[decimon]

Time and tide ping.

Maybe it has always been so. And maybe these would be good sites for some archeological exploration.

[Dumpster Baby]

This is a sure sign of a vampire pandemic.

;^)

[La Lydia]

There are “thousands” of these ghost villages, but the one the BBC uses to illustrate its story disappeared because of the mean, old Americans who barged in, broke that old man’s heart and killed him. The Americans carried out this heartless act because they were there to SAVE GREAT BRITAIN FROM THE GERMANS for the second time in 20 years, for crying out loud. I am surprised they didn’t claim it was Bush’s fault.

[yarddog]

I remember when I lived in Western Kansas, there were a lot of small towns which while not yet ghost towns were barely hanging on.

For some reason people are migrating to the larger cities. Maybe sometime the trend will reverse, I sure hope so.

[jmacusa]

That’s ok. In time the Muzzies will re-populate them.

[teancumspirit]

There in lays the conservitive problem. We as a group will not suport anyone who does not beleive just as we do. Should we (as a Group) make up our mind not to support someone if they win the primary, then who do you think the other side is going to try to manipulate into the winners spot? This is why we got McCain last time. If you dont think the left did not have a hand in that your nuts. I do not want Romney, he is a true politician, will say most anything. His stance on abortion makes me ill. There are many people who are better than him, but I WILL NOT STAY HOME if he is the canidate. I refuse to concede the next election to Obama!

[SunkenCiv]

· GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother, and Ernest_at_the_Beach · · 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  Google  LiveScience  Mirabilis.ca  Nat Geographic  PhysOrg  Science Daily  Science News  Texas AM  Yahoo  Excerpt, or Link only?	Thanks decimon. World War II has become the midpoint of all history; in the case of these abandoned villages, it had to do with the economics and gubmint budgets of the war effort basically pulling the plug on that slower-moving (and probably non-economic) ways of life. When Margaret Thatcher was PM, she pulled the plug on a good many subsidized activities, such as Welsh mining. One Welshman complained that his town was going to vanish, because once the Pit was gone, there was no reason for the town to exist. OTOH, there are plenty of placenames in the Domesday Book which still exist (probably the overwhelming majority, btw), including some pretty small places which were even smaller in the 11th century. A good number of British towns have been continuously occupied since their Roman foundations, while other Roman settlements were abandoned and forgotten, even in local folklore. And there are some British towns which have been continuously occupied since Pre-Roman times, whereas most (maybe all) of the hillfort towns reduced by Vespasian's artillery (in Roman times, that was catapaults and such) had been around for a long while before those events, but ceased to exist thereafter. To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list.
· History topic · history keyword · archaeology keyword · paleontology keyword · · Science topic · science keyword · Books/Literature topic · pages keyword ·

[LibFreeOrDie]

In the 1930's several towns in Massachusetts were destroyed to create the Quabbin Reservoir.

Enfield, MA, in 1927:

After being cleared:

Reservoir in 1987:

[blam]

(Prince) Madoc In America

"What has this to do with America? Well, King Arthur, son of Meurig, had brothers and sisters. His brothers were Idnerth, who was murdered, St Pawl, known as "King Poulentius" in the Lives of Saints, Ffrioc, who was killed by Morgan Mwynfawr, and Madoc Morfran, the Cormorant. If we begin to research the sixth Century Madoc Morfran some extraordinary and startling facts emerge. For instance, the best recorded and defining event of "Dark Age" Britain was the devastation caused by debris from a comet, which struck in 562. Dr Victor Clube, Professor of Astrophysics at Oxford University, estimates this as having been an equivalent of a scatter of at least 100 Hiroshima-size atomic bombs. Unsurprisingly, great tracts of land were rendered uninhabitable and populations were wiped out, giving rise to subsequent literature relating to "The Great Wastelands" of Arthurian Britain, the "Yellow Plague" and the "Coming Of The Dragon". Seen in this context, all are symbolic of the same cataclysmic event… "

[bkepley]

One of my favorite places is Banack in Montana. It’s a gold rush ghost town. There’s just something about it.

[worst-case scenario]

I’ve often wondered how Americans would react to living in a landscape that had architectural proof of its habitation for 2000 or more years before we got here.

Of course, there *were* people living here, but they didn’t leave much, since they didn’t really believe in permanent settlements. So we have a mighty tendency to think of America as a pristine landscape, without a human past, before “we” - European descendants - got here.

My own small city was created as a ferry landing by the very first Europeans to settle in NJ. It’s remained an important part of NJ history ever since then in the 1680s. None of the original buildings from the Colonial Period are left, of course. The entire town has been torn down and rebuilt so many times that it’s almost impossible to imagine the 19th century version, much less the 18th century, or Colonial Era. There was money to be made in destroying those “old” buildings, no matter how much the historical community argued otherwise.

It’s obvious when you look at the care and materials that were lavished on those earlier structures that the builders thought they were giving an enduring gift to generations to come. Their care was wasted on future generations. Nowadays most buildings are expected to have a lifetime that will probably not outlast the current owner’s children - the very materials that they are made from begin to disintegrate after a few decades. We seem to believe in using up all the resources we can, and letting the future generations shift for themselves.

Architecture is perhaps the greatest everyday reminder of the lives and struggles and successes that those before us experienced. I wish we here in the US had the same living history to walk through as do these Britons.

[rmlew]

The BBC labels all those who want to reduce immigration to Britain racists. They label all those who oppose Eurabia lunatics. They support rewriting British history. And we are to think they give a whit about old towns?