Prehistory and how it relates to Bushcraft.

[THOaken]

BCUK history buffs, what would you say is your favourite age or era of pre/ancient history and how does it relate to the practice traditional woodsman's skills? Or just tell us your favourite age and why it interests you in general.

I view the Mesolithic, the Middle Stone Age, as perhaps the most closely related to what we would call self reliant living that resembles Bushcraft. The Middle Stone Age came after the Last Glacial Maximum and was a time of wild woods. This is a time when we on the British Isles truly understood nature. We lived off the land in the purest sense of living off the land: we foraged, we hunter gathered. This is a time before agricultural development. We moved season by season to different parts of the Island, mostly on the coast, looking for choice foods. We lived in small bands and lead nomadic lifestyles. Our mindset, our entire world-view would've been rooted to the land. We weren't sedentary yet. I believe we were healthier and more productive before the advent of farming, but I'm also aware of farming's wide array of uses and, ultimately, the rapid progress it achieved in our society. The Mesolithic, however, was a time when our ancestors knew the land intimately, knew all of its inhabitants and respected them. That's why I am fascinated by the Mesolithic.

How about yourselves?

 

[huntergathereralex]

Hi THOaken. I'm pretty much in line with your view of the Mesolithic, although the Neolithic and Early Bronze Age have their benefits when it came to bushcraft( Neolithic = more 'stable' food supply, although only semi-nomadic in the beginning. Bronze Age = well, metal! Really handy compared to stone tools, but fully sedentary by the end of this period),so some trade offs.
From my online research, you have some of the most intriguing Mesolithic sites in the Orkney/Shetland Islands, and the Western Isles. Lucky you!
Cheers
Alex

 

[THOaken]

Hi THOaken. I'm pretty much in line with your view of the Mesolithic, although the Neolithic and Early Bronze Age have their benefits when it came to bushcraft( Neolithic = more 'stable' food supply, although only semi-nomadic in the beginning. Bronze Age = well, metal! Really handy compared to stone tools, but fully sedentary by the end of this period),so some trade offs.
From my online research, you have some of the most intriguing Mesolithic sites in the Orkney/Shetland Islands, and the Western Isles. Lucky you!
Cheers
Alex

Indeed. I'm quite lucky to have quite a lot of archaeological sites here in Scotland. You make good points.

 

[treadlightly]

The Mesolithic is very interesting to me. It is the furthest back we can go when Britain was an island. The people were hunter/gatherers but not on steppe or Arctic type tundra but in forests with which we can identify and the techniques they used still have echoes today.

 

[THOaken]

The Mesolithic is very interesting to me. It is the furthest back we can go when Britain was an island. The people were hunter/gatherers but not on steppe or Arctic type tundra but in forests with which we can identify and the techniques they used still have echoes today.

This is all very true. I feel somewhat more connected to the Mesolithic, even though we don't understand a lot about the inhabitants of the Island at this time. The Iron Age gives us a glimpse of people with a shared Celtic culture, but I feel like there's something special about the Mesolithic.

 

[Tengu]

I have little use for prehistory as there were no books.

 

[boatman]

Certainly the Mesolithic is the most bushy but even then there is evidence that it wasn't a free for all with seasonal campsites and permanent houses that may have been occupied seasonally as well but obviously the "owners" would have expected to be able to reside there when necessary.

I am not that taken with the Neolithic except that I like Francis Pryor's suggestion that much of its development was home-grown depending on livestock and garden plots initially. Bronze is a wonderful material and I have virtually a full Bronze Age toolkit which is a challenge when doing an early Bronze Age display so as not to show too much bronze stuff. Very fond of the Amesbury Archer too. By the Iron Age we are almost modern with international diplomacy and increasing consumer goods with established but fluid hierarchies an Iron Age that really extended long into the early medieval really.

Linking all of these through time and geographically as well are the boats and later the ships of the peoples which are a vastly pleasant and rewarding study.

 

[THOaken]

I have little use for prehistory as there were no books.

...Interesting outlook, Tengu.

 

[THOaken]

Certainly the Mesolithic is the most bushy but even then there is evidence that it wasn't a free for all with seasonal campsites and permanent houses that may have been occupied seasonally as well but obviously the "owners" would have expected to be able to reside there when necessary.

I am not that taken with the Neolithic except that I like Francis Pryor's suggestion that much of its development was home-grown depending on livestock and garden plots initially. Bronze is a wonderful material and I have virtually a full Bronze Age toolkit which is a challenge when doing an early Bronze Age display so as not to show too much bronze stuff. Very fond of the Amesbury Archer too. By the Iron Age we are almost modern with international diplomacy and increasing consumer goods with established but fluid hierarchies an Iron Age that really extended long into the early medieval really.

Linking all of these through time and geographically as well are the boats and later the ships of the peoples which are a vastly pleasant and rewarding study.

A great read of your analyses of all the ages. Yes, I think the Mesolithic is indeed the most "bushy." The Neolithic is characterized by those great stone monuments we all know about, but I fear there's less recognition for the people there. There's also some dispute about the introduction of farming and whether it was a 'wave of advance' revolution or not. As for the Bronze Age, the Amesbury Archer is dreadfully fascinating, isn't he? It's shocking to anyone who might not know a lot about the Iron Age and how different a world it was when even compared the Bronze Age. Full society modernity came with the Iron Age.

 

[huntergathereralex]

Hi THOaken. If you have not yet read any of these, I can recommend:
1) Going Over:The Mesolithic-Neolithic transition in North West Europe.
2)Mesolithic on the Move.
3)Thinking Mesolithic.
4)Mesolithic Britain and Ireland.
5)Mesolithic Britain~Wymer
6)Mesolithic Lives in Scotland.
7)Mesolithic Horizons.
8)Britain B.C.(a fav.)
These are all good recommendations, some easy to get, others not so much. Hope this helps.
Cheers
(sometimes Mesolithic huntergatherer)Alex

 

[THOaken]

Hi THOaken. If you have not yet read any of these, I can recommend:
1) Going Over:The Mesolithic-Neolithic transition in North West Europe.
2)Mesolithic on the Move.
3)Thinking Mesolithic.
4)Mesolithic Britain and Ireland.
5)Mesolithic Britain~Wymer
6)Mesolithic Lives in Scotland.
7)Mesolithic Horizons.
8)Britain B.C.(a fav.)
These are all good recommendations, some easy to get, others not so much. Hope this helps.
Cheers
(sometimes Mesolithic huntergatherer)Alex

Much appreciated, Alex. Thanks.

 

[Goatboy]

Surprisingly Julian Cope's The Modern Antiquarian & the The Megalithic European are also well worth a look. Think you're too young to remember his earlier work.

 

[huntergathereralex]

Goatboy,The Megalithic European, not heard of this one....mmmm,gonna have to track this one down.
Cheers
Alex

 

[rg598]

It's an interesting question. It is also a very hard one to answer. It is hard to answer for two reasons.

The first is that we know so little about any of those time periods. Perhaps that is what Tengu meant. We have only tiny glimpses into the way people lived. The vast majority of our efforts to reconstruct a coherent picture of a Mesolithic or any other prehistoric time period is based on guess work and speculation, and in many cases wishful thinking. We know virtually nothing about the standard of living of those people, or exactly how their lives were structured. It is virtually impossible to conclusively say whether the life of any particular person from that time period was happy and productive, or miserable and full of suffering. Did people enjoy liberty and the right to hunt and forage equally, or did they suffer under the tyranny of a chosen few? Were the spoils of a hunt divided equally and justly, or did the weak suffer and depend on the charity of others? Without knowing, it is hard to pick a "favorite" period. The romantic notion of free men roaming the forests, living by their skills and understanding of nature, in harmony with their surroundings, is probably far from the reality of any prehistoric period.

The other reason it is hard to answer is that it depends on what you mean by "favorite age". If you mean whether I want to live in any prehistoric age, the short answer is "No!", and the long answer is "Hell No!" I like bathing, I like being able to go to a dentist whose tool is not a rock, and a doctor who does not call on spirits to heal me. If you mean favorite age to study, then that's a different story. I personally enjoy military history, so my interests fall within the late bronze and iron age.

In my opinion bushcraft is most closely related to the iron age (if we had to pick a prehistoric time period, and in reality the late 18th and early 19th century if we didn't have that limitation). Bushcraft heavily relies on tools, and many of our practices would be hard to reconcile with stone age skills. It is hard to get around the need for a pot to boil and purify water. Few of us would do it true stone age style and drink untreated water. Many bushcrafters are proficient in skills involving the axe and knife, but felling a tree with a stone axe is a whole other ball game.

 

[Tengu]

Ive just been around a few Cornish holy wells and very few I would drink from.

Those that are not full of organic muck are no doubt sterilised by heavy metals

 

[boatman]

If we may be allowed to refer to ethnographic examples then we can see free men moving happily through the woods etc. Of course many took on obligations to families and were born into community obligations. I am sure that any Americans will correct me but weren't Native American Plains Indians, for example, free to fight or not as they personally chose?

Why the hang-up about water? People drink water and have since there were people and before they were people. Maybe they got ill sometimes but their immune systems must have been very robust.

Hunter-gatherers are often recorded as saying how smelly the whites they met were. Most tribes have ritual cleansing activities such as sweat lodges and if near a river or the sea then swimming is often a favourite activity.

Very little indication of even hunting being an important part of the diet in the Iron Age (to generalise horribly) let alone any other evidence of Bushcraft being employed.

 

[Mouse040]

I'm with you Mesolithic as regards to your point rg598 about wanting to live in another age , do you think we would struggle more living in that age with our knowledge or someone from that age living in our times with their knowledge

And I'm aware of the medical ramifications for both and concepts of technological evolution I'm purely talking about the ability to use our skill sets to live , even with the level of self suficancy they would of had in the Mesolithic could they use there skills in our deplenished environment to survive and likewise one of us with basic bushcraft knowledge could we survive in the face of a truly wild environment
I love the history of man from this period but find it frustrating with so many maybes

 

[boatman]

Latest Mesolithic house experiment and the reference within the article is to one suggesting that the Mesolithics modified their environment by burning in order to enhance growth of hazelnuts, crab apples and rasberries. Also there is a picture of the impression of a Middle Stone Age foot, fantastic to be able to follow for a short distance a walk taken by people so long ago.

http://phys.org/news/2013-07-replica-year-mesolithic-built-ucd.html

 

[treadlightly]

Latest Mesolithic house experiment and the reference within the article is to one suggesting that the Mesolithics modified their environment by burning in order to enhance growth of hazelnuts, crab apples and rasberries. Also there is a picture of the impression of a Middle Stone Age foot, fantastic to be able to follow for a short distance a walk taken by people so long ago.

http://phys.org/news/2013-07-replica-year-mesolithic-built-ucd.html

Interesting....thanks for the link.

 

[Stringmaker]

Another way to ponder this question (and thanks to the OP because it is a good one), is to ask:

"If the lights go out, to what pre-historical period would society revert and how quickly?"

I reckon a couple of hours before the looting started, a couple of days before the killing for food and water..

We'd be feral tribal hordes in no time; all the preppers who think they would be okay would simply become targets for those with nothing.