Thetford Forest Archaeology Portal & Local History Hub  - Live website.

I’ve lived through plenty of chapters—more than I suspect most people do. In one, I was a licensed radio amateur (G0AGP), keying in Morse code, studying trans-equatorial propagation and the 11-year solar cycle on the 10-metre band. When I had to move on from that world, I needed new learning curves; I needed to seek the patterns beneath the surface.

Or, as it turned out, on the surface of disturbed soils. I found myself drawn to recognising and searching for prehistoric struck flints. That, too, was a lesson in pattern-matching—a growing fascination with siliceous beauty and conchoidal fracture. I would scan the ground, filtering through the chaos of natural stones for the telltale signs of human intervention: bulbs of percussion, ripples, striking platforms, and flake scars. Even with my eyes closed, I could feel the distinct conchoidal curve of a flake struck by a knapper millennia ago. Soon, I saw how these patterns could scale up, mapping themselves onto entire landscapes. With no formal training at the time, I developed my own field techniques and methodology.

Then, computers arrived. I quickly grasped spreadsheets and databases, seeing instantly how they could help me organise and arrange these spatial patterns. Next came dial-up modems. The driving catalyst for buying a 56k modem wasn't to browse, but to build—I wanted a website to share my archaeological data.

That pursuit unlocked a new obsession: web-building. A metal-detecting webmaster of the era once joked on his links page that I would radically transform my website every few weeks. He wasn't wrong. It was a relentless search for a sense of resolution, found only in error-free perfection. In the strict syntax of HTML and XHTML 1.0 Transitional, I found a new universe of patterns.

Twenty-five years ago, web-building was a radically different landscape. There were no AI agents, no VS Code extensions, and no Git. Software packages for building websites were bought on CD-ROM; professional tools were prohibitively expensive, while the cheaper alternatives generated notoriously horrible code—bloated, messy, and unfriendly to browsers.

As an amateur webmaster working on a shoestring budget, I decided the only elegant solution was to learn how to write the code myself. The gold standard at the time had recently shifted from HTML 4 to XHTML 1.0 Transitional. I mastered it, and even taught it to my young daughters. By hand-coding XHTML in basic text editors and early syntax-highlighting code editors, I built a 140-page digital estate—a cluster of interconnected micro-sites. I even wrote a tutorial over twenty years ago on how to code by hand.

Timeline

• 1999 – 2006: Writing XHTML, building and maintaining my websites.

• 2008: Interests had moved on. I stopped paying the server bill and the websites were erased. However, the Wayback Machine had archived copies on web.archive.org. Many of the images were lost, but much remained.

• 2026: A conversation with an LLM triggers a decision to attempt a total restoration and revival of my old sites.

Step 1: The Extraction (Excavation)

Gemini AI guided me to the Archivarix service. All I had to do was select the range of dates over which the Wayback Machine had originally captured the websites. (A little tip for anyone else trying this: choosing a wider date range might have captured a few more of the original images). I decided to pay the $10 USD fee (around £7.38 GBP)—a service well worth paying for. A short while later, the ZIP file was ready.

I operate from a modest Acer Chromebook. Initially, I had some issues trying to extract the files. That process would have been much easier if I had decided to reinstall the Linux (Crostini) environment right away. I have plenty of Linux experience using a variety of distros years ago, and I had used Crostini on this Chromebook before, but right then I was reluctant to set it up again. That was a wrong move. Instead, with Gemini assisting me, I bypassed the extraction issue for the moment and took the archive straight to the next stage.

Step 2: Upload to Live Status (Conservation)

Twenty-five years ago, you either used one of the awful, ad-funded free servers like Yahoo! GeoCities, or you paid for hosting and uploaded your files via FTP. Things have moved on. I prompted the AI to help me find a free home for my website, and found myself at the front door of Netlify.

Initially, I used an AI interface to help process the raw archive data. I fed the archive into the workspace, watched the AI perform its magic, and suddenly the core structure was back online. Next, I updated the URL, choosing https://thetford-forest-archaeology.netlify.app/. Naturally, twenty-five years ago, the .app top-level domain didn't even exist. But boom—there it was.

Restoration of a Broken Website

My websites were once again live on the World Wide Web, no longer confined to a dusty archive. Yet I had massive amounts of work to do. The Wayback Machine had graciously saved the text, but many of the image files were gone (specifically those that lay too many clicks away from the index file). I managed to retrieve some of these from other old repositories, my old Flickr account, and alternative archive sites, but dozens remained lost forever.

I had a lot of tidying up to do. Furthermore, I had hand-coded these 140+ files in XHTML 1.0 Transitional, only to find in 2026 that the world had moved on to HTML5. My pattern-matching tendencies wouldn't tolerate such a structural mismatch. As a hyper-systemiser working in partnership with Gemini and Claude, it took me about three weeks of editing to rationalise everything down to 116 clean web pages, alongside their supporting JPEG, CSS, and XML files.

Step 3: The Coding (Reconstruction)

I finally did what I should have done at the start: I enabled the Chromebook's Linux feature and updated the system. My Linux commands were rusty, but I had my AI friends to guide me. I generated a website folder within the Linux partition and, using Bash commands guided by Gemini, I extracted the compressed files there. Now I had a full local clone of the website sitting in my Chromebook's local storage.

A tip for Chromebook Linux newcomers: The Linux folder partition won't automatically appear in the native ChromeOS Files app unless you have opened the Linux terminal at least once during your session to mount the container.

Next, I installed Flatpak via the terminal, using it to download Visual Studio Code (VS Code) as my environment of choice. While there are countless AI extensions available for IDEs, many require paid tokens or API credits. To keep this project entirely free, I utilised a simpler workflow: I would copy my code blocks, paste them into the free-standing browser interfaces of Gemini or Claude for structural analysis, and paste the corrected code straight back into VS Code. Money saved.

What to do with the websites themselves? Three distinct components were salvageable:

1. Thetford Forest Archaeology

2. Portuguese Thetford

3. Wesley's Metal Detector Finds

I didn't want to completely modernise everything; I wanted to preserve their history while ensuring modern browser compatibility. My approach varied across the four sites:

• Thetford Forest Archaeology: A hybrid approach. I converted the skeleton to HTML5 but maintained the period-accurate CSS and styling of the early 2000s. I updated all .htm extensions to .html. This was always my prized showcase website—the original motivation for me learning to code.

• Portuguese Thetford: I let Gemini take the lead on rewriting the CSS. I didn't just sit back and blindly accept prompts; I meticulously updated the structural tags, but permitted the AI to modernise the responsive presentation layer while keeping the original text fully intact.

• Wesley's Metal Detector Finds: This old site is a classic end-of-the-20th-century creation, complete with an animated GIF and a tiled background. I chose to preserve this one completely untouched, keeping the original code exactly as it was, save for updating the broken hyperlinks.

• How to HTML!: I had entirely forgotten that I wrote this! Originally coded in strict XHTML with .htm extensions, I left the core tutorial preserved, simply removing old CSS references to background graphics that have been lost to time. Later, I decided to delete this micro-site as a distraction and no longer relevant to 2026.

To bridge the personal knowledge gap between XHTML and modern standards, I provided Claude with a link to my old "How to HTML!" tutorial. I asked the AI to use my own 20-year-old text to form the basis of a personalised transition course into HTML5. It felt as though an earlier version of me from 2005 was reaching forward across the decades to teach the 2026 version of me how to code for the modern web.

Isn't that clever? Perfect for a Time Traveller.

Step 4: The Relaunch (Publication)

To handle updates without relying on automated AI build tools, I shifted to Netlify’s direct manual folder deployment feature. This method is entirely free and bypasses the need for automated build credits.

The deployment process is incredibly elegant. It uses a local checksum mechanism: I simply select the entire website folder from the Linux directory on my Chromebook. The interface might flag that hundreds of files are being processed, but it instantly identifies the precise files that have changed and uploads only the modifications. Updates are seamless, uncomplicated, and incredibly fast. The key is simply maintaining that perfect, updated clone within the Linux environment.

I am pleasantly surprised by how straightforward it has become to maintain a web presence today. With the files live, all that remains is some foundational SEO work—submitting updated XML sitemaps to the search engines and tidying up metadata.

Digital Archaeology.  AI Image prompted by Gemini to illustrate this post. An archaeology website that has itself, become a digital artefact.

I just checked Google Search. The index appears using the string: Thetford Forest Archaeology. May the SEO prosper, and a new generation of archaeology students learn from how an amateur did it twenty years ago.

Update - 2026-06-19

I've totally succumbed to modernism and AI intervention, by allowing Anthropic Claude AI to move the Archaeology website into the 2020s, completing its move from XHTML to HTML5, and giving it a complete fresh restyle. I have removed the HTML Tutor website as obsolete.

WITCHES

The boys use sticks to prod their long-horns whilst floppy-eared dogs scarper around the herd. One proud young barbarian cowboy, wearing his rope turban of manhood, lifts his stick and points to a lone figure strolling across the wild meadow towards them.

He alerts the older herdsman, ‘Look yonder, a girl comes our way. She looks odd—perhaps she is a stranger?’

The older, bearded man, who also dons the rope turban of the Sheonni, squints against the sun to assess the walker. She is a small, youthful woman, of early maidenhood. Such a young female is not safe to wander the lands unescorted. He sees that she wears the heavy fur of a brown bear over her shoulders. Feathers and small bones are knotted into her scraggy, bear-like hair, chalk covers her face, and she walks with a stick of twisted yew. As the bear fur swishes apart, he spots that beneath a necklace of dried amphibian skins, her painted breasts are small, her belly plump. A leather belt around her naked flesh suspends the prickly pelt of a hedgehog over her pubic region, and a cup fashioned from a human cranium lined with clay hangs by her side.

The bearded herdsman pronounces his verdict: ‘She looks to be of the Leva! One of their holy women, a servant of the frog-goddess.’

The young cowboy bunches his cheeks and splutters, ‘Ha, a Leva girl? Then we should catch her and have some fun.’ He lurches forward as if to chase the lone girl, but the older man lifts his cattle stick to block his path, adding a caution:

‘No, you fool. She might not be of our kind, but she is a frog-witch, a priestess of Athiratu. It would be bad magic for us to cause her harm, or to prevent her progress. We should encourage her to visit our Sun-priestess. Now, humble yourself.’

Both herdsmen bow in submission as Egella reaches them. She grins, sensing her power over these rope-turbaned, foreign men. They are delighted when she raises her voice over the bellowing of their beasts and speaks in their own Sheonni tongue:

‘I am Egella, of the Frog-Mother. I seek alms and sanctuary as I pass through this land.’

Momentarily, the bearded twinehead grins at his younger charge, before he addresses Egella. ‘We’ve a famous Sun-witch whose reputation is known across all lands—the priestess Utaria. We are taking our cattle back to our camp. Please, Sister Egella, follow us and we shall seek an audience for you.’

The bearded man stoops once more, then punches a cautionary fist into his young friend’s chest, hissing at him, ‘Stop gaping, you idiot, you’ll cause offence.’ Submissively, they start tapping the hindquarters of the long-horns whilst whistling to the dogs. Egella proudly follows behind.

At the camp, they point Egella towards the den of Utaria. As she walks through the settlement, Egella feels unfriendly eyes fall upon her gait. These folk are the enemies of her own; they harbour a hatred of the Leva, yet her holy role protects her from assault.

Utaria’s den stands out among the other clay-walled huts. Her dwelling alone is built of more natural materials—pine sprays and reeds from the river. A wooden lintel over its low doorway has been carved with magical symbols, and small window ports align with critical points of the sunrise. A bear skull is mounted in the thatched roof directly above the lintel, the beast’s claws fixed on either side. The herdsman tells her that Utaria is inside, ready to receive her.

Egella crouches low and enters the abode. It is smoky inside, yet she can see herbs, charms, and ritual staffs stored along the edges of the roundhouse. Large, round-bottomed, thick-walled pots are scattered about, some containing the Sun-priestess’s potions. The hostess herself crouches by the central hearth. Egella had expected an ugly old crone to match such a reputation, but finds Utaria to be nothing of the sort. She is a handsome woman in her prime, dressed only in a netting decorated with raptor feathers. Like the rays of the sun, a headdress of bright white swan feathers crowns her fair, perfectly plaited hair. It seems that whilst the frog-witches of the Leva folk indulge in dirt and mess, these Sun-priestesses of the Sheonni take great pride in their regal appearance.

Utaria waves a slender hand for Egella to sit with her at the hearth, breaking the shy silence in a common dialect:

‘Welcome to my abode, sister of the Leva-kind. I trust that you have arrived unharmed by my neighbours. They are still spooked by recent battles with others of your tongue, and may not be inclined to friendly hospitality.’

Egella opens her hands to reveal them devoid of fists or any weapon of violence. She smiles innocently and says, ‘These wars are not with any close kin of mine. I have travelled far from the south to be here, passing through many lands and visiting the hearths of other farmers. These days, war plagues us all. Sheonni against Leva, and even Leva commune against Leva commune.’

‘This is also true for my own folk. We live in violent times,’ Utaria agrees. She squints and purses her lips with inquisitiveness. ‘But Sister, I have not yet introduced myself properly. I am Utaria of Saaba. I understand you of the Leva follow the holy trinity?’

‘This is true. I am Egella, daughter of the famous Amaia who dwells by the Serpent’s Estuary. Our folk do recognise your Saaba under another name, as a divine mother, and we also seek her blessings for the solstice. However, we first fear the trinity of ancestors: Ilua, Daghnu, and Athiratu. It is the Frog-Mother, Athiratu, who offers me protection.’

‘You speak my tongue with great fluency, Egella. I sense that one day you shall share your mother’s fame across the gardens and pioneer halls of your people. Tell me, Frog-witch, what inspires your journey into the lands of the Sheonni?’

Egella cocks her head, as if carefully considering her answer. ‘In this lifetime and in others, I have seen too much misery in our world, and I am resolved to end it. I wander northwards seeking the guidance of other great witches, be they Leva, Sheonni, or otherwise. Tell me, Utaria, is it true there are still wild folk in these parts?’

Utaria prods at her fireplace, then answers at length: ‘In these parts, wild folk have become rare. But our gossiping cattle drovers wander far, and I hear their rumours of signs being found further north still. These survivors are said to still hunt ancient wild beasts passing through the upland forests.’

With an edgy look, Egella fidgets with her cranium cup, as though impatient to move on. ‘My mother prophesied that it will be on a quest to find a savage girl that I will encounter the truth to end all misery. I am hopeful of your drovers’ gossip. Yet, I fear the inhabitants of this camp may be hostile to my spending time here with you. I should leave with urgency. On my approach, I spied the outline of some dragon uplands in the north. Perhaps I should resume my trek and leave this place in peace.’

Utaria offers a friendly smile as she reaches out, pressing Egella to stay. ‘No, please do remain to refresh yourself. Perhaps first we may exchange wisdom. I see from your grey face that you are in need of rest. The hills will soon be cold and hostile to all advanced folk. I can assure your safety here. Please, stay in my lodge before you venture further. I will make enquiries concerning the reports of savages.’

It would be rude for Egella to refuse the hospitality of her Sheonni counterpart; to turn down such an invitation might cause offence. That, and her little legs are so very weary.

Egella responds, ‘In which case, I would gladly exchange my Mother’s magic with your own of the Sun.’

BEARDED BULL 

Squealing, Xagu sprints into our little camp. Qan and I get up from our fireside squat to calm her, but she cannot speak; her excitement completely overcomes her tongue. I give her a hot tea made from the lime-tree flower to steady her nerves and bring back her words.

I beg her, ‘Sister, please tell us—what in the wilds has stunned you?’

The calming tea does its work, and finally she shares her news.

‘I was foraging downstream for cat-tails when I heard them enter the wild meadows,’ she says, her breath still short. ‘At first I thought it a herd of aurochs, or those foreign cattle the barbarians keep. But when I looked, my eyes fell upon a beast only spoken of in our hearthside myths. A bovine creature, with a woolly head and a humped back.’

Qan cannot contain himself. ‘Xagu, you saw them? You saw the Bearded Bull? I knew it. I knew this was the sacred place.’ He leaps up, his spirit completely lifted. ‘Take me now. Take me to them. Come, sisters! I feel joy at seeing my brother’s spirit so lifted.

We crouch low behind the banks of sedge, peeping over the stems to see these mythical beasts. Our parents believed they were all gone from the world. I count a dozen or more bison, guarded by a prominent old bull with a pair of sons awaiting the fall of his rule. The rest are cows and young calves. They are tall and heavy, their heads set lower than the wild aurochs that patrol our woods, though they are no less formidable.

Never before have I seen Qan so elated. Unlike Xagu and me, Qan was born to the ancient Children of the Bearded Bull. I know what the appearance of this herd means to him; it is his chance to realise his dream.

‘Tonight we must dance to invite this bull to our game,’ he whispers to us. ‘Look, his sons are ready to fight for succession. If we do not extend our invitation, the wolves will beat us to the prize.’

Xagu lowers her voice, threatening to break his upbeat mood. ‘Brother, there are only three of us. Such a hunt brings great danger.’

‘Which is why we must take care with our prayers on this eve,’ Qan retorts, desperation showing in his eyes. ‘O A’killao wills that we honour his bearded sons.’

I remain quiet. I am quaking at the thought of challenging the bull when we are so few, but I understand that this is my brother’s moment. These bison are here for him.

‘I have seen enough and do not wish to spook the herd,’ Qan announces. ‘Let us collect their dung, then return to our camp and begin the preparations.’

Around the night-hearth, we three siblings beat our drums and chew the midwife’s fungi, prepared just as our parents taught us. We sip the enchanted tea and don our best hides. Qan wears the horns of the aurochs bull upon his crown, and together we dance to provoke the ecstasy of the spirit world, chanting our prayers to invite the Bearded Bull to our game. One by one, we drop to our knees as we visit the other realm. The spirit takes me.

I see the ghost of the Bearded Bull enter our little camp. His hooves strike the dirt and he bows to my brother, accepting our invitation. Without this permission, we could not hunt him. The bull turns toward where I kneel and looks down upon my weak form, his breath condensing in the chilly night air. When I look into his eyes, I see a figure reflected in his dark orbs—but it is not mine.

I see a strange young woman, a witch of the barbarian kind. She is naked, wearing only the pelt of a hedgehog over her groin, held by a thin belt that suspends the dried skins of frogs around her waist. Her small breasts are painted with chalk and clay in the swirled symbols of her alien sorcery.

I hear her voice calling my name in my own tongue: ‘I’teedo, look behind you into the woods.’

With that, the vision of the witch and the bull vanishes, and I snap back into the mortal realm. I feel eyes upon me. I twist around.

There, on the edge of our camp, a pair of eyes stares back, reflecting our hearthfire. These eyes are of this world, not the bull’s. They belong to a man—a stranger spying upon our rituals. Then they retreat into the darkness of the forest, and I lose consciousness.

A new day, and we are ready for the hunt. The bison remain in the wild meadows. On hands and knees, three of us crawl through the beige, fading summer grass, dressed in our functional hunting hides. I carry my bow and quiver, for I am quick with my darts. Xagu is a strong thrower, bringing a trio of sharp casting javelins, while Qan approaches with his stone-headed thrusting spear strapped to his back. It is our brother who must make the kill.

We use the breeze to hide our scent, having smothered our skins in the bison’s dung. We watch our quarry chew his cud. Our movements must be careful, or the herd will spook and melt into the wildwoods.

It is Xagu who leads the choreography.

She rises from the grass, waves a javelin at the old bull, and taunts him. ‘Bull, your ugly calves are scrawny, but they’ll fit our spit just fine!’ She pretends to throw at a nearby calf and laughs. ‘Come dance with Xagu, bull, or I shall stitch new breeches from your calf skins!’

The bull takes the bait. He spits his cud and, unaware that two more dancers are hidden in the field, launches his mighty charge at my sister.

We await our chance. I feel the thunder of his hooves striking the earth. Fear and excitement mix in my chest. He lowers his head, presenting his crown of horns. Xagu stands her ground until the last moment, then leaps and rolls into the tall grass just as death bears down on her. As the bull rushes past, she hurls her first javelin deep into his rump. I rise from my crouch, my bowstring snapping as my first arrow pierces his shoulder.

The herd corrals the calves, just as we hoped. The bull must be lured further away. Pained by our projectiles and annoyed by my pesky sister, the Bearded Bull comes to a dusty halt and looks around. I vanish back into the cover while Xagu crawls to safety. Now, it is Qan who leaps up from the grasses further afield.

He hollers his invitation cheerfully. ‘Grandfather! O A’killao! I am Qan of the Galarri, and I am here today to dance with you!’

The bull turns and charges my gangly brother. While he is distracted, Xagu lands her second javelin near his rear hamstring before the shaft snaps. My next arrow pierces his ribcage. Already, the Bearded Bull’s charge begins to falter. Last night’s prayers have been heard.

The bull reaches Qan, who jumps and rolls aside, avoiding the deadly horns and hooves. With his flint-spiked spear, Qan jabs and rips the underside of our quarry, spilling blood across the wild orchids. The bull is weakening fast.

Still on my feet, I sprint further from the herd to take the next position. My heart beats like last night’s drum. I yell out to the bovine creature, ‘Over here, pretty bison! Come and play with I’teedo, daughter of Tashkilla, of the Goshawk! I wish to dance with you!’

The Bearded Bull snorts, blood showing at his nose. His wounds are already fatal, but his spirit is determined and he comes for me anyway. The ground shakes with the clatter of his heavy hooves. Taking steady aim, my yew wood bends before I release the tension. The arrow pierces him directly in the eye.

The Bearded Bull bellows mournfully and falls. The dropping leviathan tumbles toward me; his horns could still dispatch me to the spirit forests. I jump and roll almost too late, escaping the crash as he collapses into the dirt. He kicks wildly, casting up a cloud of dust as his legs try to find purchase on the earth. Through the haze, I see Qan run forward. I want to scream in ecstasy—this is my beloved brother’s dream. His time.

Qan lifts his brave spear.

‘Do it!’ I scream. ‘Do it now!’

He plunges the flint point down into the Bearded Bull’s chest.

The kicking subsides. Xagu runs over to join us, falling to her knees by my side. Together, we sing our prayers, beseeching the Bearded Bull not to haunt us.

Qan withdraws his bloody spear and wails his chant. ‘Grandfather, I pray for you to move on peacefully to the next realm, where you may join the ancient herds. We promise not to further damage your family in this world. Your strongest son will be free to lead your cows and grandchildren. My kin are grateful for the gifts you bestow upon us.’

It is done. The Bearded Bull is no longer a sacred being, but meat and hide for us to butcher. Qan pulls a sharp flint blade from his belt and leans down to slice the hairy throat. Xagu places her alderwood bowl beneath the wound to catch the flow.

I stir out the clots using a wooden fork, and we take turns toasting the spirit. The blood of the sacred bull energises us. This has been our finest day. As we slice into our prize, we are soon drenched in the red spill.

Concealed in the elderberry scrub, Sugea tracks the kill, his breathing laboured. In the communes, he was taught that the wild-born people were barely human—lazy, starving wretches who survived only by eating their own kind. Yet the three before him defy the herders' lore. They speak in strange sounds full of dry clicks. There is a dark-skinned, long-limbed man and two girls; one shares the man’s deep, earthen skin, while the other looks enough like Sugea’s own kin to make him blink.

They move through the bush with absolute confidence. The bull is a mountain of muscle, yet it goes down with terrifying efficiency. Every spear and flint-tipped shaft finds a vital spot. No fumbling. No wasted breath. These wild-borns are not the broken remnants he has seen dragged into the farming settlements as breeding stock. They are providers, and they are thriving.

He waits until they take their fill of the meat and vanish into the treeline. Only then does Sugea emerge, dragging his injured leg through the dust. He is a scavenger now, his dignity traded for a full belly and a warm hide. His stone blade works frantically, hacking at the cooling mounds of red muscle and prying loose the heavy marrow bones the hunters left behind.

The first snarl does not come from the undergrowth. The wolves simply appear—a grey perimeter closing the distance without a bark or a posture. Sugea freezes, his hands slick with sticky bison grease, his sharp stone flake suddenly feeling uselessly small. One brute, larger than the rest and scarred across the muzzle, breaks into a steady trot toward the midden. It does not rush; it moves with the easy pace of a predator that knows injured prey has nowhere left to run.

WAR

The bark shield-wall shatters in a spray of dry splinters. The Sheonni pour through the gaps, their faces smeared with ochre, wielding lethal flint. Sugea feels the soil tremble under his feet—the hard, wet thud of birch-bark boots packing down earth that just this morning was consecrated for growth.

Sugea is a shaman for the wheat, not a trophy for the enemy. To be taken alive would be a rot no spell could scrub away. For years he has trained to serve Daghnu, the Wheat Father, chanting and spilling blood into the dirt to make the grain rise. But with the Sheonni breaking through, the priest is gone. He wants to be a man. He rips away the heavy straw mask and tears at the itchy costume. He will not stand in the background like Daghnu’s shadow, shouting holy words while braver boys are butchered.

To his left, Zoreon—a seasoned warrior who had danced beside him for the harvest blessing—takes a mace full to the head. His peaked leather hat collapses into a bloody mess.

The air doesn't smell of burning husks anymore. It tastes of wet, hammered slate, sour sweat, and greasy cowhide. Boys Sugea envied only moments ago fumble blindly in the press, their wooden spear shafts slick with sweat, sliding right through their fingers.

A rope-turbaned Sheonni raider, reeking of the wolf-pelt on his shoulders, lunges at a fallen Leva boy. His movements are heavy, efficient, punctuated by a blunt grunt of effort. All the prayers for rain and the old litanies for the Wheat Father disappear. The earth isn't asking for a neat bowl of bull’s blood anymore—it is drinking everything his people have.

Sugea grips his greenstone axe until his knuckles turn white. The head is cold and smooth, polished by weeks of sand-rubbing. Flint-tipped arrows zip through the air, hunting for Leva skin. He lunges, swinging in clumsy, heavy arcs that pull at his shoulder. He aims for the face of a Sheonni boy who looks just as terrified as he is.

Then, something slams into the side of his head with a sickening crunch. His vision goes black. His knees fold, and he hits the stony ground hard. The last things he sees are the wheat stalks he was supposed to protect, swaying in the wind as if he weren't there at all.

When he comes to, a Sheonni warrior is urinating on his face. Sugea twists, fighting the rough ropes binding his wrists.

He spits his curses up at them. ‘Dung-eating wildborns! Clanless wolf-stinkers!’

They just laugh at his Leva tongue, kicking him with their birch-soled boots. They bind him spread-eagle inside a clay hut. For three days, their crones enter at their leisure to beat him and defile him.

By the third day, the fever takes hold. His body is broken, filthy, and reeking so badly that their Sun-priestess deems him unworthy of a proper Ireslari sacrifice to her pits. They drag him out and dump him onto a midden heap at the edge of the settlement, leaving the strawman priest to rot into the soil of their wheat gardens.

But he refuses to die.

He crawls from the stinking refuse mound. Weak, burning with fever, and unable to stand, he drags his useless legs out of the cultivated plots and into the margins of the dark forest. Among the trees, surrounded by the fallen fruits of the autumn wilderness, his breath slows. As soon as his legs will bear his weight, he sucks air through his swollen throat and limps north, toward the wilds.

 Sugea remains a thou.

Back to the Future: Time Travel and Haplogroup Index

Images here are visualisations by Google Gemini

Meet a great-grandmother from 250 generations ago. She carries the mtDNA haplogroup H6, or perhaps H6a, in trillions of her cells. She is a descendant of the 'Basal Helena' we met in the Levant 25,000 BCE. But this grandmother lives on the banks of the Volga, in what is now southern Russia, and the date is 4,500 BCE.

5,000–4,500 BCE), the Khvalynsk culture

Source ©  OpenStreetMaps Modified by myself.

She is no longer a nomad of the caves. Here she belongs to a world of copper, cattle, and sheep—the first great social hierarchies of the steppe. The ancient spark from the Levant has adapted to the cold winds of the north.

Our 250-times great-grandmother is not a wife of the Fertile Crescent Neolithic, nor have her people abandoned their Eastern Hunter-Gatherer roots. Instead, they have adapted to a way of life unique to the steppe. The herds they once hunted, they now master. They take from the Fertile Crescent what they need—sheep and cattle—but they do not toil the soil. They are women of the great Eurasian Steppe. They are becoming the great pastoralists; the herders of the endless grasslands

This ancestor belongs to an archaeological layer which Russian researchers have named the Khvalynsk culture. It is a period defined by a pivotal shift: the move away from hunting, fishing, and foraging towards the pastoral herding of cattle, sheep, and goats.

These herds introduced the concepts of private property and surplus value to their economy—a newfound wealth that seems to have stratified their society. While some of their graves were laden with status objects, such as polished stone maces and copper bracelets, rings and pendants, others remained starkly bare.

The Great Eurasian Steppe serves as the continent's primary thoroughfare. Across these vast grasslands, new cultures, languages, and peoples—alongside their livestock and technologies—surged east and west, linking Europe, the Caucasus, and Central and East Asia. The people of the Khvalynsk culture were a product of this flux, carrying the genetic heritage of several previously isolated populations. These included hunter-gatherer groups local to the East Europe and the Eurasian Steppe, from the Caucasus, and from as far away as Siberia. Our 250th great-grandmother’s matrilineal lineage once resided on the Iranian Plateau before embarking on an arduous trek far to the north. Her arrival on the Volga helped forge a new way of life, blending southern traditions with the rugged spirit of the northern plains.

GO TO NEXT ACT - Yamnaya culture. Westward migration to Pannonian plain. 3,000 BCE

Back to the Future: Time Travel and Haplogroup Index

Back to the Future: Time Travel and Haplogroup Index

The Cradle of the Zagros: 7,500 BCE In a mountain valley in Southwest Asia—modern-day Iran—the Aceramic Neolithic is in full bloom. As I visualize an early goat herder in this landscape, I have to ask: is this man my direct ancestor?

Roughly 9,500 years ago, my paternal lineage (identified by the Y-DNA marker L-FGC51036) likely moved through this transformative agricultural culture. A few millennia later, as the Aceramic period evolved into the Sarab and Guran cultures of the Pottery Neolithic, the next genetic variant appeared: SK1414. Following this mutation, "cousins" of my direct line radiated outward, eventually establishing separate paternal lineages in the Levant, Anatolia, the Indus Valley, and Europe.

My ancestors here were the heirs to accidental selection processes initiated much earlier by the Zarzian culture. Having survived the harsh climatic collapse of the Younger Dryas, these people emerged from their refuges to find their relationship with wild grasses deepening into a state of total interdependence. Over generations, wild flora adapted into domestic strains of einkorn and two-row barley—crops that now relied on human threshing to survive.

Simultaneously, the wild bezoar ibex was being transformed into the world’s first domestic goat. It is highly probable that this region saw the very dawn of goat domestication. These animals were perfectly evolved for the Zagros terrain, turning rugged scrub into high-quality protein for Aceramic farmers. Beyond meat, these goats may have already been exploited for dairy, supplemented by gathered legumes and wild nuts.

However, domestication was neither intentional nor entirely beneficial. While agriculture anchored people to the land and allowed for more children, it also planted the seeds of the global population explosion. In time, humans were conditioned by these new species-to-species relationships. For millennia, early farmers suffered from malnutrition, stunted growth, and zoonotic diseases that jumped from livestock to humans. The status of women often declined; skeletal remains reveal the toll of increased childbirth and the grueling physical labor of milling grain on their knees. Yet, agriculture permits a viral, expansive growth that the old ways could never match.

The Material World of the Aceramic Zagros The inhabitants of the Aceramic Zagros clung to several ancient technologies even as they innovated. They continued to produce delicate flint microliths, though toward the end of the period, they began crafting polished stone axe-heads. They had not yet adopted fired pottery; instead, much like their hunter-gatherer ancestors, they relied on woven baskets and skin bags. Yet, a shift was occurring: they had begun partially firing the clay walls of their storage pits and sculpting small clay figurines. These figures suggest that their belief systems were evolving in tandem with their economy and their changing relationship with the landscape. As visualized in the accompanying images, my ancestors were already fashioning sun-dried clay bricks to build multi-level houses within the Zagros valleys.

Historically, there has been a significant emphasis on the western "leg" of the Fertile Crescent—the Natufians, early Levantines, and Anatolians. However, the importance of this eastern leg in the Zagros has long been underrated. Many population genetics enthusiasts now suggest that Zagros Neolithic Farmers form a distinct genetic cluster that later radiated outward, carrying these foundational agricultural practices with them. I am but one of many descendants of this influential lineage.

Early Fertile Crescent. Home of West Eurasian agriculture.

Source ©  OpenStreetMaps Modified by myself.

GO TO NEXT ACT - Godin Tepe 3,800 BCE

Back to the Future: Time Travel and Haplogroup Index

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:

Natural Britain during the Early Holocene

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.

Later Mesolithic SE Britain.  Wild-woods or temperate-forests?

How I portray Late Mesolithic Britons in fiction

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.

British Gravettian