Artificial islands commonly known as crannogs dot hundreds of Scottish and Irish lakes and waterways. Until now, researchers thought most were built when people in the Iron Age (800-43 B.C.) created stone causeways and dwellings in the middle of bodies of water. But a new paper published today in the journal Antiquity suggests that at least some of Scotland’s nearly 600 crannogs are much, much older—nearly three thousand years older—putting them firmly in the Neolithic era. What’s more, the artifacts that help push back the date of the crannogs into the far deeper past may also point to a kind of behavior not previously suspected in this prehistoric period....
But why were Neolithic people tossing their “good china” off of artificial islets? Without direct accounts from the time period, archaeologists can only speculate as to why the crannogs were built, how they were used, and why they became places for pottery disposal. Garrow and his colleagues surmise they were used for feasting, another unknown set of religious or social rituals, or both.
The Crannogs
H/t Instapundit for this article on Scotland's ancient crannogs.
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3 comments:
Plenty of secrets on earth and heaven that remains secret. Humanity only assumes they have explored the heavens. In truth they have not even explored a quarter of the oceans nor half the land.
There are ancient civs all over due yo the grand cycles. It was never a linear progress up.
It would be interesting to compare those 3,000-ish year old crannogs with the climate of the time and the associated water levels.
Eric Hines
This period was one of change. (I may overreach. It might be just before a time of change, weakening my entire argument here.) These crannog builders would be much more likely to be related to the earlier peoples, such as at Skara Brae, than the incoming Indo-Europeans, who would most likely have arrived after this time, though not long after. As the I-E were on the move and driving other populations before them very gradually, we might expect that the people then in Scotland were under pressure from related tribes. Britain had become separated from the continent as Doggerland went beneath the waves quite some time before - 2000 years, perhaps. But there wasn't much cultural change within until about the time of these crannogs we are talking about. To get away from other peoples for ceremonies and rituals would have taken on greater importance (even if we, from our perspective, know that those "other peoples" were closely related to them).
No burials, no mussel middens or stacks of animal bones, no signs of battle. Ceremony is one of the few things left.
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