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Amesbury in Wiltshire confirmed as oldest UK settlement, reports the BBC.
The town of Amesbury, which includes the famous monument Stonehenge, "has been confirmed [to have] been occupied since 8820 BCE" making it the longest continuous settlement in the United Kingdom. Researchers also discovered evidence of frogs' legs being eaten in Britain 8,000 years before any evidence of frog leg eating in France. No one from France was available for comment at the time of this post, however, we can easily imagine them "steaming" about what smug bas*&^ds many of the British can be in situations like this. (Snark alert. No more silly puns or I may croak. Ribbit.) The British should be careful because further research may show these frog legs were left at Stonehenge by French tourists who became bored with the local cuisine of crickets and bark.
Stonehenge is still widely recognized today as the icon used as a stage set for the heavy metal band Spinal Tap.
From our second article we learn The Stonehenge Hidden Landscape Project team used ground-penetrating radar, and 3-D laser scanning, to create a map of a wide area around the Stonehenge monument. One interesting discovery is a long trough bisecting an east-west ditch that is thought to be aligned the sun rise locations of the fall and spring equinoxes.
First from the BBC we learn:
David Jacques, from the University of Buckingham, said: "The site blows the lid off the Neolithic Revolution in a number of ways. .. "The area was clearly a hub point for people to come to from many miles away, and in many ways was a forerunner for what later went on at Stonehenge itself. ... The first monuments at Stonehenge were built by these people. For years people have been asking why is Stonehenge where it is, now at last, we have found the answers." ...
"We have found remains of big game animals, such as aurochs and red deer, and an enormous amount of burnt flint from their feasting fires."
The dig in Amesbury also uncovered 31,000 worked flints in 40 days as well as animal bones such as frogs' legs.
Mr Jacques said our ancestors were eating a "Heston Blumenthal-style menu".
It's about time someone "blew the lid off of" this whole Neolithic Revolution thing, which I'm sure many others were beginning to find to be a tad annoying as well.
But, what is this about "Heston Blumenthal-style menu?" What the heck is this supposed to mean? Winston Churchill once quipped that America and England are 'two nations divided by a common language." He could have "beefed-up " this quote a tad by adding and and uncommon diet. Can anyone find one restaurant in all of American where on can go in and ask, "May I have some frog legs served in the Heston Blumenthal style, and make them extra medium, please? And, oh yes, I'll some Patriot Fries with that."
Maybe I'm just in a rotten mood today, but does anyone else find it "a tad odd" that Andy Rhind-Tutt, the founder of Amesbury Museum and Heritage Trust, is deducing that there must be "something unique and rather special about the area" to keep people there from the end of the Ice Age, to when Stonehenge was created and until today?" Heck, isn't this sort of like saying "why yes, there must be something very 'unique unique and rather special about the area' to keep people living around Pittsburgh, since the early colonial days, when so many obviously better places are to the west an all around in every direction. (Sorry Pittsburgh, I mean this in the most sympathetic possible way.)
Let'a face it, most people are lazy. Once they find a place to put a sofa and now a TV that's pretty much where you find most of their descendants for hundreds of years. Must of been more so back in the days when one had to crawl through forests with no roads to get "elsewhere," and the major source of news of the "world" was drunkards and criminals thrown out of, or escaping from, other areas.
Well this "gruel is a little thin." While trying to "dig up" more facts for our readers I found Archaeologists Discover 15 Previously Unknown Monuments Buried Around Stonehenge, at Huffington Post, and an odd reversal of perusal direction for more substantive articles.
The mystery surrounding Stonehenge has suddenly deepened -- literally. A first-of-its-kind study suggests that 15 previously undiscovered or poorly understood monuments lie hidden under the ancient stone monument and its surroundings.
For the study, researchers used a variety of techniques -- including ground-penetrating radar and 3D laser scanning -- to create a highly detailed subsurface map of the entire area. According to a release from the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Archaeological Prospection and Virtual Archaeology, one of the partners in the study, the technologies are notable for being much less destructive than traditional, digging-based exploratory techniques.
The trough and the other newfound monuments have "absolutely transformed" how archeologists view the area, Gaggney said. Yet "until you dig holes," he acknowledged, "you just don’t know what you’ve got."
"Absolutely transformed?" Does he mean this literally or figuratively? Does he mean that in regard to the English eating frogs legs thousands of years before the French? Yes, but is it much of a risk guessing they did not cook them as well. Because we've known Stonehenge has been a major religious and trade hub for early pagans for a long time. So, although I find this to be exciting it seems a bit of stretch and maybe even cheeky to declare this to be "an absolute transformation" of our understanding of the era. A substantial "relative extension" seems more accurate to me.
Dang, I can see its going to be a long day for me kogs. So many little things are bugging me. Maybe I had caffeinated coffee by accident for breakfast - I seem to bet allergic to it and becoming aggressively irritable all day after drinking it.
P.S. Oh, damn! I couldn't close this article without looking up the Heston Marc Blumenthal style of cooking From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. I was hoping it would say "a style of cooking descended from ancient inhabitants of Stonehenge."
Heston Marc Blumenthal, OBE (ˈbluːmənθɔːl;[1] born 27 May 1966) is an English celebrity chef and owner of several restaurants. He is an advocate for the importance of scientific understanding in cooking and a pioneer of multi-sensory cooking, food-pairing and flavour encapsulation. He has advanced his ideas in books, two long-running newspaper columns and several TV series.
Cherio and all that.
PS: On an encouraging aside we should notice how the United States and England have patched up our differences after the Revolutionary War. When friends visited from England, when I lived up near Concord, Mass I would always take them to show them statues of our founding fathers and mothers, and freedom fighter they thought were terrorists, the shot heard round the world, and the New England stone walls behind with our early colonists rebel forces shot at the British soldiers in what they thought was a crass and savage way to fight a war.
11:59 AM PT: This comment by glb3 is so great I have to put it up here in an update as well so the flybyers don't miss it.
So, are you telling us that Stonehenge was an ancient restaurant specializing in multi-sensory cooking, food-pairing, and flavor encapsulation?
by glb3 on Tue Aug 26, 2014 at 02:12:58 PM EDT
The restaurant at the end of the Wiltshireverse!
by Railfan on Tue Aug 26, 2014 at 02:49:35 PM EDT
[new] Yes, exactly. Thanks for clarifying this glb3. Due to that distraction about the frog legs, I completely "lept over" this most important . Thanks for clarifying this.
Apparently, it was the original "Hard Rock Cafe."
Damn, what an oversight. I'm off today. I'm not "stoned" are anything. Now people are going to make jokes about me being "dumb as a bag of rocks."
If I ever become a famous writer maybe literary historians will refer to this as my Neolithic Period?