Month: May 2021

The stone age. It invokes a picture of primitive humans hitting things with rocks. In fact, the term ‘stone age’ covers a period of about 3 million years!

The Palaeolithic, or old stone age, began when hominids first picked up stones to use as tools. First, they would have been for breaking things; then, jagged edges would have been used as blades for knives or crude axes.

There’s a problem, though. Defining these vast chunks of our species’ history with such simple terms is misleading.

From 3 million years ago, our ancestors used stone tools, but their societies evolved over time. Stone only defined the material they used as tools in the same way we call other periods the bronze age or the iron age. Most of their lives were nothing to do with stone at all.

The bulk of Neolithic homes, based on archaeological finds, were constructed from wood and thatched with straw or reeds. Their furniture would have been made of timber, as might their plates and spoons. Wood, leather, fabric and plant fibres would have been far more important to our ancestors. They simply used stone to work them. The biggest problem is that these other materials are perishable.

Whereas we can find stone axes, knives and arrowheads, the wooden, leather and cloth artefacts are long gone. There are clues as to the skills of these ancient humans, though. Finds in Denmark and Scotland have shown us how the stone age peoples would have worked wood. The handles of axes, thrown into a bog or the sea, as ritual offerings, have been found. Each one beautifully carved to fulfil its purpose. A complete house door was discovered in Switzerland, crafted by the home builder 6,000 years ago.

There is evidence of fabric too. Though a piece of cloth could never survive the thousands of years that separate us from them, a textile imprint on a clay pot was found at Ness of Brodgar in the Orkney Islands. It seems the potter reached inside the pot during its manufacture, leaving the imprint of his or her sleeve in the wet clay, preserved for 5,000 years for us to find.

But what of us? What defines our ‘age’? Would you call this time the technological age or the computer age? Computers and machines control most of our daily lives now. We can barely function without clocks and cars, smartphones and electricity.

We look back at our ancestors and think their society was strange and exotic. Yet, they have over 3 million years of history for their ways, and we have barely a few hundred.

Perhaps we are the strange ones!

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The recent discovery of a log boat in the waters of the Boyne River in Ireland prompted me to investigate the likely sailing vessels of the Neolithic.

The boat, found near Drogheda, on the east coast of Ireland, was newer, between the bronze age and the middle ages. Still, the design of these ‘dugout’ boats had not significantly changed for thousands of years. Take a large section of a tree trunk, shape the outside to the hull profile you need, then spend hours painstakingly chopping out the centre with a stone axe or adze.

The boat you’re left with is long and narrow, with pretty poor stability, but it floats. In calm seas or inland waterways, it’s an excellent method of getting about.

The island I call home has some pretty inaccessible places. A section of the island called South Lochs was hard to reach before the building of paved roads, even though it was pretty close to the principal town of Stornoway. The residents would take a rowing boat for their journeys to the town rather than face the endless slog across rough moorland.

There is more evidence of early boatbuilding found at Broksø, Denmark. Peat digging uncovered a 3.8-metre long canoe, preserved in the bog for around 5,000 years. It’s made from an oak log, though other discoveries have revealed the use of alder and lime wood for boats too.

There were other options, of course. Boats can also be built from a woven wooden frame, covered in animal skins, and sealed with fat. This means a greater choice in the hull’s shape. There are traditional Irish boats, known as currachs, that were made this way.

Putting to sea in these must have been a hit and miss experience. Yet, we know our ancient ancestors travelled this way by the apparent trail of a trade route up the west coast of Britain. Flint tools from Grimes Graves, where up to 18,000 tonnes of flint were extracted in the Neolithic period, have been found throughout Britain. These were traded and must have been transported by boat to many of the archaeological sites where they were recovered.

Today, I think most of us would think long and hard about taking to the sea in a rowboat to trade with our neighbours. Maybe our ancient ancestors were braver than we believe.

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Until next time…

D J Eastwood