Archaeologists discover Britain's oldest home

[n2doc]

By David Keys, Archaeology Correspondent

Archaeologists have found Britain's earliest house - constructed by Stone Age tribesmen around 11,000 years ago. The discovery is likely to change the way archaeologists view that early period.

Just 3.5 metres in diameter, the circular post-built house pre-dates other Stone Age buildings in the UK by up to a thousand years.

Located at one of Britain's most important prehistoric archaeological sites, Star Carr in North Yorkshire, the newly discovered building may have been home to a Stone Age hunter - or conceivably even a prehistoric priest or shaman.


Ethnographic parallels elsewhere in the world suggest that, in hunter-gather societies, well-built structures of this kind were often the homes of shamans.


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http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/archaeology/a...

[HEyHEY]

1. Etched in on the wall is the world's first recorded sarcastic comment.

[Warpy]

2. 3 meters across, it was likely the home of a lot of people

who huddled together for warmth in that climate. Single family living was rather a late invention.

Rank undoubtedly governed proximity to the fire, but likely the place was packed every night.

[Ichingcarpenter]

3. Only 5,000 years after the last major icesheet in Britian

16000 years ago then people moved in 5 thousand years later
Its still must have been damn cold.

[xchrom]

4. shamans needed a place for all their stuff.

kinda like a garage today.

[Jim__]

5. A post built house - does that mean the entire structure was posts?

Or, would there have been space between the posts that was filled in with some type of material, e.g. mud, skins? I'm just trying to picture how the house would have looked.

[Igel]

6. Apparently not.

See the picture for Pfostenhaus at http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pfostenhaus for a N. German post-build house.

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pfostenhaus

[Jim__]

7. But that doesn't match the description of the house in the OP.

The house described in the OP is circular. It's the fact that it's circular that got me to wondering about it. Most of our modern houses are rectangular. I wondered if these primitive people used posts as the complete structure of their house because I thought that might explain its circular shape - it seems more natural to build in a circle if the entire structure is posts.

[Posteritatis]

9. The posts were probably just supports for things draped over them

Think something like a tipi, which is (usually) circular and made on a frame of a few posts that are widely separated. Eighteen biggish posts wouldn't be enough to run the full circumference of a three-meter building, but it would certainly make a more solid, permanent frame to hang material on.

If it was more of a solid palisade, it would probably be immediately obvious - postholes last a very, very long time if people know what they're looking for, which I'd assume these guys would.

[Old Troop]

8. Near the end of the Ice Age. How interesting.