How Old are our Stories Really? The Tale of the Mesolithic Dragon.

a reply to: surfer_soul

Sounds an awful lot like the a metaphor for a meteor impact event to me, for instance,

It does and for dragon stories I would ordinarily agree with you. There is no identified site to suggest a tsunami-causing meteor - that we know of today. That's not to say there won't be one uncovered in time.
What I also found interesting was that:

(in) 6600 BC Þjórsá Lava, the largest holocene lava flow on earth,[2] originated from Bárðarbunga about 8,500 years ago, with a total volume of 21[2] to 30 cubic kilometres and covering approximately 950 square kilometres.[5] 870

en.wikipedia.org...

The Storegga Slide has been estimated at around 6225-6120 bc - only a couple of hundred years apart. Did the earthquake that triggered the Storegga event have any connection to the eruption of the Icelandic volcano? I have no idea and I haven't seen them linked in the limited reading I have done on either.
But darkened skies and billowing smoke also fulfil the criteria for a volcano so...maybe.

a reply to: beansidhe

Good point a huge Volcano eruption could explain it too. I don't see why one event couldn't trigger another event such as the Storegga slide as you suggest. Isn't it called the domino effect? Anyway great thread much food for thought here.
Starred and flagged.

a reply to: surfer_soul

Thanks surfer_soul, it was nice talking with you.

originally posted by: beansidhe
a reply to: Byrd

It does have an Arthurian flavour, I would agree with you there. I suppose what I'm striving for is an understanding of the origins of sea serpents; did a singular catastrophic event create the creature? Is it a vehicle for transmitting geophysical events through generations?

There's undoubtedly multiple origins for sea serpents... including real sea snakes, snakes swimming in the water, and wild fish tales ("No, I didn't catch anything today but I *almost* caught...")

Remember how creative dreamers and bards are. Although the LORD OF THE RINGS was partly a product of World War II, nobody followed Churchill around simpering and wailing while he hopped off to Tora-Tora to toss the original Mein Kampf into the heart of the volcano.

a reply to: beansidhe

Bean, i found an article on the tsunami site, but its ireland and not scotland.

Archeologists have uncovered evidence of pre-farming people living in the Burren more than 6,000 years ago — one of the oldest habitations ever unearthed in Ireland.

Radiocarbon dating of a shellfish midden on Fanore Beach in north Clare have revealed it to be at least 6,000 years old — hundreds of years older than the nearby Poulnabrone dolmen.

The midden — a cooking area where nomad hunter-gatherers boiled or roasted shellfish — contained Stone Age implements, including two axes and a number of smaller stone tools.

Excavation of the site revealed a mysterious black layer of organic material, which archeologists believe may be the results of a Stone Age tsunami which hit the Clare coast, possibly wiping out the people who used the midden.

and this little tidbit,

“These people would have come to certain places at certain times of the year. Obviously they came here to eat shellfish, but possibly they had another place beside a river nearby for when they wanted to catch salmon and trout, and at other times they would have collected things like hazel nuts.

“We know that they were cooking and eating shellfish here, but we don’t know yet exactly what method they were using to cook it. So hopefully that is one of the things we can uncover in the weeks ahead.”

The archaeologists are also hoping to establish the make-up of a mysterious substance found during the excavation.

The substance, which is two or three inches deep, disintegrates when it comes in contact with air. A large slab of the material has remained intact on an ancient settlement, indicating that a large amount of it was laid down at once, possibly as the result of a tsunami.

“We have found a mysterious layer of black organic material on the site and it is just under that level that we have found all the oldest archeology,” said Mr Lynch.

“We have not been able to identify exactly what this black layer is yet but, as it happens, it is this layer which helped to protect the ancient settlement that we are currently excavating.

6,000-year-old settlement poses tsunami mystery

Its not the article i found originally, but it has the gist of what is going on.

a reply to: punkinworks10

Thank you for finding that. I looked for another event in Scotland but I couldn't find it. That'll be why.
I can't find anything else (online) about that tsunami that doesn't link back to the Examiner's article and I can't find the results for the black organic material. There's no reason to assume that it would be available online, though.

What I might do is have a look for stories of sea serpents changing the landscape inIreland - not any kind of evidence that this is the source of the story, but it would certainly be interesting.

a reply to: Byrd

Remember how creative dreamers and bards are. Although the LORD OF THE RINGS was partly a product of World War II, nobody followed Churchill around simpering and wailing while he hopped off to Tora-Tora to toss the original Mein Kampf into the heart of the volcano.

This could so easily be the product of dreamers and bards (or the more boastful fishermen out there) and not a creation tale at all. It's fun to speculate.

originally posted by: beansidhe

I can't find anything else (online) about that tsunami that doesn't link back to the Examiner's article and I can't find the results for the black organic material. There's no reason to assume that it would be available online, though.

www.heritagecouncil.ie...

[email protected]

If you go down to the contacts at thee bottom of the page, Michael Lynch was the field advisor on the sight in question and there appears to be a telephone number as well. If you emailed him, he may be able to get you the info on the black organic material or at least tell you if it has been identified as yet.

Kudos on yet another great thread!

a reply to: peter vlar

Oh that's brilliant, thank you! I'll email him in the morning and post back what he says. I wouldn't have known the right person to contact.
Great to see you as always, I hope all is well with you.

B xx

Brilliant thread and very interesting to read, I'll look at the links you provided in your OP.

originally posted by: beansidhe
a reply to: Anaana

Hello there, thank you, I'm glad you dropped in!

I see the creation aspect too, although maybe that's the familiar part of Scottish folklore that I'm drawn to and therefore more comfortable with?
You raise a really good point about settled peoples describing the land being split or maybe apportioned (?) and the Mesolithic folk in the North are always described as nomadic. I don't think burial sites have ever been found for any of them.

The Mesolithic is quite hard to pin-point materially I think, and often seems to be reliant on remains of lithic works, but places like Starr Carr help fill in some of gaps of understanding and allow for a more complete picture. So, in terms of division of land, I wouldn't consider it in the way that we, post enclosures act, relate to it but more in the wider way in which we relate to the landscape in general, and the way in which we develop attachments to place and the need to feel as though we have always, in some way, existed as part of that landscape.

originally posted by: beansidhe
But then, I suppose, it begs the question of who built the calendar found in Aberdeenshire from around 8000bc? (quite a nice video on that link). Were the people more settled than we think and the passage of time has obliterated most of the evidence? I have no idea, I'm just wondering out loud.

Using Starr Carr as an example, they were occupying the site seasonally, coming back each year and rebuilding their brushwood hunting lodge. I would have thought that they had a variety of ways of "tagging" spots to help them to locate them again each year, as well as to say to others that they had been there, expressions of territorialism as well as fealty and social identity. No different to what we still do today. And, of course, Britain was not without human visitors even at the height of the last ice age, that attachment to space, combined with a vastly dramatic change in the nature and look of that landscape in a relatively short space of time, would perhaps culminate in a need to make more permanent markers to record their "Being" there.

In short, I don't think that they were more settled than we think, I do think though that they were very attuned and attached, in much deeper way, to their landscape than we are perhaps able to understand.

a reply to: beansidhe

Hey beanie !

Long time ... 😊

Just wanted to let you know that I had not heard of this ... but thanks to your nicely organised OP,
that is no longer applicable ...

😎😆

a reply to: Timely

Hey Timely! Always a pleasure to see you.

a reply to: Anaana

A calendar suggests permanence to me, or if not permanence, longevity. It suggests planning, observation and a sense of future.
For seasonal returns though, yes, why not? That is what the evidence to date tells us and my notion of what a calendar means should not be superimposed on somebody else's from 10,000 years ago. It may well have served as a 'tag' or perhaps a gathering point for celebrations in the better months.

I do think though that they were very attuned and attached, in much deeper way, to their landscape than we are perhaps able to understand.

Or they moaned about the drizzle and cursed the midges.
Your version is more beautiful though and yes I agree; we seem to have lost our sense of us as nature the older we have become.

originally posted by: beansidhe
a reply to: Anaana
A calendar suggests permanence to me, or if not permanence, longevity. It suggests planning, observation and a sense of future.

I don't see why it can't be all of those things, lack of settlement, in the way that we understand it, does not preclude a permanent attachment, or detract from the benefits of forward planning. We return to places because there are reasons for us to return there.

originally posted by: beansidhe
For seasonal returns though, yes, why not? That is what the evidence to date tells us and my notion of what a calendar means should not be superimposed on somebody else's from 10,000 years ago. It may well have served as a 'tag' or perhaps a gathering point for celebrations in the better months.

I was being a little general, but what I meant is that, travel around the world and you will find evidence of humans marking the landscape in a variety ways. Even in those instances where it is to say "I woz 'ere", there is a reason that they were there. Even if that reason is that they wandered off the beaten path and got lost. It can be random, but it is human nature - well nature's nature - to mark out our territory and our presence within it. So, yes it is a calendar, but why is it there in particular, the answers to why and what, hang on the "why there?".

originally posted by: beansidhe
Or they moaned about the drizzle and cursed the midges.

Your version is more beautiful though and yes I agree; we seem to have lost our sense of us as nature the older we have become.

The drizzle, midges...the long, long, wet gray winters where you can begin to believe that the Sun has gone and done a bunk for good. I have been known to spontaneously burst into tears at the sight of Wensleydale, the darker and stormier the better, my spirit soars when I mount the road that runs across the North Yorkshire Moors to Whitby, and the first time I see the sea, every time, my heart near pops out my mouth. But it's grim up North with brief interludes of absolute perfection. Given the power to roam wherever you choose, would you choose where you here or the Med? Of course those people didn't have a choice, as such, they followed their food. The diversification in diet seen with the Mesolithic "hunting kit", widened choice, and calendars enabled it.

I think we have got very arrogant, and forgotten that which sustains us.

originally posted by: beansidhe
I believe that many of our stories are older than we allow ourselves to believe and that if we listen carefully we can still find the message our ancestors were so keen to impart.

Yet the fact remains, that the earliest emergence of a dragon from any mythology is around 3000bce and the story, because it includes a moral about the strength of the relevant God, ALWAYS travels..
With the Orkneys only being populated by seasonal hunter gatherers during the Mesolithic and by Norse settlers thereafter, there is no wiggle room here for this to be anything but a more local retelling of the Jorgamandr myth.

originally posted by: beansidhe
a reply to: beetee

Hi beetee, thank you for your response.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that there has been so much interaction between different groups of people in Europe for such a long time, that it is almost impossible to say if a story is homegrown or has been imported from somewhere else. So the fact that one finds the same story in different areas might not mean that they have preserved the same story independently, but just that the story have spread through various forms of contact.

I think that ultimately, you are right. It becomes an impossible quest because without written sources we can only guess. We know that Iron Age Picts had dragon/worm stories because of their stones, but before that it is impossible to know.

But, hey, it might also be a recollection of such a traumatic event. It would certainly be suspicious if it was found only in the areas where this event happened, and nowhere else.

It would and so I think that what I need to do next is have a look at other sea serpent stories to see if they transformed the landscape as well and that is therefore a common thing for sea serpents to do, or if this is unique behaviour for a sea serpent.

Reminds me of the tsunami stones in Japan.

Could that stone indicate a safe building height from the coast?

a reply to: Marduk

For me, and this is only for me - it's not an assertion that it's correct - I see this as a landscape story. What we share and the reasons that our stories and archetypes are so alike across the world, is that we all see the same sky, the stars, the sea and the land. Our stories come from these and from each other.

Is it Jorgamandr? Well, it's suspiciously similiar.
So maybe of equal importance from considering the roots of a tale is considering the present. We take from it what we need to hear.

B x

a reply to: SteeBoo

Hello SteeBoo. That's a really good idea, that it delineated a virtual safe zone.
The stones have been found throughout Scotland and seem to serve as burial stones, sometimes (maybe) boundary markers like at Burghead but many are found inland, they're not all by the coast.
Tsunamis are rare in Scotland, although enormous waves and lashing rain are not.