I am pleased
that they at least were somehow or the other to lock down the actual antiquity
of this site. It gives us another
starting point for the development of human knowledge that is properly deep in
time.
Far too often we
are expected to accept a contemporaneous provenance for a broadly distributed
body of knowledge which is obviously nonsense but swayed by the resultant statistical
preponderance of evidence at the end point.
Here at least we
discover that tribal lore included astronomical methods likely already thousands
of years old and broadly distributed if it was applied in Scotland long before
the European Bronze Age.
As noted we are
picking up significant traces of knowledge and sophisticated stonework at the
10,000 year mark in isolated locales as we might expect because it remained
early days into the development of agriculture.
It is not too spectacular and it may not be metal work yet but it is definitely
a clear beginning. Unfortunately the
better locales are certainly underwater.
'World's oldest
calendar' discovered in Scottish field
14 July 2013
Archaeologists believe they have discovered the
world's oldest lunar "calendar" in an Aberdeenshire field.
Excavations of a field at Crathes Castle found a
series of 12 pits which appear to mimic the phases of the moon and track lunar
months.
A team led by the University of Birmingham suggests
the ancient monument was created by hunter-gatherers about 10,000 years ago.
The pit alignment, at Warren Field, was first
excavated in 2004.
The experts who analysed the pits said they may have
contained a wooden post.
The Mesolithic "calendar" is thousands of
years older than previous known formal time-measuring monuments created in
Mesopotamia.
The analysis has been published in the journal,
Internet Archaeology.
The pit alignment also aligns on the Midwinter
sunrise to provide the hunter-gatherers with an annual "astronomic
correction" in order to better follow the passage of time and changing
seasons.
Vince Gaffney, Professor of Landscape Archaeology at
Birmingham, led the analysis project.
He said: "The evidence suggests that
hunter-gatherer societies in Scotland had both the need and sophistication to
track time across the years, to correct for seasonal drift of the lunar year
and that this occurred nearly 5,000 years before the first formal calendars
known in the Near East.
"In doing so, this illustrates one important
step towards the formal construction of time and therefore history
itself."
The universities of St Andrews, Leicester and
Bradford were also involved.
Dr Richard Bates, of the University of St Andrews,
said the discovery provided "exciting new evidence" of the early
Mesolithic Scotland.
He added: "This is the earliest example of such
a structure and there is no known comparable site in Britain or Europe for
several thousands of years after the monument at Warren Field was
constructed."
The Warren Field site was first discovered as
unusual crop marks spotted from the air by the Royal Commission on the Ancient
and Historical Monuments of Scotland (RCAHMS).
Dave Cowley, aerial survey projects manager at
RCAHMS, said: "We have been taking photographs of the Scottish landscape
for nearly 40 years, recording thousands of archaeological sites that would
never have been detected from the ground.
"Warren Field stands out as something special,
however. It is remarkable to think that our aerial survey may have helped to find
the place where time itself was invented."
From 2004 to 2006, trust staff and Murray
Archaeological Services excavated the site.
NTS archaeologist Dr Shannon Fraser said: "This
is a remarkable monument, which is so far unique in Britain.
"Our excavations revealed a fascinating glimpse
into the cultural lives of people some 10,000 years ago - and now this latest
discovery further enriches our understanding of their relationship with time
and the heavens."
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