And is complete nonsense!
This ‘dribble’ has been regurgitated so many times in the past that we have almost taken it as truth. Consequently, when an archaeologist finds something that doesn’t fit this ‘norm’, it is rejected totally out of hand. In previous sections, we have seen the way good scientific evidence is dismissed when it doesn’t fit the old accepted theories of British history. The same disregard is given to our ancestral culture. Academics paint them as unsophisticated fur-clad nomads who hunted wild animals while their women gathered berries; hence the term ‘hunter-gatherer’. But then, suddenly, out of the blue, this strange group of farmers, who were incapable of building a decent wooden cabin, got together to build a stone monument, using woodworking techniques, that would last 10,000 years.
We should not take lightly their ability to build something of such magnitude as Stonehenge, as the degree of organisation required to produce these constructions is very rarely seen in our history. There is a tendency for archaeologists to look at certain modern cultures and compare these people with our ancestors. The classic example is the hunter-gatherer tribes of Africa, America or Asia. This analogy is fundamentally flawed, as these tribes do not possess the organisation or the engineering ability to build monuments as large, or as long-lasting, as we see in Northern Europe.
So, how do we establish a framework for us to understand this unknown civilisation?
The answer is to look even more closely with an unprejudiced mind at their technology, science and mathematics and, through this window in our imagination, we will try to find some answers to our questions. We have already established that this civilisation existed for thousands of years (much longer than our very own civilisation that dates back to the farming revolution just five thousand years ago), continually working on their monuments to adapt them to the falling groundwater of the Neolithic Period which ended their aquatic way of life.
We understand from the man hours they put into building their monuments that they had to be highly organised, as they only had small numbers of people to work at raising stones and digging moats.
So, did they all live in caves as portrayed?
Well, if they did, there must have been a lot more caves back then than now, or they would have been rather crowded! Clearly, this is not the answer. Our hypothesis explains that after the last ice age, the land was flooded with groundwater from the melting ice caps. Britain then became a nation of islands with a mild climate, much warmer than today - the kind of subtropical environment now seen in some regions of the South America. After the last ice age, as the tundra that restricted growth receded, trees grew in abundance and the dry land became covered with woods and thick forests. If we are going to investigate the lifestyles of Mesolithic and Neolithic man, we must look to the boat people of the Amazon and Far East for examples of their ways.
Archaeologists have reconstructed roundhouses made from mud and straw, which they suggest is the logical construction type based on the discovery of post holes at some Bronze and Iron Age sites. The problem is that this type of house seems to have come into being in the Bronze Age, with no evidence of earlier man-made housing in the Mesolithic and Neolithic; hence the association of cave dwellings with this period, which spans about 7,000 years (5 times longer than the 1,500 years of the mud hut phase). This lack of accommodation is even more bewildering when compared to the elaborate housing found in the forsaken wasteland of the Orkneys. The round stone structures found there, which had built-in furniture and walls 2 metres high to keep the elements out, are of a greater sophistication than any Bronze and Iron Age mud huts in the South, but yet these houses are older.
So, if we had houses in the past, why did we go back to mud huts?
We have seen in more recent history how our ancestors did ‘go backwards’ in the Dark Ages. When the Roman Empire withdrew from Britain, their elaborate brick-built, centrally heated houses were abandoned for the simple mud and stick houses of Medieval Britain and the warm air central heating facility was lost for nearly two thousand years.
Are we seeing the same thing in the Orkneys?
The only evidence archaeologists have of habitation is post holes in the ground. Most post holes would make fine square buildings, but this has always been dismissed since roundhouses were first defined some 60 years ago. The problem for archaeology is that once a discovery is defined in detail (usually via a paper or book on the subject, interpreting finds at a particular site) archaeologists apply it to all such features in their future fieldwork.
Therefore, after Gerhard Bersu identified a roundhouse at Little Woodbury in the 1930s, this type of construction was expected to be the standard in all prehistoric sites throughout Britain. But there is a problem with this assumption. The houses at Little Woodbury were probably built in about 600 BCE. We know from the writings of the Romans that when they invaded a hundred years later, the society they conquered was hierarchical. That means that there were kings and servants, who one would imagine lived in different types of houses.
Now I understand that it is hard to believe that archaeologists are this ‘prescriptive’ in their attitude. But this is a real example of the problems that, if not challenged end up as perceived archaeological truth.
The Neolithic settlement at Brzesc Kujawski was discovered in 1933 by farmers digging gravel from deposits beneath their fields on a low ridge of land bordering Lake Smetowo. While digging, they found artifacts and skeletons. Luckily, an archaeologist named Konrad Jazdzewski (1908-1985) was working nearby, and when he learned of these discoveries he came to investigate. He immediately recognized that this was potentially an important find and began excavations. Over the next six years, he cleared the topsoil from more than 10,000 square meters, exposing one of the largest Neolithic settlements discovered before World War II.
The Brzesc Kujawski Site
Jazdzewski noticed that one of the most apparent Lengyel features at Brzesc Kujawski was the long narrow trenches dug into the clay and gravel subsoil, sometimes reaching a meter or more below the surface. These trenches formed trapezoidal outlines 20 to 30 meters long, 5 to 6 meters wide at one end and 2 to 3 meters at the other. Clearly, these were structures of some sort because there were indications that the trenches had held upright posts. Among these trapezoidal enclosures were large pits with very irregular bottoms dug into the clay subsoil”.
So far so good then - now read the next extract - you couldn’t make this up if you wanted too!!
“At the time, the prevailing belief was that Neolithic people lived in the pits, which were thought to have been roofed over with flimsy shelters. But what were the trapezoidal post structures? Archaeologists who had recently excavated Linear Pottery post structures at Koln-Lindenthal in Germany had proposed that they might have been barns or granaries. They could not imagine people living in them.”
Archaeologists (because of their inadequate and closed minded training, could not believe that these primitive hunter-gathers could build a house, so they told everyone that they lived in the ditch with an animal skin as a roof (no doubt attached to the perfectly secure wooden post).
It beggars belief, but it’s absolutely true!
Even today they are suggestion that they are barns or granaries and people could not live in them - Is this because archaeologists have portrayed these people as ‚fur covered primitives’ that could only live in round mud huts, like our African ancestors - but it is a step up from living in a watery pit I guess!
„But one of Jazdzewski’s workers remarked that if he had to live in one of the muddy clay pits, he would break his legs slipping around in it. Jazdzewski concluded that the Lengyel timber structures at Brzesc Kujawski really were Neolithic houses and that the pits served some other purpose.”
IT’S CALLED A MOAT YOU IDIOT!!
A ‘worker’, some manual labourer had to break the news to Jazdzewski (Konrad Jażdżewski (1908–1985) a Polish professor of archaeology at the University of Łódź. that his ideas were plain ‘NUTS’ and
the result of closed minded stereotypical twaddle. Its amazing to me, that 70 years later nothing has changed in the archaeology field and to prove it look at the new modern interpretation of the site.
“Eventually this view prevailed, and archaeologists now know that the big pits in fact were the places where clay was dug for plastering the walls of houses built with timber posts set into foundation trenches. At Brzesc Kujawski, more than fifty such houses have been found, both during Jazdzewski’s excavations in the 1930s and during further excavations by Ryszard Grygiel and Peter in the 1970s and 1980s. They are oriented along an axis running northwest-southeast, with the wide end toward the southeast. The reason for this orientation of the houses or for their trapezoidal shape is not clear. Many of their outlines overlap, indicating that they were built and rebuilt at different times. Burned clay plaster in the filling of the foundation trenches indicates that a number of the houses were destroyed by fire. The nearby clay pits were filled up with debris, animal bones, charred seeds, and artefacts like broken pieces of pottery. Other pits were used for storage or as the locations of workshops”15
Clay pits for god sake!! Let’s see clay foundations and rain, what do you get??..... it’s the blind leading the blind!!
So Gerhard is probably right – the mud hut roundhouses so favoured by reconstruction archaeologists are typical dwellings – for some in that society, but not all; particularly not for tribal chiefs, princes and holy men and only from the Bronze age onwards 2500BCE - 64AD, which still leaves many possible buildings missing.
Post Holes
When you look at any prehistoric site, you find post holes; not just some, but sometimes hundreds. Archaeologists try to ‘join the dots’ and outline something familiar, but the chances of getting it right from just an outline of dots are realistically zero. Fortunately, later prehistoric roundhouses are much more identifiable, but the constructions of the Neolithic and Mesolithic are almost impossible to identify using today’s techniques (or lack of them!).
The reason for the confusion is that most archaeologists seem not to understand why you dig a post hole! Structural archaeologist Geoff Carter has spent many a long year trying to educate archaeologists on the merits of post holes and why they are dug. On his web site, he concludes that ‘thousands of disregarded postholes’ are ‘tucked away in reports as unphased.’ He continues, ‘it is little wonder archaeology made up a simpler story [of mud roundhouses] that was easier to understand’.
Quite simply, if you just want a stable post which does not wobble when pushed by wind or people, you use a stake, usually with a large spike on the end to cut through the soil – as you would do when erecting or mending a fence. The stake is simply driven into the ground, making a hole that narrows to a point. But you would only dig a hole and create a stable base, if you were going to place a lot of ‘weight’ directly on top of the structure.
A posthole is a hole dug to accommodate a timber post, which would typically be used to support a load acting vertically upon it, usually as part of a larger structure with multiple post foundations. For this reason, the top of the post would be narrowed to form a ‘tenon’ so it can be jointed into a corresponding hole, or mortise, in a horizontal timber. The horizontal timber will link it to other posts, and the weight of the structure will be spread evenly between several posts. Posts are least suited to loads being applied from the side, so in this situation, driven stakes, which fit tightly into the ground, would be used. This produces a feature archaeologists refer to as a ‘stake hole’, the ancient equivalent of a hole left by a modern sharpened fence post driven into the ground. Fences are not very heavy, but they do get pushed sideways by animals and even by the wind, making stakes more appropriate in these circumstances.
Stakes are designed to sink into the ground under pressure, whereas posts are not so designed; the terms, and the usage, are not interchangeable. Usually, the builder does not want a post to sink, since it is supporting the structure. However, pointed timbers driven a very long way into soft ground like marshes or lake bottoms can be used as foundations; in this context they are known as piles.’ We have already seen mortise and tenon joints in the Archaeology section of this book, as Stonehenge’s Sarsen stones were dressed with mortises and tenons before they were erected. This evidence proves that, prior to the building of Stonehenge, the mortise and tenon joint was very familiar to prehistoric man, and he must have used it in his domestic wooden structures.
If you have the ability to use this type of joint, and you understand the mathematics of weight distribution (hence the use of posts rather than stakes), then you can do two things. You can place very large roofs on your buildings; we can calculate the size of the roof space against the number of timbers required to support it. You can also build structures with multiple ‘floors’. Man has always been fascinated by height, either climbing it or building it; our other ancient monuments had great foundations, not for a single storey enclosure, but to build to the sky.
Is it beyond imagination that at a time when our ancestors were building the largest man-made construction in Europe (Silbury Hill), they might also have built multi- storey monuments into the sky? In fact, I’ve built one myself in my garden for my children; it’s called a tree house, didn’t take long and it’s over 10 feet high and I built it without any assistance. But don’t ask me to build Stonehenge, for I wouldn’t know where to start. So, if can build a construction above the ground on my own, why have archaeologists never considered that they were capable of multi-story buildings, even when they know from the joints used at Stonehenge they had the knowledge and technology?
These post holes can be reinterpreted to produce long houses as seen in the medieval period, which used the same woodworking techniques. Such floors could even be part of the roundhouse structures we have already found, that are currently identified as ‘mud huts’. This, clearly, is an advanced civilisation that could build not only monuments of stone but also multi- floored houses or towers, such as Woodhenge.
Boat Houses and Crannogs
Remember, this was a nautical civilisation that travelled every day by boat, due to the thick forest and dangerous animals, and had marked trading routes (following long barrows).
That being the case, why would they wish to live on the land?
There are still indications of this aquatic dwelling style in Britain; they are called crannogs. These are houses that are built on the groundwater, connected to the land (if necessary) by bridges. The most important aspect of these houses is their accessibility to the boats the families would use. These type of homes existed up to the 17th century in Scotland, and if you look at Durrington Walls you can see that not only was it a natural bay for houseboats, but there are also outlines of five crannogs on the shoreline.
Recently, in Star Carr, archaeologists have claimed to have found the oldest house in Britain – its date, amazingly enough, is 8500 BCE. This is the same date we have suggested for the first phase of Stonehenge, including the three mooring posts in what is now the car park, but was then the shoreline of the Stonehenge peninsula. What the archaeologists found at Star Carr was a crannog, but more important was the discovery of the ‘planking’ that formed the walkway to the roundhouse, for they discovered the earliest known evidence of plank splitting. This is a process in which logs are split with wedges along the grain, to obtain flat thin wooden planks like those we use in construction today.
This find is significant, as it begs the question: why bother?
If you are making a walkway, it can be just as effective to use whole logs rather than split wood. The plank-splitting process would take more time and greater expertise to produce the desired effect. Well, logs are solid, and are hardier than split wood because they are thicker, so they would last longer. However, wooden slats are flatter and easier to walk on. If you’re carrying goods and cargo, it’s practical to use planks for a walkway over groundwater – they might save you from falling in!
What we see here is a hi
gh degree of expertise and technology that was thought to be more Iron Age than Mesolithic (a difference of about 7,000 years, incredibly enough), but the greater revelation is that planks could have been used for other purposes. If we are looking at a nautical civilisation that possessed not only wood-splitting skills, but also mortise and tenon joints as seen at Stonehenge, then it’s not a quantum leap to suggest that they joined planks together to make large boats, rather than the dugout or leather canoes archaeologists had previously believed to be the limit of Mesolithic ability.
If you were a master craftsman and you had ample free wood to use, where would you want to live: on land in a mud hut with the animals, or on the water on a boat of your own - away from dangerous predators?
The Stonehenge Enigma (Prehistoric Britain Book 1) Page 16
