MYSTICAL or PRACTICAL? Huge 8,000 year old pits discovered in Bedforshire, England.
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- čas přidán 9. 09. 2024
- "People in Britain 8,000 years ago dug pits 16 ft across and 6 feet deep (Yes, I know - I said 8 FEET DEEP in the intro!) in alignments stretching up to 500 metres ... explain!"
Well, the thing is, no-one has got a comprehensive explanation for these pits from the Mesolithic period that have been found in Bedfordshire. However, The Prehistory Guys feel they've got a slightly better grip on reality than some archaeologists.
What do you think?
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I enjoy your work so much. Having been raised in a very practical, land based way, I often found myself sitting quietly only by force of great will while in courses that studied ancient life/artifacts/practice. Even in art history workshops, sometimes the knowledge of real life is scarce among my professors. I tried, when new to the environment, to point out things that were obvious to me and any other farmer/hunter/rancher - but it was not productive. The things my teachers did not know about the types of horses used for different sorts of work was staggering.
run of the mill 'blue worker' normal guy here, who started noticing the history i was taught hasn't matched up with discoveries made while i was out in the grind just trying to keep a family under a roof. Once i started doing some self education updates, a lot of sketchy shit started to become evident.
Too true! I'm a professional builder of wooden boats and spent some time at sea under sail on both sides of the Atlantic, including an Atlantic crossing. I've worked on the building of three historical replica ships and repaired many old wooden craft.
The ignorance of the real world exhibited in academia in my field is astounding! There are several myths about the capabilities of ancient seafarers that are utterly laughable--but have persisted as received, unexamined fact by generations of historians--passed on in college classrooms year after year!
When no one can remember exactly where they'd stashed the dried Auroch that Autumn.
There's an area in Canada called Buffalo Jump (Cypress Hills national park)...
the First Nations people would drive the Bison by herding them in a frenzy to quite literally force them off the cliffs and ultimately would have enough to feed villages from far around the plains of North America.
Near Salt Lake City, Utah, USA, we have the Kennecot Copper Mine, which I believe qualifies as a monumental pit.
A recent study by MacKenzie (Journal of The Midlands Anthropological Institute, Jan 2023), has managed to decode much of the purpose behind these pits. The groups constructing these were NOT nomadic, and these are NOT ritual structures. Approximately 50% of these pits were actually "brew vats". We know this because the sides of the pits were lined with woven reeds several layers thick and sealed with tar. On top of this is the residue of hops and honey, so these giant pits were used to brew mead. It wasn't mead as we know it, but was fortified with animal protein, that's why we find bones of various animals in the pits. There is a maze-like path leading to each and it's speculated that villagers easily made their way to the edge of the pool of mead and drank their fill. Afterward, it was difficult to extricate themselves (intentionally so) due to their inebriated state. This was a form of a rite of passage. Many didn't make it as evidenced by extensive deposits of human bones surrounding the pit. The north side of each pit however had a straight path by which the villagers accessed the mead pool and filled their gourds with the nourishing libation. Surprisingly, the gourds were stoppered by cork bark obviously imported from the region of Portugal. It's speculated that psychedelic mushrooms were added to each gourd in varying quantities and consumed the night before a hunt. This would give the hunters insight as to where the prey could be found and it would impart extra bravery to the party. The hunting parties consisted of approximately 10 hunters followed by (typically) by 3 women carrying gourds of additional mead that was consumed throughout the hunt. The women were chosen for their red hair which was believed to have a magical effect on the prey, freezing them dumbstruck so that the hunters could more easily sneak up on them. The prey was dressed on the spot and carried back to the village on slings carried by 4 individuals. The ginger women led the way back to the village because they had not been consuming the mead. Upon returning, the villagers greeted the hunters with a rhythmic wailing, entreating the gods to allow the kill to nourish their bodies. The wails were sung in 3-part harmony and the meat was cooked on triangular spits in the remaining pits. The pits were apparently used continuously for many years until they lost their fermentation capabilities, after which another pit was dug along the same line. It looks like each pit was used for 50-80 years. This indicates the peoples were not nomadic. Additionally, they were cultivating the flax used to line the brew pits in the immediate area. I don't know how MacKenzie could tease such amazing detail from his excavations, but then I'm not a scientist.
Fabulous. Can we quote you? 🤣
@@ThePrehistoryGuys I think it would be better to get your hands on the source material. I only summarized the key points and what I thought was most interesting but the paper has a lot of contextual and background information that you might find useful.
😂
Another great video! One thing to remember about shamanic people groups: Absolutely everything for them was spiritually charged. They did/do not separate mystical things from practical things. This is something that I find myself wishing more and more that modern science would bear in mind. To the shamanic world, absolutely EVERYTHING has mystical significance. They did/do not see the mystical and the practical as being in separate categories. Sometimes, either/or questions have no bearing and may merely confuse matters.
When I read that people would be coming back to them from time to time, instead to rituals I had to think of migration patterns. Especially if they would specifically target aurochs, which the bones suggest. The size of those were between 155cm and 180 cm (6ft). Seems a perfect depth to target their neck but you had to mind the horns. But it would be safer as they were contained as opposed to in the open.
Or perhaps a group would have two or three sites that they moved to every year…
Tangent: probably unrelated; the thought occurs to me… One of the best ways to Store Meat for future consideration without some form of refrigeration is Live On The Hoof.
I'd tend to agree with the hunting pit hypothesis.
But I would disagree that the people that dug them weren't necessarily nomadic. Nomadic people often return to an area to hunt for a time before moving to another area, so as not to deplete a resource. Who knows, the Stonehenge pits maybe the same group of people.
That's a fair point. Thanks @rialobran. Michael 😊
True. Sometimes pottery is seen as a solid confirmation of a Sedentary lifestyle but there are historical cases of large pots, inconvenient to transport on the annual migration between seasonally exploited ecosystems--being stashed in camps to be used on the return trip.
Thought Rupert was going to explode right there on camera.
Well done gentlemen, common sense win’s.
Stay safe 🇦🇺
Hunting pits / traps would be logical
Soil samples - chemical analysis - organic evidence?
Very nice hypothesis!
Perhaps the researchers are subscribers to the channel and are reading this themselves!! ❤😂😉
That was brilliant. Thank you gentlemen 😊
Good to hear plausible interpretation.
base camp hunting. you can still 'plant' some root veggies and such near the water edges with little tending.
There's also the high likelihood that the boundary between ritual and practical was paper thin...
I can see John Cleese reading this aloud from a newspaper...
'A series of mon-u-men-tal pits? How on earth can a pit be monumental?' (You can hear him yelling this over his shoulder, then scoffing, shaking his head and rolling his eyes).
'Upon further analysis, they concluded they were used for spiritual celebrations'
'Yes of course! Bloody archeologist finds a hole on the ground he didn’t dig himself, and it just HAS to be CEREMONIAL in nature!'
I had a few thoughts. I think modern archeologists have become too far removed from the natural world to adequately interpret living in it. Maybe they all ought to be sent on survival courses. Here in North America in the Northeast under similar circumstances the aboriginal people used to have their main or summer villages and then travel to the winter camps to hunt. That was possible because the land was so bountiful. Just because around Stonehenge they used the pits to catch the game then economically used them to dispose of unwanted remains doesn't mean it's ceremonial.
Good morning from the SF Bay Area. Another interesting podcast. If you keep doing such a good job I just might have to send you a few ducats! 😉
Love the black and white shirts. Duality. Two sides to every story.
we've got lot of these ancient Dene hole pits in Kent, mostly chalk & gravel extraction
One doesn't hear much about the combination of hunter/gatherer lifestyle and farming. It's almost as if there is an emphatic either/or--with no possibility of both. You get to be a Nomadic Hunter/gatherer or a Sedentary Farmer.
Here in the State of Maine, the historic lifestyle of the Penobscott Tribe was both! They Wintered on their hunting grounds a long way inland and migrated down the Penobscott river by canoe to the coast for the Summer where they fished and dug clams. Enroute to the coast, they planted crops at Old Town, a location that is now still tribal lands and a center of their culture . These crops were tended through the Summer by tribal members who shared the duty and rotated back to the coast.
In the Fall, the trip inland started again. They stopped to harvest the corn and other crops, storing the corn in silos of some sort. As Winter approached they moved up river to the Winter hunting grounds. Once there and the river had frozen reliably solid, it was again available as a highway for travel by snowshoe and toboggan, and periodic trips became possible to Old Town to retrieve stocks of corn.
In the Spring, the cycle began again.
Countless cultures around the world must have adopted similar strategies during the Neolithic.
One can imagine that an excavation and study of a Neolithic site similar to Old Town might well have described a Sedentary Farming Culture.
Those ‘aurochs people’ must have been very generous to mankind, making them and their sprit quite honorable. There must have been stories, songs and dances honoring them, especially during the feasts in which they played a role.
Could we get a link to the article? One thing I didn’t hear in your discussion was details of butchering or cuts on bones of the aurochs which for me for might be why the authors considered ritual. An entire unbutchered aurochs would be unusual and would require a different explanation which “ritual in nature” is one of the options.
I agree the use of the pits for hunting is a strong reason for their existence, but like other writers here, I’d like to see how they are geographically arranged with relationship to each other and to the stream(s). Not that the stream channel necessarily will be in the exact same location for 8000 years, but general relationships should hold.
One last thing I’d like is any stratigraphy from the pits. Might give me some ecological sense along with geology. Yeah, got my MA in anthropology specializing in archaeology many years ago, and still try to keep a finger in.
Thanks!
Hi Winifred, the full report is yet to be published but here are a few links.
www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-66072487
www.sciencetimes.com/articles/44732/20230707/25-mysterious-large-holes-mesolithic-era-discovered-england-experts-baffled.htm
www.sott.net/article/481951-Discovery-of-up-to-25-Mesolithic-pits-in-Bedfordshire-astounds-archaeologists
All best, Rupert
A few points:
1) If placed in order of what provided the most nutrition, it should be Fisher-Gatherer-Hunters
2) Plants and trees come into season at different times of the year, and both river fish and the grazers of the plains have regular migrations.
3) Mountain goats and sheep were a valuable resource, but it gets cold up there in winter. Transhumance and going to where the seasonal bounty is, drove most annual circuits.
4) H/G, or F/G/H, take your pick, owned their resources. Such ownership was possible because it was embedded in networks of relationship. If the youngsters of one group arrived at a berry patch just as the berries were ripe, and found someone else there, the grandmothers and grandfathers on both sides would get involved, after an exchange of gifts. The side that was in the wrong, but larger, would see that they had too much to lose if they defied their networks
5) With ownership of hunting grounds it became possible to invest in traps, and with ownership of stretches of stream, it was possible to invest in weirs. Both provided food in accordance with the seasonal migrations. But there was no point in living near a trap when it wasn't time for the migration, nor by a weir
6) Deep sea fishing, evidenced by 41 kya in Timor, was the lifestyle most conductive to staying in one place, but that place is in many cases now under the waves.
1 man can easily move a cubic yard of dirt in a day. These monumental pits are ~150 cubic yards. Noted: Rupert's ever-present pint of gin.
Excellent work on this one fellows!
Another common explanation that goes on my nerves no end is that certain cultures kept their dead under the bed or in the pantry under a floor where they had to pry up the floor to get at the preserved food. No they did not do that. This just screams necropolis. And while still extant hunter gatherers tend to have fasting and cleaning rituals before they go hunting they are usually not prone to religious practices. They are generally very pragmatic. Some archaeologists once came up with the idea and they are all repeating this bull ever since.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely. A little power in a small field corrupts to the extent society allows such small groups without money to get corrupted.
I enjoyed the giggle over 'monumental pits'. I suppose I think of monuments as high and wide, or at least apt to have been regarded as monuments even at the time. Archeology has trained me to adore pits, but think of them as middens rather than 'monuments'! PS, kinda hard to herd Pine Martins into a pit. I agree, hunting traps.
We’ve never really stepped out of being hunter/gatherers. I’ve gone gathering Saskatoon berries in the bush many times, while some of the others will go deer, moose, or geese hunting, we all have our permanent homes and agriculture as well though. Lol!
I think many have only been gathering at the supermarket these days. I have met townies who won't pick blackberries, are shocked that animals die for their dinner plate and one woman who was confused that a goose was not a duck and "how did I tell the difference".
@@nomadpurple6154 And unfortunately, that’d be why they say that 90 to 95% of the population will die if we lose the power grid, too many that have absolutely no idea how to survive without the systems put in place.
Is a monumental pit an oxymoron?
Developer won't be happy, pits will be a construction problem. Better to find them first though.
yea, lol. 25- 16*8 'pothole' checks are a bit much without noting some whole other engineering project going on once upon a time.
What did they do with all the dirt? Were there any indications of nearby habitation of the people?
I fail to see how you could catch Pine Martyn’s in a pit because they are arboreal mainly. Also I wouldn’t be so sure a small agile animal couldn’t jump/ scramble 6 feet or more, just as a cat can. In which case if the Martyn’s were placed there and not caught, it does suggest some ritual significance to me.
A flared bottom pit suggests a bog used after a hot curry
Where I live, the natives have "First Hunt, and "First Fish," where children are taught to have reverence for the animals, giving proper thanks, etc. Then they go out and kill the beasts to eat them! Is that "ritual," or "subsistence?" In fact, it is both! Giving thanks for food is called "saying grace." Doing it before a hunt is much the same. Animals are still hunted though: a society has to eat, and chasing a beast into a steep sided pit is a great way of doing it!
Monumental pit is a creative space to keep the archaeological types easily distracted...Nice...😺😸😼😻
Have you read 'Dark Emu' by Bruce Pascoe? I was reminded of the (somewhat controversial) theories about the economies and agriculture of the Australian aboriginal people by the first chapters on mesolithic Britain when I recently read 'Home' by Francis Pryor. I am sure in time we will recognise how mesolithic Britons modified their landscape and were far more sedentary and numerous than one might assume when the label "hunter-gather" is thrown about.
Bruce Pascoe is a fraud and his claims of Aboriginal farms and villages are nonsense with no archeological evidence to support them whatsoever.
well said pre history guys. :)
Would the pits hold water? Perhaps they filled with rain or reached the water table. Animals are attracted to waterholes.
Seasonal opportunities were known and harvested.
Stream channels, and the first fucking thing they say is ritual, those were Fisheries or traps.
That comment was made just as soon as the word Rich will come out of your mouth the first time, and I don't want to delete it cuz I about had a brain aneurysm top screaming at a phone I'm surprised you didn't hear me all the way across the pond. This is a classical case of archaeological bias, they think of our forefathers is just barely wearing anything, only making grunting sounds. I'm just going to stop right here before my blood pressure really pops out. Our forefathers were very very intelligent after the end of the video y'all did a decent job of covering a overall view.
I read the news today oh boy, four thousand holes in Lancashire....
Well, maybe these pre bronze age people had a historical team that were digging for what nowadays is called Britain?
Refrigerators/cool storage?
Thank you sirs🤗
Why is it that archaeologists seem to make everything of some religious or spiritual significance? Whilst I'm sure they had some beliefs, they probably spent most of their time and trouble on practical things than we are expected to believe. Animal trap was my first thought, and they may well have put them on animal routes to watering places so they didn't even have to herd them but could be off doing something else.
Because their lives depended on finding food. Plus if you are hunting an aurocs, a cow the size of a minibus with horns that matched and elephant tusk, you want all the spiritual blessings and support you can get. Also the average amount of work hunter gathers did was about 35 hours a week or less depending on the season and environment.
Hi guys.
I read the news today oh boy
Eight-thousand year old holes somewhere in Bedfordshire
And though the holes weren't small at all
They had to dig them all
Now they know many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall
Genius! 🤣
Pits seam to random to try & force a beast into? Kind of like hitting a bullseye. Wouldn't a narrowing channel into a Massive trough be better. Sounds like a hole to place a Starting, Pole, in for Structure. So what about the 300,000 year old Chert Tools found there?
Also I imagine these pits would quickly fill with water, unless of course they have some kind of drainage system.
The geology of Linmere is “middle chalk” which is highly permeable. Water wouldn’t gather in the pits. An aerial view of the are shows them heading off the gap between an extinct river and fencing could easily be erected between holes. I personally believe traps is the most logical answer. For a people’s without a ready soured of carbohydrates, these pits would take a significant amount of time and resources to dig, with basic tools like antler. I can’t see them dedicating such effort in digging these for ritual purposes. But they would for a 1,500-3,000lb Auroch IMO
@@ashab1 Yes, after you dig it out, & put in the Center Tent Pole, you would fill back in with soli, to prevent being toppled over.
I might have missed it, but is there any evidence the pits were contemporaneous?
Doesn't help the old joke that show anything to an archaeologist and they'll assume it's ritualistic does it :) Kinda see their point on this one.
you guys need to turn up your audio
Diggin flared pits don't butter no parsnips. 😸😽😼😻
They were looking for a treasure. Never found it. It's still there. You're welcome.
you shouldn’t call Guy a weasel, he doesn’t deserve it. you are talking about Guy Martin, right?
🤣
No, Michael was not talking about a person, he was reading that bones were found from the weasel like marten , that is a Pine Marten. They do look like large weasels and live in woodland. A rare species now in the UK
Definitely hunting pits!
It’s a good put down... calling someone a “monumental pit” 🤭😂
8k years and i had to drive my game into a pit? sounds like a spiritual celebration was in order if a 'clan' got something to eat lol.
Charcoal hearth?
Ive seen charcoal hearths in Ibiza years ago. 1971 to be exact. They were shallow, about 50 centimetres and maybe 2 m diameter with rectangular slots round the sides to allow smoke to escape. The wood was covered with sand/ soil and left to smoulder. They were just dotted about on the hillsides in forest clearings. Life in the Spanish countryside was much as it had been for centuries back then. No electricity, piped water, etc. We even cooked in large clay pots exactly like those found on neolithic sites.
@@helenamcginty4920 they could be rectungular too in ancient times, later mostly round up tu 20m diameter but most were less..
Are archeologist afraid to find something that is not in some way tied to a ritual. Hunting can be a ritual, a rite of passage in some cultures. If they were hunting pits used by possibly no attic people, then you would expect to find bones form animals that were trapped while the hunters were being nomadic. Did the bones show some signs of butchering, cooking or carving? If not, they were probably just collateral catches while not being actively used. K.I.S.S.
I am constantly confounded by assigning 'ritual' functions to anything that is not defined within the field of UK history. Especially with regards mesolithic and neolithic periods, these presentism explanations are just annoying by now. African Anthropologists could quite happily explain 'desert kites' and 'snare pits' as a practice of managing game in a local environment and not just to catch and eat anything that fell or were drove into it. The pits are scarcely at shoulder height to adult aurochs and the spacing suggests a deliberate pattern that may suggest early domestication attempts as much as simply hunting or keeping the stabby horns pointing in the other direction. That is, the capture of young animals perhaps for selective breeding over generations. This idea would not occur to anyone invested in the idea that mesolithic society would be pastoral, engage in game management or herding or anything other than base 'hunter-gatherers' or foraging (I hate the overuse of this term). Pits and enclosures have a transactional value depending on where they are located and are essential to an early indication of a stud book, or kennel by the time of the Neolithic causewayed enclosures where there is already evidence of auroch oxen. Needless to say, there are many steps required before an aurochs ox is found and these never even enter into discussion. I imagine if you have enough 'ritual', then the magical end result is... more ritual.
👍😁❤💕🙏
Couldn't it just be a case of prehistoric Keynesian economics?
When in doubt invoke the ever popular "Ritual Culture". Sad to think what the professionals are missing due to confirmation bias and ideological dogma. If only AI could be fed the raw data somehow ...
8000 years ago there is a good chance they would not have been vegetarians.
come on man you know the thing, everything they discover is either ceremonial or for religious worship, people didn't do anything else.
Explain....
I’m disappointed there’s no reference to climate change and the pits, surely this can be rectified even at this late date?
It's pit-a-full. Sorry!
You good fellas make BBC history shows look like rubbish.
At least bbc has history shows, american tvs history is reruns of little house on the prairie
I will be soon digging some astrological aligned pits on my farm land in Lapworth for future 'Smithsonian' types to analyse in 4000 or so years. There will be animal bones, fossilised wood and a broken Dyson buried just to confuse.
The photos of the pits look remarkably like the state of the roads in Birmingham! These too are traps set by modern day man to extract wealth from humble motorists. I would pay three goats to preserve the stability of my spine!
Brilliant. 🤣
Epiphany #1. The pits/traps? I think we maybe uncovering very early origins of 'cockney rhyming slang'? The pits n traps were dug in straight lines, linked to a stream channel! Very similar to modern sewerage, goes into river, raw, then out to sea, raw! Has ritual significance? People returned many times. Were they used daily just before the 'shower n shave'? The remains of wild animal remains... this maybe down to dental hygiene and the lack of chewing?
Sure the capturing of animals could be a ritual in itself, could it not? Reminds me of cave painters who would draw out the animals they were about to hunt, thus focussing their minds.
Just for the record, the use of the name "Linmere" is a blemish and corporative construct of the older and real name of the area Is I think 'Chalton Cross' although technically now Houghton Regis. The name Chalton Cross gives a clue to the landscape as it was named after an ancient crossroads, two roads, one possibly Roman period and the other was the "Theod Way" or "Theodweg" or "Peoples Way" and certainly this was mentioned as two armies one viking and the other saxon came to a peace treaty instead of battle a little further along at 'Ytingaford' so this crossroads may have been very important in bygone times. This was an ancient ridgeway forking off from the nearby Icknield Way on Galley Hill nrth Luton, which in itself is said to be one of Britains oldest roads.
Some say this ancient line following the ridge of the Chiltern Hills all the way from Wessex ie Avebury area towards East Anglia and beyond , in this case meaning Doggerland; the sunken lands below the north sea that dissappeared some 8,000 years ago. The area of the pits just may possibly have been the 'highland hunting grounds" for the inhabitants of Doggerland when the sea was a couple hundred feet lower and the mass of the human populations lived there. So could the pits have been seasonal hunting grounds for people living further afield? I can easily see a ritualistic hunting event using the pits and possibly other constructs like fences to coerce the beasts into the traps and I have no problem seeing this as a ritualistic event possibly even with some use of mind altering tools. I can see them using salt, prepared on the lowlands to preserve the flesh to take back. Anyway, thats just one idea! lol!