Ancient britain

[Suffolkrafter]

I've been revisiting History of Ancient Britain by Neil Oliver, currently three episodes in. I watched it a long time ago but for some reason it's really hit home this time round.
I don't think I fully appreciated two things:
The first is just how few people were around in the Mesolithic eras and earlier, presumably due to the large amount of land needed to support hunter gatherer societies, along with an unwillingness to venture far into the forests.
The second thing that struck me is just how staggering the change from mesolithic to neolithic really is, with the development of farming and more settled communities, and subsequent growth in population, trade and conflict. It really is a remarkable change.
What gets me is that prior to this change, we didn't live all that differently to other animals. We built rudimentary shelters, we foraged, we hunted. As did the other animals. We used tools, but again, other animals have been shown to use objects around them for various purposes. I guess what set us apart was the dexterity that came with opposable thumbs and enough intelligence to figure out mastery of fire and the eventual planting of seeds.
There's something about that development in our history that seems a little sad, and on the grand scheme of things, it has happened remarkably quickly. In any case, it's a great series, on iPlayer.

 

[Broch]

I've been studying the Mesolithic and Neolithic in Britain for some years now and the more I study the more respect I have for those early British. They had fantastic skills with their basic tools and materials, they were problem solvers, and they were thinkers.

 

[John Fenna]

And I love their clothing and tool making skills (a right pain to try to replicate!)

 

[Suffolkrafter]

I'd love to have a go making flint tools. There's tonnes of the stuff in my area and when I have the time I'll find a course and give it a go.
I was also struck by the differences in skills between the folk that lived pre-ice age, on the tundra, and those later inhabiting a woodland environment, birch, alder, oak and so on. Two very different environments. I guess following the change to neolithic and subsequent discovery of metal working, the next big change was the industrial revolution, then perhaps the age of computing?
In any case, it got me thinking about the concept of rewinding our land, natural habitats vs agricultural use and so on. What counts as natural or 'original'? I'm not so sure anymore, after watching this series.

 

[Broch]

It is a difficult subject. Some people consider a medieval farming landscape 'natural'; it's what they've been force fed as 'typical' countryside. I personally treat the Mesolithic and early Neolithic, very lightweight farming, era as the last 'natural' state for Britain. Our wildlife has evolved over hundreds of thousand of years, if not millions, we have been intensively farming for only around 4,000 years. What we call farmland birds are species that have adapted to take advantage of our farming environment because of loss of natural grasslands etc. The species haven't changed at all.

I chair an organisation called the Montgomeryshire Habitats Management Group (a bit of a mouthful I know). Our aim is to support land owners and managers (our membership includes anything from a garden to a farm and even large estates) to improve habitats for increased biodiversity. By trying to create all the seral stages of early British habitats (not all on one site) we will protect and improve our habitats for wildlife.

 

[haptalaon]

I really enjoyed the Ray Mears book about trees - which turned out to be a lot about ancient Britain, which order trees evolved in, how he imagined them living alongside trees based on the skills he knows. I loved how very humanising his vision of ancient people was, it made them seem very close by.

I love thinking about this stuff, I guess i find it quite spooky, the idea we are surrounded by the ghosts of trees.

Re: rewilding, I definitely think more biodiversity and more green space that is vibrant and alive is more important than any particular ideological/aesthetic goal of an era. So I'd support anything which local groups are able to finance and manage and which makes most sense with their landscape.

But id love to restore large patches to be truly left alone, ancient and wild, to see those ecosystems which worked themselves out without human participation. I'm not sure it's practical, but it would be a wonder to see.

 

[Aristotle]

I would like to see many of our currently very large areas of tussocky, treeless, grassy, moorland restored to forest.

Small areas of fenced off land fairly quickly becime woodland.

Near my parents house, in a post-undustrial town, what were originally waste tips have, without any obvious management, and no livestock, become fairly dense woodland in the 3 decades since my friends and I would play and ride motorcross bikes etc on them, when the trees and bushes were much smaller.

 

[haptalaon]

Near my parents house, in a post-undustrial town, what were originally waste tips have, without any obvious management, and no livestock, become fairly dense woodland in the 3 decades since my friends and I would play and ride motorcross bikes etc on them, when the trees and bushes were much smaller.

There was an interesting news story recently -

in Wales there's a big problem with unsecured coal tips, basically industrial waste from the last 100 years where some big guy has made money off the landscape and people but not put any of it into restoring or making safe the work sites. A thing that's still ongoing. A lot of these sites are at risk of collapsing and causing land-slides.

But because these places have been abandoned and are so useless and you can't do anything with them without huge amounts of upfront investment...they've turned into nature pockets, some with very rare or unusual critters and plants living there. So there's now a bit of tension about what to do with them: they do need securing, and yet. It's a tricky one!

 

[Pattree]

I read that. One problem is the very high acidity in a slag heap. If you leave a spade in that ground overnight you will get an etched line across the blade. There are very few indigenous plants that can survive that and they are trying to find a deep rooted tree or shrub species that will hold the tip together.

They are going to have to bulldoze the tops anyway. They were built by simply tipping waste from overhead buckets so they were very close to the angle of collapse and no one put drains in them. Some of them are creeping towards housing. I haven’t heard of a big collapse for a quite few years.
Yes indeed. Not an easy problem.

 

[haptalaon]

Some of them are creeping towards housing. I haven’t heard of a big collapse for a quite few years.
Yes indeed. Not an easy problem.

(derailing the topic a bit, but I think they're back in the news because there's been a handful, notably the one in Tylorstown)

 

[Aristotle]

There was an interesting news story recently -

in Wales there's a big problem with unsecured coal tips, basically industrial waste from the last 100 years where some big guy has made money off the landscape and people but not put any of it into restoring or making safe the work sites. A thing that's still ongoing. A lot of these sites are at risk of collapsing and causing land-slides.

But because these places have been abandoned and are so useless and you can't do anything with them without huge amounts of upfront investment...they've turned into nature pockets, some with very rare or unusual critters and plants living there. So there's now a bit of tension about what to do with them: they do need securing, and yet. It's a tricky one!

That's interesting. The ones that I was referring to are not coal slag, though.