Catastrophic flooding changed the course of British history

Nature:

Thanks Walter, I love to read threads about archeology.

You certainly saw evidence of major changes due to volcanoes when you took that road trip with Dys. Amazing, isn't it, that what we know today was totally different a few thousand years ago--sometimes just hundreds of years can make a landscape vastly unfamiliar compared to the original.

American Geologists have been teaching this for years. When I was in grad school, there were a number of seminars and field trips sponsored by the Quaternary Research International (INQUA). I was along when two eminent geologists, one Rhoads Fairbridge from UK and Australia, refused to see the model similarity between the shoaling and "rushing water" scour mechanics that were left as riverine marks in the per-glacial ancient Chesapeake and Delaware bays. Weve been quietly teaching the mechanics of flood flows for the Chesapeake, Del, Atchafalaya/Missouri, the Bosporus, the Gulf of Karabougas, the revcersal of the Athabasca/Mackenzie system, The Dover Straits, gibraltar and the ancient med "desert", and several others that I dont remember.

To state that there was "little evidence" is kindof bullshit because the UK scientists were always too bullheaded to take anything as "strong suggestions" unless they discovered it themselves. Im actually amazed that Nature published it. prolly cause Nature is almost entirely non US influenced.

Im not bragging but Dr Gupta was involved in a number of discussion sessions re: glaciofluvial mass wasting and mega-landform creation. Oh well, theyve finally believed what weve been telling em for years. Sort of like continental drift. The first guys doing the discovering were the Canadians and then everybody ws reluctant to buy in until everybody went off to devise their own experiments and field discoveries to show that this was all nonsense. AND , instead, we all found out it was true.

JMTC.

I am always greatly interested in and entertained by the contemporary application of multi-disciplinary studies to the slaughter of historical sacred cows. In the 19th century, historians began to apply "scientific" techniques to flesh out details of what scant historical evidence was available about the world of man. But historians continued to be hidebound by assumptions which were based upon false racial stereotypes, and dedication to the superiority of European cultures deriving from the classical period in Greek history, and the Judeo-Christian tradition. So, for example, the principle of "cultural diffusion" was elucidated, and no one questioned the implications of that belief. Therefore, evidence was beaten, fold, stapled and mutilated to fit into the assumptions which placed the "cradle of civilization" in the middle east or on the Greek peninsula. This first came forcefully to my attention when researchers in Bulgaria found evidence that copper was smelted and alloyed with tin to form bronze long before it appeared in the middle east. The initial reaction was to claim that the Bulgarians, as communists, were simply engaged in claiming for themselves a priority of cultural development to which they were not entitled. That sounded pretty silly to me, as the Bulgars were not in the region at the time, so such a claim did nothing to burnish the reputation of the Bulgarians.

What has since been discovered, and admitted, is that copper was found and smelted all across the globe in different cultures at different times, and it would be difficult if not impossible to know who smelted and worked copper first, and who first alloyed bronze. But my point is that 19th century historians assumed, based on their prejudices, that copper was a product of the "cradle" civilizations of the middle east. What the archaeological evidence suggests is that copper may have been first smelted and worked in what is now northern Iraq or in Anatolia (although there is sufficient imprecision of dating methods to give the Bulgarian claim a slim chance). That does not, however, support the middle eastern "cradle" hypothesis, since the great Semitic civilizations did not yet exist at that time, and when they arose, they were based on temple societies regulating irrigation and flood control systems, and not on the exploitation of copper or any other metal--the contemporary evidence is that although copper was being used when the Sumerian and Akkadian civilizations arose and matured, it was coincidental to their rise. Further investigations in the 20th century have revealed that there has been absolutely no basis for any claim that copper smelting "diffused" from the middle east to other regions far away, and that copper smelting was done in China, in North and South America and in the British Isles at other times, independently of any commerce with the middle east, for which there is no evidence.

But it is in the nature of academic competition and jealousies that people continue to argue for the own sacred cows--most authors continue to claim that copper was first smelted in the middle east, and they tacitly imply that the knowledge of copper smelting and the use of copper artifacts "diffused" from there. But copper is often found close to or on the surface, in sufficient "purity" that it ought to be an intuitive assumption that many people found it and used it in many places at many times.

With regard to Walter's article, however, i find the contention that this "mega-flood" had "changed history" to be rather disingenuous. We have good archaeological evidence that ancient humans hunted close to the edge of the glaciers, but no evidence that they lived close to the edge of the glaciers. The glaciers themselves may well have driven people out of what is now Britain, but i doubt that even a "mega-flood" event prevented people from going there to exploit resources there, except in the period during which the event was actually in process. In historic and "near-historic" times, we know or have good inferential evidence that a lively trade was carried on between the continent and the island. The claim about "changed history" somehow seems to suggest that migrations and cultural development would not have occurred as they did had there been no English Channel. Color me unconvinced.

Ive always lectured that the "discoveries" of alloys and amalgams that we give huge civilizational significance to, IS A MATTER OF DUMB LUCK OF GEOLOGY.

Tin, in a form called Stannite , is a common occurence in "Hot water:" hydrothermal deposits all over the world, from the perii Alp volcanic fields, to CHina, middle east, Russia, even the UD (Had there been some people around). So, Ive always submitted that, when the concept that by adding heat, a craftsman can facilitate an ease of working a bae metal. The "Dumb luck" comes in when stannite is usually discovered in most poorer deposits of copper ores. SO, after the really high grade native coppers were more or less exhauste, the little veinlets of cuprite and cpper, (in association with stannite and other metal sulfides) actually enable the artificer to create a new alloy by luck of the draw of his retort rather than as an implied "conscious effort" by some bronze age metallurgical genius.

We know this by inference from the very example of how iron and steel were "discovered" "Iron bloomeries" were dicovered as adjunct to fire pits whenever the old ones were using a stone lined fire pit. The first discoveries of iron were the creation of a mineral from iron rich sandstones. The iron mineral, called fayalite, was able to be separated as a mushy mess that remained in the bottom of the pit after many days of festing or fire making. The mushy iron piece (an early "iron bloom") was then taken and , by some Edison of the late Bronze age, re heated to drive out the siliocate impurities and tadaa, we had bloom iron . ALL the pieces or early Iron age artifacts are so loaded with silica that its probably not a result of a conscious effort to practice metallurgy. The iron was , more likely, also a product of dumb luck of the fire pit.

The coprrelation of the source material for copper and bronze , sort of follows the same line of thinking.

Ive always been fascinated at how the origins of deductive applied science has arisen. My feelings have always leaned to the "great accident" theory rather than a "conscious effort" prattle' I believe bronze was a fdortuitous discovery (as set stated) co "discovered" in many areas fortunate enough to be gifted with the proper mixtures of tin sulfides and native copper and cupper oxides.When we compare early areas of bronze indsutry we have almost invariably the co-location of suitable deposits of stannite and copper . The actual "fiddling" to obtain the proper mixtures of stannite and copper, were probably a trial and error development that led to the development of "recipes"

Dont get me going on the "discovery" of **** like cement. That too was a total accident.

I find your "dumb luck" thesis to be far more plausible that cultural diffusion. I chose the example of copper because ordinary archaeological research blew that one right out of the water (i.e., as an example of cultural diffusion from the middle east "cradle" civilizations) long before the 19th century and early 20th century historians were willing to admit it. Amerindians in North America were making copper artifacts 7000 years ago, and in South America at the latest, 2000 years ago. It is ubiquitous, and by the "dumb luck" thesis, would have to have been discovered many times and in many places.

I do think, though, that craftsmen pay attention to effects and that they dick around in an experimental fashion. The Chinese started to use iron long after it was being used in the middle east--but they were making reliable cast iron long before the Europeans; possibly as early as 500 BCE they were intentionally puddling iron in furnaces with temperatures exceeding 1000 degrees centigrade, which qualifies as a low grade blast furnace. No one was doing that in Europe before at the earliest 1000 CE. I cannot help but think that that was the product of intentional experimentation. By contrast, metal working in the ancient Mediterranean world would have been the work of slaves, and in middle ages Europe, the work of serfs. High quality iron casting doesn't appear in Europe until about the same time as guilds of craftsmen were first formed--which suggests to me that slaves and serfs probably don't have much interest in innovation, or aren't heeded if they do come up with something new. Things like that, though, will never be more than idle speculation. It can be said with certainty, though, that the Chinese were making high quality iron castings with puddled iron heated to what were then very high temperatures more than 2000 years ago.

Thats just a matter of time of first discovery. tHE Earliest Chinese iron artifacts are still almost 10% iron silicate "fayalite" indicating that they too began with 'bloomeries " which were the very first step in every iron culture, not just european or Middle Eastern. The discoveryof further refining, and then to actually smelt was a natural order that occured independently and was PROBABLY dictated by the way that the metal "likes to be worked" and the fact that the various cultures discovered these basic keys by accident at different times . The commonality was that the metals only respond to one way of working . The concepts of annealing, and more sophisticated alloys came later in all cultures. (The Chinese discoverd that working with meteoritic iron you could adjust the surfacing and develop an early steel) But that too ws a "luck of the draw, somebody had to have a meteorite lying around.

In all cases Earliest bronzes were crude and non ideal mixtures .We know this by years of EDAX analyses that can pick out the metal mixtures and crystal arrangements pretty much to the ppb level .The U of Penn and the University of DElaware at Winterthur have a really great metallurgical reference collection (it was all begun because E I Dupont, in his life , was a major collector of antique silver, and he was getting ripped off by fakes. So the WInterthur institute in Antiquities Forensics(associated with the ARt DEpartments of the U of D and the Archeology Dept at Penn) was born.. Its almost a cultural stratigraphy that showsthe metallurgical history of almost every culture that independently discovered bronze, then iron, then steel, and how they each went through stages of enriching the final product to come up with an optimal metallurgical(usually a weapons) grade.

The concept of oxidizing and reducing flames were pretty much a Chinese product , and that was probably a function of the observation that the color "celadon" was a desired color for pottery but needed to be associated wit an oxidizing flame and this discovery was probably the result of using little ceramic "cruets" to melt various base metals in a hot air rich tunnel kiln.

Im still off Walters topic but I dont think hell mind. Metallurgy, like C14 leaves a very good forensic "fingerprint" of the skill levels of the manufacturing processes. We can pretty carefully give an "inductrial level" date to a particular smelting (or bloomery or forging technique,) merely by the inclusions and purity of the metal.

We know that , fromDuponts experience, various metal refining processes required more chem
ical reactions than were possible in earliest industrial smelting and bloomery. For example, bronzes went freom an "impurity of tin" to a conscious alloy with time. Gold and silver were always impure even though the :score" system was devised as a means of assuring purity. They really never had the skills to tell whether the gold or silver was l more than about 95%. And a lot of smuggling of " assay overages" was accomplished as means of avoding taxation with the Dutch and the Spanish.

Duponts collection of Federalist silver was over 85% fakes because the silver was of such a high level of purity (as determined by EDAX) that the hsitorians knew that , worldwide, we didnt have the skills to produce such highly refined silver until into the20th century when we discovered various methods of ultra refinement. Thus an entire metallurgy research facility that looks into the archeological significance of metal refining , was born by a need based on gathering evidence for prosecution of artifact forgers. Today the labs are world renowned for such forennsics as well as conservation of art and antiquities.



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You're correct: he doesn't :wink:

I don't claim to have a sophisticated understanding of the chemistry of metallurgy, but a detailed knowledge of the development of metallurgy is almost a sine qua non basis for understanding the development of higher order civilizations. However, what we have learned, once we dropped the middle east "cradle"/European superiority blinders which 18th and 19th century historians had used, is that metallurgy follows higher order civilizations, and neither causes them nor defines them.

In China, the invention of the crossbow has been traditionally dated to circa 600 BCE, relying upon both the archaeological evidence of bronze "trigger" mechanisms, and disputed linguistic references to written characters for crossbow (disputed in that scholars do not agree on which characters might or might not mean crossbow, the arguments being dependent upon context). However, ethnological evidence is that minority populations in China have used "triggerless" crossbows for literally millenia, with some scholars claiming both that this type of crossbow may have been used for as long as 4000 years (not a majority opinion), and that bone, horn and shell artifacts were in fact trigger mechanisms. As late as the Ming dynasty (14th century et sequitur), there is documentary evidence that some ethnic minorities used antler-based trigger mechanisms. The point of all of this is that it is possible, although not confirmed, that crossbows existed far longer in China than had previously been thought, and that they were not dependent upon metallurgy. If that is so, then the appearance of crossbows made with sophisticated bronze triggering mechanisms in the late 7th or early 6th centuries BCE represented not the invention of device which was dependent upon metallurgy, but the sophisticated improvement of a device using metallurgy.

In either case, the widespread use of crossbows predates the switch in China from "bloomery" iron smelting methods to the primitive blast furnace method of puddling molten iron at high temperatures to produce more reliable grades of cast iron. The evidence is pretty good that what Chinese historians have long maintained despite European skepticism to the effect that the development of large (truly huge by European standards) armies did not necessarily follow or depend upon metallurgical advances. Contemporary Chinese historians who promote this point of view claim that the crossbow was already known, and known for centuries, among ethnic minorities in the territory of what became China. Their claim is that previously, armies had depended upon mercenary levies of these tribesmen for the use of the crossbow, but that the introduction of bronze trigger mechanisms allowed for much larger groups to be trained to use the crossbow from among populations which were not familiar with its use. One strong inferential factor which favors this view is that almost constant warfare with large armies was already in progress in the Spring and Autumn period (roughly 750 BCE to 450 BCE), before the appearance of a crossbow with a trigger, and during which period smaller states were snapped up by the principal warring clans. In the subsequent Warring States period, these larger domains actually fragmented, and contemporary Chinese historians credit both the crossbow, and tactical doctrine which emphasized the use of disciplined bodies of soldiers equipped with pikes, with providing smaller war lords the means to challenge the larger, more wealthy and powerful states of the Zhuhou clan leaders. At all events, contemporary Chinese historians deny that any of this was the product of metallurgical advances, and rather insist that the nearly constant warfare over several centuries lead to metallurgical advances. Another incidental detail which favors this point of view is that sophisticated bronzes had been known as long ago as the Shang "dynasty" circa 1300 BCE, but that the new advances in the bronze and iron smelting and casting techniques only appear after the "civil wars" among the Zhuhou were well under way.

Furthermore, there is now a overwhelming evidence that higher order civilizations do not depend upon metallurgy. Recent research strongly suggests that the Sphinx is far older than the recorded history of pharaonic civilization in Egypt. Geological evidence has been alleged which would place the Sphinx's construction to 7000 BCE, long before the recorded history of pharaonic civilization, and some Egyptian scholars suggest that there were an earlier Hamitic civilization or civilizations which produced the Sphinx, and upon which the subsequent pharaonic civilization was based.

Whether or not that were true, the Americas provide abundant evidence that metallurgy was not necessary to the rise of very sophisticated higher order civilizations in both North and South America. There is archaeological evidence that Amerindians were smelting copper and gold (both of which can be found easily in surface deposits, obviating the need for mining operations) as long ago as 5000 BCE. But it was only ever used for ornamental purposes, and the basic technological culture of North, Central and South America remained stone age technology. Nevertheless, Kahokia was a city of perhaps as many as 40,000 inhabitants long before the Europeans arrived, and in fact, was probably abandoned before the Europeans arrived (at least before European colonists arrived). Compare that to the nascent United States 400 years later, when there was no city which much exceeded 20,000 inhabitants, except for Philadelphia.

In the central Mexican plateau, the Toltec tribes built enormously wealthy and sophisticated city states while their only metallurgical efforts were in ornamentation. The Spanish treated their military sophistication with respect, and the only thing which saved Cortés and his men from anhialation before they had even crossed the Sierra Madre Orientale was Cortés' diplomatic skills in coming to an arrangement with the rulers of Tlaxcala. The standard military equipment of Toltec armies were the bow and arrow, and swords made with fire-hardened wooden blades into which obsidian blades had been fitted.

Even before the rise of the Toltec city states, however, Teotihuacán came to be the largest city in the pre-Columbian Americas. There is good archaeological evidence that the people of Teotihuacán traded with, perhaps dominated, perhaps even conquered the other tribes of what is now Mexico, including the people of the Yucatan. Similarly, there is abundant evidence of an older, sophisticated civilization in the coastal highlands of what is now Peru, long before the rise of the Tawantinsuyu, which was relatively young at the time of the Spanish conquest, there having been 13 Incas at that time.

In all these examples from the Americas, the main factor in producing a higher order civilization had been social organization, especially in the case of the Tawantinsuyu, rather than any technological advances. It is, of course, possible that the Tawantinsuyu only seem to have been better organized socially and politically than other Amerindians because we have the most complete records of how their society was organized than in any other example. Be that as it may, the point cannot be denied that these civilizations reach higher order levels of organization in the absence of a technological reliance upon metallurgy. This is not to say that they did not use copper and gold--simply that their predominant technology remained stone age.