Hello Redneck, et al,
Congratulations, you've prompted what has already develop into a worthwhile and fascinating discussion.
First of all, let me qualify myself by stating that I am not an archaeologist and no expert and fully believe that those who promote themselves as experts in a field should be viewed with extreme suspicion. Neither do I see myself as a Bushcrafter but rather as a mountaineer who never stopped for long enough to appreciate or to take stock of the skills I had acquired along the way until I matured, becoming older and more crabbit.
Fire, for me, is only ever a luxury on a beautiful spring or late autumn evening, or after the fire is established and my camp consolidated. Otherwise it has been a necessity as defence against midgies, mosies and clegs, misery or hypothermia and on the odd occasion, a matter of life or death.
I do not wish to deride anyone or undervalue the fascination of fire-making or the practice of skills and sheer enjoyment of doing so, but because of experience I do view the use of anything other than the quickest and most reliable way of making fire as an indulgence. I use a cigarette lighter, carry a mag-rod, firelighters, rubber, cotton wool, birchbark, amadou and anything else I know will take a spark or burn readily.
I'm convinced that our ancestors would have had much the same attitude as I do with regard to getting a fire going as quickly and easily as possible and would most certainly have used a cigarette lighter if they could have got their hands on gas refills and I'd bet, given half the chance, they'd have had a few stories to tell about idiots throwing petrol on the fire.
I agree with you entirely regarding your conjecture that the bow-drill is a technological development, that the hand-drill probably came first and that the Spark was the business in Europe both before the development of other methods and long after they had fallen from vogue or had been forgotten!
Toddy's axiom, that "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" is wonderful... if inconvenient! Flint is present in Scotland, as are agate, quartz, jasper and chert, all of which will indeed make a spark. Iron is also present and although there may be a rarity of nodes such as are present elsewhere in Britain and the European continent, trade, barter and commerce are nothing new and there is evidence of coastal and continental trade away before the early bronze age into the neolithic and probably Mesolithic. We have fine stone axe and mace heads made from jadeite and other materials, which could only have been imported from continental Europe, in our museums and there appears to be some uniformity in size and form throughout Europe from the Neolithic to the weights and measures of the late Bronze Age EU Standards.
A particularly provocative idea for me is that early bronze weapon design compares sexily with Mesolithic design and I believe that familiar skills and technology were merely transferred from familiar materials to the new, and the use of fire may well have been the catalyst! C'mon Baby light my fire!
I hold issue with your belief that our ancestry is no older than the Neolithic (presuming you are referring to Britain and not the Americas... Redneck? And the Mesolithic Solutreans believed to be the first settlers of what are now the Americas predate your "Neolithic (10,000 - 4,000 years ago)" by a possible 5,000 years), as the evidence of Mesolithic occupation is everywhere and one of the first long-term neolithic camps discovered in Britain is just along the coast from me at Morton Farm near Tentsmuir in Fife, with an abundance of microliths, hammers and other tools and enormous shell and bone middens.
Just two miles from my home are the Wemyss Caves (Wemyss = uamh; Gaelic and probably Brithonic, "cave") which are covered in graffiti and carvings, from "Wee Tam loves Tracy", past more modern times of the Hammer and Sickle, Fleur de lys, Union Jack, Lion Rampant, the Norse Thor and companion goat (I'd have thought he'd have a Rottweiler or a Pit Bull), a long ship complete with mast and sail, oars, helmsman and steering oar (obviously carved some time after a sudden bowel evacuation); Pictish floral rods, mirror and crescents (The Experts again), Z-rods, bulls, salmon, wolves, deer, horses; an odd deer/horse looking animal with a conspicuous elongated head makes me wonder when the last Scottish elk died! There are tether points the likes of which I've only seen in the Mediterranean, double ballock and erections, female fertility symbols (which The Experts refer to as bird-symbols because they look like a bird head with eyes above a V shaped beak), Mesolithic cup and ring marks: And symbols which I believe to be so ancient, strange and alien that they are meaningless to us. Perhaps the product of a different thought process, understanding and world view to Modern Man!
Neanderthal remains have been recovered from Doggerland. Sea level rose markedly after the last Ice Age retreat and what was sea level in the Mesolithic is now some 30 - 50 mtrs below present. An area of the North East is currently being investigated on the grounds that soil deposits, stratification and formation may indicate that the immediate area remained ice free during the last Ice Age, increasing the probability of human occupation. About 10 years ago there were artifacts found in a limestone cave in the Eribole area of the far north of Scotland, the implications being that an Inuit type people lived or visited the cave some 15,000 years ago or earlier.
It is my belief that all of these people had fire, but not all of them had access to wood! All of them had fire but not all of them were party to the same technological advantage. One thing is patently obvious, that our ancestors were highly resilient and intelligent with an array of skills and knowledge of their environment which we can only glimpse as though through the wrong end of our electron microscopes.
Just delighted at having the opportunity to express myself, so thank you all.
, its called Doggerland, but it was gradually disappearing after the ice had retreated and the land was returning to normal. (weight of the ice etc)
