Bronze Age teenager buried at Stonehenge had travelled to the site from the Mediterranean

[Ichingcarpenter]

Yesterday scientists said the stones were attracting overseas tourists thousands of years ago – after discovering that a Bronze Age teenage boy buried there around 1550BC grew up in the Mediterranean.

Professor Jane Evans, who traces the birthplace of Bronze Age skeletons using a chemical analysis of teeth, believes the visitors were travelling to Britain specifically to see Stonehenge.


The remains were radiocarbon dated to around 1550BC – a time when the monument was already more than 1,500 years old.

Prof Evans said: ‘He’s about 14 to 15 years old and he’s buried with this beautiful necklace. From the position of his burial, his age, and this necklace, it suggests he’s a person of significant status and importance.’

She used a slither of tooth enamel the size of a nail clipping to trace his origins.

And an isotopic comparison of the mineral strontium, which is absorbed by the body from plants, revealed that he was born and grew up in the Mediterranean.

The boy's grave was alongside dozens of other graves at the site but it was the only one that was not from Britain In contrast, the Amesbury Archer, who was buried 1,000 years earlier, was most likely to have been raised in the Alpine foothills of Germany, Prof Evans said.

Mike Pitts, editor of British Archaeology, said: ‘Archaeologists for a long time have been fighting the idea that there was any migration going on at this time.
‘But, clearly, there were individuals moving across huge distances.’

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1315897/Bronze-Age-teenager-buried-Stonehenge-travelled-visit-site-Mediterranean.html

[Orrex]

1. These rich kids and their fancy vacations!

[trotsky]

2. ...

:spray:

[Ichingcarpenter]

5. LOL!!!

I wonder how the British Food at that time sat with his southern european palate?

[LaurenG]

9. **

:spray:

[RandomThoughts]

3. It is also possible.

That young men from that area traveled to other places, had families, then some returned home. It would make sense that such travelers were honored in tradition, when they brought back stories with them.




Which also explains the Kirk Comment.

I am from Iowa, I only work in outer space. That is funny isn't it.

[druidity33]

6. he "young man" in question

was apparently around 14 or 15 years old...

:shrug:

[RandomThoughts]

7. yea, he could have been a child of someone that left

the village and returned later with a family.

[dkf]

4. Fascinating...

[Ichingcarpenter]

8. BTW Ships were not archaic nor primitive during his age

The Mediterranean was awash with ships that sailed from Egypt to Crete to Spain and beyond let alone the Phoenicians. The time mentioned was before the great dark ages that occurred in the Aegean and Greece. The Minoans were going full tilt at 1500bc but something happened that turned back civilization

The author of the article said he came over in a primitive crude boat, I doubt that from the historical records.



Aegean/Minoan ship from 2000bc

[muriel_volestrangler]

10. That would be very early for Mediterranean boats to make it all that way north

See, for instance:

Until about 800 BC it is highly probable that the Mediterranean and the Atlantic remained largely separate oceans, though there must have been some shipping movements between them, but after about 800 BC all this changed. The occasion was the establishment of a port-of-trade on the islands of Gadir (Roman Gades, modern Cadiz) by Phoenician traders from the ports of Tyre and Sidon on the coast of what is now Lebanon. The initial impetus for this remarkable commercial adventure was the Assyrian demand for large quantities of silver which the Phoenician middle-men obtained for them from the metal-rich region of south-western Iberia.

Gadir was admirably sited to exploit the trading opportunities of the region and once established the traders could venture further, down the African coast to acquire gold and ivory and along the Atlantic shores of Iberia where copper, gold and tin were to be had. The curious, ornate sailing ships of the Phoenicians were soon to become a familiar sight as they explored the Atlantic coastlines beyond the Pillars of Hercules.

Once the Straits were opened up to Mediterranean shipping Gadir became a focus for more adventurous expeditions. Some time in the 5th century the Carthaginian Himilco sailed into the Atlantic but claims to have found nothing after three months' sailing. Later another Carthaginian, Hanno, pushed south along the African coast possibly as far as Cameroon. Both were courageous voyages, but were only the best published of the many that were surely made.

The end of the 4th century saw another remarkable journey - that of Pytheas of Massalia (now Marseille). He probably travelled overland along the Aude - Carcassonne Gap - Garonne - Gironde route to the Atlantic, and then sailed on local shipping to explore the sources of British tin and Jutish amber. In doing so he seems to have circumnavigated Britain and may even have got to Iceland. Returning safely to Massalia, he wrote a book On the Ocean which became quite widely known in the Mediterranean for its strange tales of the mysterious Ocean peoples.

http://www.britarch.ac.uk/ba/ba63/feat2.shtml

There's an interview with Dr. Jane Evans here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_9042000/9042773.stm . Note the Daily Mail writer attributed the 'primitive wooden boat' to 'they', ie 'scientists', meaning Jane Evans and her team, and it's also used in this report: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/8032449/Buried-at-Stonehenge-boy-with-the-amber-necklace.html

[Ichingcarpenter]

11. The boats I described existed long before your 8th- 5th cent BC

The Minoan traded with cultures as far as Spain with pottery found Don't forget they were an island, though they traded mostly with Egypt, Cyprus and the Palestine area.
Ancient Nubia/Axum traded with India during this time. The Ancient mysterious 'Sea People' who had developed shipping and raiding were around at this time


Most Scholars agree that civilization around the whole Mediterranean turned into a dark age right around this boy's death even pottery and tools became more primitive
The age I describe was a golden age 800 years before the rise of Greek Culture.

[muriel_volestrangler]

12. That's the point - they didn't go into the Atlantic

and so it's extremely unlikely their type of boat would turn up in Britain.

[Odin2005]

13. Stonehenge must have been a pilgrimage location, fascinating!