Signs of early settlement in the Nordic region date back to the cradle of civilisation

I was surprised a bit about the findings that have taken place in Denmark.

www.lunduniversity.lu.se... ed42c&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer

“Our findings of large-scale fish fermentation, a traditional way of preserving fish, indicate that not only was this area settled at that time, it was also able to support a large community”, says Adam Boethius, whose findings are now being published in the Journal of Archaeological Science.

The discovery is also an indication that Nordic societies were far more developed 9,200 years ago than what was previously believed. The findings are important as it is usually argued that people in the north lived relatively mobile lives, while people in the Levant – a large area in the Middle East – became settled and began to farm and raise cattle much earlier.

“These findings indicate a different time line, with Nordic foragers settling much earlier and starting to take advantage of the lakes and sea to harvest and process fish. From a global perspective, the development in the Nordic region could correspond to that of the Middle East at the time,” says Adam Boethius.

“The discovery is quite unique as a find like this has never been made before. That is partly because fish bones are so fragile and disappear more easily than, for example, bones of land animals. In this case, the conditions were quite favorable, which helped preserve the remains”, says Adam Boethius.

I did not truly appreciate the apparent Structured Society dating back to that time frame. I thought more along the lines of a more mobile association taking place, moving from site to site, along with the weather or game runs.

It is nice to see the North represented in "Cradle of Civilization" discussion though. Sumer should not get all the attention.

Ciao

Shane

a reply to: Shane
Harvesting fish is still a form of hunting, so they haven't made the transition from hunting to farming which is the real mark of the Neolithic.
What this shows is that a Mesolithic lifestyle doesn't have to be nomadic.

a reply to: DISRAELI

You have noted a valid remark, but I would suggest, the rising powers of the period in Sumer would at best, be only entering the Agricultural phase. I believe this dates to closer to 6500-6000 BC so far, although I haven't been afforded the opportunity to further review recent finds of that nature. There is evidence they did nurture Wild Species of Grains and evidence in the Levant does suggest intentional growing of Figs dating back to 9000 BC. Evidence from 6500 BC was found to point to Rice being grown in the Far East.

www.abovetopsecret.com...

Although it's a decade old, some of this was noted in the link above about Agriculture.

But thanks for the remarks.

Ciao

Shane

I'm not much for that fermented fish. My father would get little barrels of the fermented herring when I was a kid. I liked the salt codfish though, I still eat that and quite a bit of fish in general.

No wonder those people are dead, you can't live forever eating that kind of stuff.

originally posted by: Shane
I did not truly appreciate the apparent Structured Society dating back to that time frame.

Quelle surprise

Now you might want to check your research on the actual cradle of civilisation, which had cities and farming at this point in history

originally posted by: DISRAELI
a reply to: Shane
Harvesting fish is still a form of hunting, so they haven't made the transition from hunting to farming which is the real mark of the Neolithic.
What this shows is that a Mesolithic lifestyle doesn't have to be nomadic.

False. It depends on if they fish farm or not. Fish farming is a form of agriculture (aquaculture), not hunting.

a reply to: Quetzalcoatl14
I thought fish farming was a more modern development?
Surely the nearest they would have come to that in earlier centuries was trapping migrating fish on rivers?

originally posted by: DISRAELI
a reply to: Quetzalcoatl14
I thought fish farming was a more modern development?
Surely the nearest they would have come to that in earlier centuries was trapping migrating fish on rivers?

I think there are primitive forms of fish farming. I suspect they might have been basic cages created within ponds and streams where fish are grown. Also, seeding ponds with fish specifically for farming is aquaculture too. A lot of these relatively primitive and low-tech methods are still used in places like Bangladesh (and encouraged and invested in by development organizations for their food security returns). All I'm saying is these methods are not beyond the pale of ancient societies.

a reply to: Quetzalcoatl14

I could completely see a place where there are ponds and streams being a place where a mesolithic hunter would use their nets in such a manner.

The thing is: need. If there is a need, man will innovate. Without a need...

My thoughts are that the neolithic era emerged as a result of megafauna extinction, especially the enormous loss of resources that the mammoth represented. The need to develop a more stationary life is a result of not having to chase your primary resource across the continent.

Agriculture was likely stil practiced for millenia by hunter gatherers, who I'd imagine were prolific stewards of their primary foods by replanting along migration routes. Take a plant, leave a seed. That kind of thing. Thus, "farming" could have existed for several millenia.

a reply to: Shane

Any time you have a number of people living in a small territory in permanent or semipermanent domiciles, you get a structured society. The larger the population, the more structured the society.

originally posted by: Quetzalcoatl14

I think there are primitive forms of fish farming. I suspect they might have been basic cages created within ponds and streams where fish are grown. Also, seeding ponds with fish specifically for farming is aquaculture too. A lot of these relatively primitive and low-tech methods are still used in places like Bangladesh (and encouraged and invested in by development organizations for their food security returns). All I'm saying is these methods are not beyond the pale of ancient societies.

Yes - penning fish is different than breeding them in controlled ponds. In this case,the article talks about penning wild fish and not raising them.

originally posted by: Byrd

originally posted by: Quetzalcoatl14

I think there are primitive forms of fish farming. I suspect they might have been basic cages created within ponds and streams where fish are grown. Also, seeding ponds with fish specifically for farming is aquaculture too. A lot of these relatively primitive and low-tech methods are still used in places like Bangladesh (and encouraged and invested in by development organizations for their food security returns). All I'm saying is these methods are not beyond the pale of ancient societies.

Yes - penning fish is different than breeding them in controlled ponds. In this case,the article talks about penning wild fish and not raising them.

Ah, okay. Makes sense.

Do you have an idea when aquaculture first started historically? Like many agricultural practices it probably emerged in a number of locations without needing interaction.

a reply to: Quetzalcoatl14

Do you have an idea when aquaculture first started historically?

Polynesians were very, very good at it. Hawaiians in particular but it started before they perfected it.

a reply to: Byrd

I just never associated the Norse Peoples with larger population bases, as it is suggested here. A few Hundred, yeah sure, but "Cradle of Civilization" implied numbers are more than what I would expect to be presented with during 7000 BC.

It is nice to see the information though.

Ciao

Shane

a reply to: Shane

An interesting article about farming (rice) from Sri Lanka varnam.org...
which shows a female embedded in rock with rice etc dating back to 30,000 BC. Which totally upsets the ideas of when ordinary farming started and is largely ignored by those who make their careers out of saying that farming started considerably later and in the Levant etc etc. Why should we think its any different for people fermenting fish? We know people lived by water and rivers and seas which all provide fish which people ate. What we do know also is that people used virtually every part of the animal. If they were wise enough to utilise gut, bone etc why on earth should we think they were not wise enough to plant food they knew they depended on, unless it was so prolific they didn't need to. They would only have needed one really bad period of time, weatherise, possible fire damage, disease etc to have been on the verge of starvation if they hadn't made provision for themselves by some form of controlling their food production. Surely wherever you get people living in groups and especially in the northern climes with long winters in order to survive they had to manage storage of food to last through the winters months.

There are areas between Southampton and the Isle of Wight and out past Cornwall towards the Isles of Scilly where the ruins of field boundaries can be seen underwater, another thing kept pretty quiet yet not in our history books yet.

One of our now called controversial archaeologists got himself in trouble for proposing farming in the UK started considerably earlier than the books tell us. Frances Pryor was most likely right but he was hushed up and retired. I watched him talk about this on the tv and you could see the squirms going on around him.

I don't understand the reasons for wanting to keep our history curtailed into such a small band of time. I can't believe homo sapiens with our brains merely traipsed from pillar to post scratching a living - we were and are far too intelligent.
I noticed that my Grandaughter was told at school that the first peoples lived in Sumer. Now that is not correct and when I asked her teacher why wasn't she telling the children about the Vinca civilisation all I got was a blank look.

Australian aborigines have been trapping fish with stone traps for many thousands of years, probably 10's of thousands. Sometimes on a large scale like in the link below.

environment.gov.au...

a reply to: Quetzalcoatl14

The female influence in agriculture or aquaculture would have had to be profound. I could imagine that some time could be available for the more sedentary of the group (those not out hunting) to create better food situations while "at home". Oyster farming seems to be a reasonable thing for a paleolithic person to do. And lord knows there are plenty of associations of women with oysters (the venus) throughout history.

A group that hunted or migrated along rivers or bays would find it handy to return to the mussels that were left behind to grow until they pass back through.

Possibly the successes seen in aquaculture, agriculture, and maybe even the keeping of small animals like we do rabbits, would have given a lot of insight into what would later be called "animal husbandry", resulting in the domestication of the various goats, pigs, and bovines that give us the modern barnyard.

Just to get the facts straight OP, Blekinge is in Southern Sweden, not Denmark, so we're talking about the southern Scandinavian peninsula, not the Danish islands!

This 11 000 year old underwater site in the Baltic Sea made the headlines in 2014:

news.discovery.com...

It's not too far away from Blekinge. A picture is emerging where Scandinavia was inhabited much earlier than previously though. It is not because a place is thought of as geographically remote today that it has always been so, we know that in relation to Orkney's Neolithic past.

originally posted by: Shiloh7
a reply to: Shane

An interesting article about farming (rice) from Sri Lanka varnam.org...
which shows a female embedded in rock with rice etc dating back to 30,000 BC. Which totally upsets the ideas of when ordinary farming started and is largely ignored by those who make their careers out of saying that farming started considerably later and in the Levant etc etc.

Sadly, your source article was written by someone who didn't understand the original BBC article and has gone on to fabricate information. It caught my eye because they talked about maize and I knew that maize is American and wouldn't be domesticated for another several thousand years.

The original report (here) says that they were simply collecting seeds and the date was 23,000 BC. And the site, Ohalo, is actually in the Middle East.

One of our now called controversial archaeologists got himself in trouble for proposing farming in the UK started considerably earlier than the books tell us. Frances Pryor was most likely right but he was hushed up and retired. I watched him talk about this on the tv and you could see the squirms going on around him.

A delightfulman, who is actually well respected in the community. I don't have any evidence that he was forced into retirement or obscurity. He's old and this limits his time and energy (and he has a sheep farm which takes a lot of time) but he's still writing and doing television.

I noticed that my Grandaughter was told at school that the first peoples lived in Sumer. Now that is not correct and when I asked her teacher why wasn't she telling the children about the Vinca civilisation all I got was a blank look.

This is probably because Vinca was a culture and not a civilization. There are oodles of early cultures like this, and Vinca is not the absolute earliest (in fact, the Neanderthal Mousterian culture predates the Vinca by a whole lot.

a reply to: Byrd

It could be that the author heard the term "corn" and just linked it to maize.

Corn is just a generic name for kernel or grain outside the US. Inside the US, it has a very specific meaning: maize. Which we (for some unknown reason) don't really even use. Even the spanish speaking population around here tends to just call it corn.