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ARCHAEOLOGISTS EXCITED BY 500,000-YEAR-OLD AXE FIND IN QUARRY

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Europa
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« on: May 23, 2008, 12:51:46 am »

ARCHAEOLOGISTS EXCITED BY 500,000-YEAR-OLD AXE FIND IN QUARRY
By David Prudames 16/12/2004
 

 
 This image shows the axe head from different angles. Photo: Graham Norrie, University of Birmingham Institute of Archaeology and Antiquity.
 
A Stone Age hand axe dating back 500,000 years has been discovered at a quarry in Warwickshire.
 
The tool was found at the Smiths Concrete Bubbenhall Quarry at Waverley Wood Farm, near Coventry, which has already produced evidence of some of the earliest known human occupants of the UK.

It was uncovered in gravel by quarry manager John Green who took it to be identified by archaeologists at the University of Birmingham.

"We are very excited about this discovery," enthused Professor David Keen of the university's Archaeology Field Unit.

"Lower Palaeolithic artefacts are comparatively rare in the West Midlands compared to the south and east of England so this is a real find for us."
 
Despite being half and million years old the tool is very well-preserved and will eventually go on show at Warwickshire Museum.

Amongst other things, the hand axe would have been used for butchering animals, but what is perhaps most intriguing about it is that it is made of a type of volcanic rock called andesite.
 
Photo: Graham Norrie, University of Birmingham Institute of Archaeology and Antiquity.


 
Andesite bedrock only occurs in the Lake District or North Wales and this is only the ninth andesite hand axe to be found in the midlands in over a century. Archaeologists are now trying to figure out how the tool might have got there.

Although it is possible the rock was transported to the midlands by glacial ice from the north west there is as yet no evidence for it, which suggests humans might have brought it into the area.

The lack of material for good quality hand axes in the midlands would probably have been known to our ancestors, therefore these tools could have been brought in ready made.

It may also be significant that all previous andesite hand axe finds have been made in deposits of the Bytham River, a now lost river system that crossed England from the Cotswolds via the West Midlands and Leicester to the North Sea.

This valley was destroyed in a later glaciation and seems to have provided a route into the midlands for Palaeolithic hunters.

Half a million years ago the area was at the edge of the human world, linked to Europe along the Bytham valley and across a land-bridge existing before the cutting of the Straits of Dover.

In addition to the hand axe the Smiths Concrete Bubbenhall Quarry has produced 18 other Palaeolithic tools, currently under investigation by the team at Birmingham Archaeology.

Other finds in the area include bones and teeth from a straight-tusked elephant, which are also set to be displayed at Warwickshire Museum.
 
 
Warwickshire Museum, Warwick
  Warwickshire Museum, Market Hall, Market Place, Warwick, CV34 4SA, Warwickshire, England
T: 01926 412 500
Open: Tues-Sat 10.00 - 17.00 (all year round) Sun 11.30-17.00 (Apr - Sept only)
Closed: Mondays (except Bank Holidays)
 
 http://www.24hourmuseum.org.uk/nwh/ART25245.html
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« Reply #1 on: May 23, 2008, 05:10:47 am »

Great story!  Also the mention of the straight-tusked elephant is interesting, and ties into ongoing questions on other threads, yes?

Hand axes were highly sophisticated tools and a very large version were still in use during the Troyan war according to Homer.  Many of the dead had their heads and necks caved in from these monsters....and they were also used to cripple a horse with one blow, making the chariot useless.  They were carried aboard the ships and used under the keel to level and steady beached boats.
« Last Edit: May 23, 2008, 05:18:38 am by rockessence » Report Spam   Logged

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Edgar Cayce
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« Reply #2 on: May 23, 2008, 10:26:19 pm »

 Grin

Imagine; 496.500 years of service - as a symbol of skill, stand and dignity, as well as a major tool for wood-chopping, carpenting, wood-carving, butchery and skin-reeding - to become a symbol of primitive brutality and skull-breaking.

3.500 years ago and the "fall" of ancient antiquity seem to have started, as the cultures that built the "ancient civilisations" of "old antiquity" - start to declined and deintegrate. Thew cause given by the oral and litteral traditions point to "ignorance", "misbehaving", "violence" and "greed". The archeological sources may speak of a material and civil destruction that can only be exlained by "organized violence" - what historians may call "civil unrest"...

As warfare repeated and spread the entire culture of the old civilisations gradually changed - dramatically. When physical violence become organized and the tecniques of warfare developed into specialized killer-weapons - the use of the old "hammer-ax" - to protect oneself - became a significator of the older - and thus "more primitive" culture. They should be the defending part of the biased arguments, the phoney aggrivation - as well as the assaults, attacks and deterioriations descibed in the stories about the Trojan Wars...

Already during the time of the Babylonic tyrrants there was a new view spreading - as the new warlords succeeded - suggesting that the loosing part was the more primitive. Still today we find that old propaganda at work - as biologists and others tend to explain nature as a wrestlingmatch, where the win ner is explained not only as the stronger but also "the more advanced" - as by a "choice of nature". That's like saying that a stone is more advanced that a flower or a rose - since the stone can crush all its leaves in an instance.

Many have a hard time understanding how the ancient (and great) civilisatons could develop into magnificence, - and then be broken down and - even - errased. From what modern archeaology can tell there seem to be little or no signs of war prior to the Bronze Age. During the middle and late Bronze age the enigma of warfare seems to have spread - from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean. As the war reached Anatolia and Europe we see the start of "The Iron Age".

During this process the old code of dignity were repetitively broken - as groups and batalions accepted to be scholed, trained, equipped and dressed - to effective murderers. Since then - to fuel their further crimes and conquests - a row of tyrannies consequently described some of their neighbours as "bad", "dumb", "unjust", "untrustable", "crazy", "primitive", "wild", "sick", "scrupleless", "deceitful", "soul-less/sense-less" or "eternally evil".

That might have been the start of the stigmata that followd the disapearance of highly developed civilisations of Hindustan, Mesopotamia, Greece, Egypt, Rome, Europe, England, Scandinavia and Russia.
Later the same destiny hounted the treasures and resources of the ancient pyramid-builders of Asia, America and ultimately China and Australia...
 
In the Greek myths we find the expression "The **** of Europe" - refering to the consequence of the Trojan Wars that left Europe defenseless to the sucesssful agressors. As Rome were attacked their old (cretan/etruscan) kingdom fell apart. Replaced with the tyrrants of a "City State" the Greek and Roman cultures became part of a repeating warfare.

When they finally managed to defend themselves successfully the "War-culture" had become the Lex of the land. As their war-machines improved the Roman warlords became criminals temselves - as they extended their mandatories and forced themselves into the royal seats. Forming new empires they used their powers to invade, subdue and rob even their long-term allies and peaceful neighbours. As the and the old code of conduct, rigthousness and human dignity were broken the tyrants of Greece and Rome would stigmatize their northern neighbours as "wild and agressive, but primitive" in the same breath as they were adressed as "heathens", "barbars" and "pagans".

"Heathen" originally refer to the people of the North-European heaths, which include large parts of France, Germany, Belgium, Holland, Denmark and Sweden. All basicly agriculturalists - from Neolitic time onwards.

"Barbar" refers to the ancient custom of undressing and stay bare - as the spring-temperature rises to the comfort of summer-heat, bathing temperatures - on beaches, meadows and estates assigned and equipped for social gatherings and events - as well as moments of profound intimacy.

"Pagan" simply refer to "The Woodlanders".

Today we may ask WHY it became wrong to be born and rised to apriciate, cultivate, grow and live in and from the onces rigthly inherited wood-lands?!


---

When the ancient men of Europe became object to foreign agression, piracy and invasion - their stone-axes and hammers were one of the few tools they had to defend themselves. Facing metal-pikes, spears, daggers, swords and axes these stone-axes obviously became a symbol of somthing "old and primtive".

Since the start of Eurasian archeology the excavated stone-axes and hammers have led our contemporary historians to borrow the the stigamatized picture of the northern European - as a "wild and primitve pagan". Even when they are found in Neolitic, Mesolithic and - even - Paleolithic compounds - the present understanding of these "stone-age-cultures" seem to be fundamentally wrong.

The association of the stone-ax is still connected to "skull-breaking brutality" of "primitive brutality". Resuming the consequent stigmatisation, invasion and conquest of Scandianvia we may remember the "official view" on the Vikings as "Wild, brutal, terrible, horendous, primitive..." 

The impact of this old stigmata is obviously still in effect. Not before 1995 could the historic academies in Scandianvia agree to discuss the verifications and the historic context of this old, but outdated view on the marine forces called "Vikings".

Today we may understand that the navy of "Viking war-ships" were not much different from the naval forces of the Trojan Wars - except from better speed, bearing and efficency. Allied i their efforts to resist foreign tyrrants the unified kingdoms of Scandinavia had succeded to mobilize, train and equip their "Sea-Wolves" - into an impressive navy and an effective weapon. Their efficency even threate Rome itself (862) - which made it possible for the ancient civilisation of Scandinavia to successfully resist the new "Emperors of Rome" from taking Denmark and Scandinavia - until 987 AD when the Danish defence-system was broken by an overwhelming army, recruited among the enslaved populations of France and Germany.

Since the enslavers won Scandinavia, too, we have all learned how "civilsation" arrived in Europe with "The Word of Christ"  - in latin. Consequently we learn to believe that the stone-age Europeans were "very simple", "primitive" and "wild".

At the end of the day we still seem to consider the poorer peasants to be somewhat dumb, narrow-minded and "uncultivated".  But nothing about their value as food producers with a life-long service - not to speak of their ethic qualites, - such as honesty, dignity, responsability and honourability. Consequently there is a connection between the ancient, civil culture that spread the dropshaped "hammerax" of flint - and the defending part of the old (pagan) culture that built Crete, Egypt, Greece and Rome...
« Last Edit: May 26, 2008, 09:38:44 pm by Boreas » Report Spam   Logged

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« Reply #3 on: May 24, 2008, 02:46:00 pm »

Boreas, once again you focus that brilliant beam of light into the dark, for all of us!
Thanks for this great post!!!  Love your wonderful mind!
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ILLIGITIMI NON CARBORUNDUM

Thus ye may find in thy mental and spiritual self, ye can make thyself just as happy or just as miserable as ye like. How miserable do ye want to be?......For you GROW to heaven, you don't GO to heaven. It is within thine own conscience that ye grow there.

Edgar Cayce
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