd explain to me, that he knew that my pursuits were innocent enough - but it would be opening the gates to other kids, including those with lighters and matches.
The photo at the top of this photo was taken in Waterloo Plantation, Hainford. When I was age 13 - 15 years, during the 1970s, I lived nearby. And again for a while age 18 - 24 years. Only a small patch of woodland, but I'd always be attracted to it. Dog walking, bird watching, hunting rabbits with ferrets, hunting insects to feed avairy birds, collecting moss and lichen to decorate my bird's show cages.
Later, for several years, I lived in the Thetford area. I'd use the surrounding forest so much. Dog walking, deer spotting, bikejoring, canicross, archaeological surveying, mushroom foraging, and offroad cycling.
I recognised back then, that I was a biophilliac. I don't state that as a matter of fact, or as some sort of special gift, or hocus pocus. Just a fact. I seem to get something a little bit more than other people do, from being out in what might be described as Nature. In contact with dogs. Alert to wild-life. Surrounded by greenery and perhaps a bit of wilderness. On my own, sure, sometimes. It's something that I acknowledge about myself. It is one of the drives behind my hikes. It's no accident that I've been attracted to woodlands all of my life. It brings me calm. I seem to need it. My meditation. Time in the woods, forests, fields, marshes, or walking ancient green lanes. It's as though I sometimes need a top up to keep me sane. I think that reflects in my photography, that has become far more about how I feel, than about the art, or popularity that I once sought through the medium of black and white film. Now I see more in colour.
Horsford Woods.
]]>
