Stonehenge Headline Mike Pitts of British Archaeology magazine in questioning mood. Probably the only person I would trust to say anything sensible about Stonehenge, marvelling at the latest story of the movement of the Altar Stone from Scotland. Yes it could be a glacial movement but sort of via Doggerland. Doggerland for those who do not know where it is now, it is that patch of land that once joined us to Europe in the North Sea.
"He finds the glacier scenario more “plausible”: “these findings could imply that the people of Doggerland attached cultural significance to the Altar Stone … [and so saved] it from being submerged by rising sea levels at the end of the last ice age”.
A drowned landscape, which is rather exciting. How do we know? Well fisherman trawling the bottom of the sea there have fished up prehistoric axes and arrowheads, showing that once long ago the land was settled. Ten thousand years ago we were part of Northern Europe (my DNA tells me that by the way) and then seven thousand years ago approximately a glacier pushed through and it is what it is today. Vincent Gaffney and co-workers explored this lost land and wrote a very complicated book on the subject, I did not understand it! But then a Wiki will explain this lost land and of course the scientists who study it with great interest.
You will note that Pitts is just a tad offensive about newspaper headlines - aren't we all of course. The journalists leap on any piece of news, tear it apart without understanding, headline a few facts again without understanding them, and then off we go on their ignorance .
Well there is, in the Private Eye magazine a funny set of Breaking News by Mail Online, a couple for your delectation.....
Video Exclusive: Woman, 24, in cropped t-shirt and skintight shorts leaves VERY little to the imagination as she tragically plunges to her death.
Friends fear Meghan not to be trusted with kitchen knife
Starmer denies mainlining heroin with Rachel Reeves in urine-infested Downing Street.
This is a favourite.
Dan Hodges. Day after day, people are dropping dead from old age. Why is Starmer doing nothing about it?
Well when England finally kicks the bucket (it won't) we shall be glad of Ian Hislop and his team of erudite journalists ploughing through the latest scandal, and missing being sued by an inch. Speak up, speak out ;)
------------------
I had never read Private Eye until I picked up my son-in-law's copy earlier this year. I was impressed not only by how cuttingly funny it is, but also by the level of real investigative journalism.
ReplyDeleteThey followed the Post Office scandal through from the beginning Tracy. I think Private Eye has become an institution protected by its ability to make us laugh by all that goes on.
DeleteThere is a website I use that is plagued with absolutely ridiculous click bait headlines, some leading to the Daily Mail, maybe a local edition. I've never looked at what seems like a rag.
ReplyDeleteI knew nothing about Doggerland, so thanks for the education.
Doggerland is one of those unknown lands beneath the sea Andrew and is now looked on as a good place for off-shore turbines.
DeleteAnother Private Eye fan here.
ReplyDeleteSomehow reducing news to silliness makes it seems safer and gets one away from all the seriousness of it Anne.
DeleteDoggerland is fascinating., Dogger is now a 'sea area' in the shipping forecast, as you know.
ReplyDeleteI think they have mapped it as well, it is all very exciting Janice. But we have drowned forests on the West coast around Wales as well. It is of course mentioned in the daily round of the shipping forecast early morning.
DeleteI didn't know this. Will parts of your islands disappear if sea levels rise?
ReplyDeleteNo Ellen, though parts of our coastline crumbles into the sea every now and then. The drowning of the land was by glacial events which culminated around 7000 BC.
DeleteThe Daily Mail is entertaining but I sure wouldn't believe anything they tell me.
ReplyDeleteI've never heard of Doggerland, or this theory that we were once connected with mainland Europe, though it makes sense. I suppose it was dry land at the same time the Bering Strait featured a land bridge from Alaska to Asia.
I would rate the Daily Mail as frivolous, except at times the paper can be dangerous. But there again I have never read the paper so how would I know. There is a great rabbit hole to go down for the beginnings of how countries formed Steve, it starts with Pangea.
DeleteGosh, if only we could have a look into the past at Doggerland - I wonder how many burial chambers, stone circles and the like we have lost, how much rock art. When I was studying burial chambers in the Scilly Isles, some were underwater there, and stone walls marched out into the sea. . .
ReplyDeleteI have never been to the Scilly Islands they look rather beautiful. I expect a picture will be formed over the years of Doggerland going way back past the Mesolithic. The theory that the stones of Stonehenge where carried on glaciers will still rumble on though Jennie.
ReplyDeleteI wonder just how much of the archaeological remains on Doggerland are being destroyed by the desecration by useless windmills?
ReplyDeleteOr, of course Will, damaging fishing and heavy trawling of the bottom of the Dogger Bank by fishing boats. The marine ecology is to a point protected by an EU directive. But not very well.
ReplyDelete