Historical story

Northern Europe previously inhabited by prehistoric humans

Finds in Happisburgh, UK, show that northern Europe was inhabited earlier than thought. The flint artifacts are older than 780,000 years, possibly up to 970,000 years. Prehistoric man lived in a relatively warm phase between the glacials, although it was colder than today.

The Pleistocene is a period in Earth's history characterized by glacials (colloquially:'ice ages') and interglacials, the warmer periods in between. In the Pleistocene, 2.6 million to 11,600 years ago, humans barely made it to northern Europe even during the interglacials. The oldest known site was at Pakefield (GB) about 700,000 years ago. Archaeological and geological evidence from Happisburgh, southeastern Britain, shows that humans were present in northern Europe even earlier. A mainly British team of scientists led by Simon Parfitt wrote about this in the scientific journal Nature .

Distribution of humans in Europe

The first Europeans were found in Georgia around 1.8 million years ago. This is probably the human species Homo erectus . Half a million years later, humans also lived in southern Europe, such as Spain, southern France and Italy.

Simon Parfitt and colleagues now claim to have the oldest evidence of human habitation north of latitude 45°N, which is roughly the area above the Alps. The remains are said to be more than 780,000 years old, possibly up to nearly one million years (970,000) based on magnetic properties of the sediment, plants and animals. In the News &Views piece in Nature However, in which the Australians Roberts and Grün summarize and comment on the scientific article, it is stated that there are indeed sites north of latitude 45° north. They reported sites of around one million years old from Germany and northern France, noting that these may be less dated than our British site, Happisburgh.

Finds

Nevertheless, Simon Parfitt and colleagues made a remarkable discovery. The evidence of human activity consists of 78 flint artifacts, most of which are pristine. And so they cannot have been transported far. The artifacts occur in several sandy layers, which means that Happisburgh was visited/inhabited several times by prehistoric man.

Environment and adaptation

Other finds tell about the local environment and climate. The flints are embedded in sands and gravel originating mainly from the ancient Thames, which then flowed 150 km northwards, and for a small part from a no longer existing river, the Bytham. The sediment itself shows that prehistoric humans lived close to the River Thames in an estuarine environment, where the influence of the sea was occasionally noticeable.

The vegetation, reconstructed from pollen, seeds, pine cones and wood, consisted of heath, pine and spruce in the oldest phase of habitation. In the most recent phase, from which most of the artifacts stem, there was forest (pine and spruce) next to grassland. The fauna confirms the latter:there were grazers such as horses and mammoths. The sea was not far away, because researchers found molluscs, barnacles and single-celled organisms (foraminifera).

The temperature, derived from beetles, was 16-18°C in summer and between 0 and -3°C in winter. The temperatures and vegetation are comparable to those in present-day southern Scandinavia. Despite the relatively warm period between the glacials, the inhabitants of Happisburgh had to adapt. In the winter they mainly lived on the wildlife present, in the summer they could also use vegetation as a food source. This is how they survived in the varied landscape near the Thames.

Lock

According to Roberts and Grün, the challenges after this research mainly lie in finding more accurate dating methods. This is of enormous importance to reconstruct the distribution of humans in Europe. For now, the search for archaeological artifacts continues along the English coast. Just like the erosion that causes exposure.


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