Humans in Britain 700,000 years ago

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Littlestone L
Littlestone Dec 15, 2005 22:45:06
Replying to PeterH

>...it really makes you realise that the text book accounts can no longer stand as orthodox dogma.<

Yup, "The stone tools from Pakefield are by far the oldest evidence we have for people in north Europe or the Alps... So who were they? That is a difficult question to answer... We do not know whether there was a local evolutionary transition to <i>heidelbergensis</i>, perhaps with a change to handaxe making, or whether new people and new technology came into western Europe, replacing or absorbing the previous inhabitants."*

The first handaxe from the Pakefield excavations will be on permanent display at the Time and Tide Museum, Great Yarmouth. This beautiful axe is on display at Norwich Castle Museum until mid-January.

* <b>British Archaeology</b>. January-February 2006. pp 25.

W Wild Wooder
Wild Wooder Dec 19, 2005 16:36:30
Replying to Littlestone

Sorry to drag this string back onto the front screen, but I keep mulling the whole thing over. What intrigues me is whether these people, who clearly had a degree of sophistication to produce the stone tools, were also in the process of developing social awareness and structure and some sort of an appreciation of the spiritual dimension. If this was the case, can we view it as the genesis of the society that erected giant stones?