Posted on 01/17/2007 12:39:44 PM PST by blam
Paviland Cave and The Red Lady
Paviland Cave, on the south coast of the Gower peninsula, South Wales, is an Early Upper Palaeolithic (Early Stone Age) archaeological site, dating to roughly 30,000 - 20,000 years ago. It is the richest site of its kind in Britain, with four and a half thousand finds, including worked bone and stone (lithic) tools.
The Red Lady of Paviland was a fairly complete human skeleton dyed in red ochre that was discovered in 1826 by the Reverend William Buckland in one of the Paviland limestone caves at )Goat’s Hole Cave).
The "lady" has since been identified as a young man who lived 29,000 years ago (26,350 +/- 550 BP, OxA-1815) at the end of the Upper Paleolithic Period (old stone age), and are the oldest human remains found in the United Kingdom, as well as being the oldest ceremonial burial in Western Europe. The skeleton was found along with jewellery made from ivory and seashells, and a mammoth's skull.
Although now on the coast, at the time of the burial the cave would have been located approximately 70 miles inland, overlooking a plain. The ice sheet of the Devensian Glaciation would have been advancing towards the site, and the weather would have been more like that of present day Siberia, with maximum temperatures of perhaps 10°C in summer, -20° in winter, and a tundra vegetation. Bone protein analysis indicates that the "lady" lived on a diet that consisted of between 15% and 20% fish, which, together with the distance from the sea, suggests that the people may have been semi nomadic. Other food probably included manmoth, the woolly rhinoceros and reindeer.
The skeleton is currently housed at the Oxford University Natural History Museum in England, however a campaign is now underway to return it to Wales; specifically to Swansea Museum
I wonder what the DNA looks like?
GGG Ping.
Paviland??
Woo hoo! Cave talk!
Must have been before global warming wrecked the earth.
Please add me to your GGG ping list, please. My daughter is planning an Anthropology degree, and loves to see these posts.
caver?
see you here:
www.crawlathon.com/
Please FREEPMAIL me if you want on or off the
"Gods, Graves, Glyphs" PING list or GGG weekly digest
-- Archaeology/Anthropology/Ancient Cultures/Artifacts/Antiquities, etc.
Gods, Graves, Glyphs (alpha order)
I wonder what the DNA looks like?Like a twisted ladder. ;')
That is such a cool site.
Hey, Kentucky caves. Best caving in the world!
"Other food probably included manmoth"
I thought I'd heard of weird creatures, but a "man-moth"?
Whoa, manmoth! More information than I wanted to know! :)
|
· join list or digest · view topics · view or post blog · bookmark · post a topic · subscribe · |
|||
Antiquity Journal & archive Archaeologica Archaeology Archaeology Channel BAR Bronze Age Forum Discover Dogpile Eurekalert LiveScience Mirabilis.ca Nat Geographic PhysOrg Science Daily Science News Texas AM Yahoo Excerpt, or Link only? |
|
||
|
· Science topic · science keyword · Books/Literature topic · pages keyword · |
|||
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
