Ancient Welsh forest uncovered by fierce-storms !

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Ancient Welsh forest uncovered by fierce-storms !

The remains of animals and Mesolithic tools have been found in these deposits. These include an Auroch, which is an ancient cow and is the ancestor of all modern cows, a pig, a roe deer, a red deer antler and a brown bear jaw

At Lydstep Haven, a pair of broken flint microliths were found by the neck vertebrae of a pig. This pig may have been injured, but not caught by its Mesolithic hunters and subsequently died in the forest. A tree trunk fell on its remains, preserving it, and the microliths in situ. This find has been dated to about 6000 BC.

Geraldus Cambrensis (Gerald of Wales ) noted the uncovered submerged forest, during his tour of Wales in AD 1188.

‘We then passed over Newgale sands at which place a very remarkable circumstance occurred. The sandy shores of south Wales laid bare by the extraordinary violence of a storm, the surface of the earth, which had been covered for many ages, reappeared, and discovered the trunk of trees cut off, standing in the very sea itself, the strokes of the hatchet appearing as if made only yesterday. The soil was very black and the wood-like ebony. This looked like a grove cut down, perhaps at the time of the deluge, or not long after.’

We cannot be sure whether the marks he saw were made by a stone axe. It is certainly possible, since stone axes were in use before the forests were submerged between about 6000 and 5000 BC.

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There is so much yet to be discovered that the seas of the Earth have hidden. As a child, I believed everything had been discovered, or rediscovered on this planet, and the only avenue of adventure and discovery was out in space. This idea is continually disappearing as things are reappearing regularly on this planet. Good article.

Wow what a great gift and an interesting one at that. Who knew? With all the weather upheavals as of late, I'm sure there will be more finds like this one in various places around the globe. Thanks for sharing this.

I've always wondered how much history of our past has been covered up by the last ice age. Imagine what lies underneath our feet that has been buried by the glaciers from the last ice age.

We know that 20,000 years ago, the sea around Wales was 125 metres below its current level.
It is clear that the Welsh shoreline has been an area of human activity from the earliest times, primarily as an important source of food, as evinced by the middens of discarded cockle and oyster shells discovered in estuarine areas, some of which date from the Mesolithic period. Footprints from that era preserved in the intertidal zone at Uskmouth near Newport give extraordinarily direct evidence of the coastal activities of hunter-gatherers. Lithic scatters remaining from stone tools indicate continued human presence throughout the Neolithic era, while the distribution of distinctive regional types of stone axe hints at their seaborne transportation. The stylistic similarities between ritual monuments such as tombs in Wales and Ireland suggest cultural contacts across the Irish Sea.

The earliest vessel remains yet discovered in Wales date to the Bronze Age, from a ‘sewn boat’ (of timbers laced together) of around 1,000 BC, found at Goldcliff on the Bristol Channel. There is good evidence for Bronze Age coastal settlement, including a hut site discovered in the intertidal zone of the Severn Estuary at Magor and finds of pottery, animal bone and charcoal. By the Late Bronze Age, and throughout the Iron Age, the Welsh coast was being exploited for its defensive potential, with numerous hillforts and promontory forts sited to take advantage of high sea cliffs and precipitous slopes. Finds indicate that some of these sites continued to be inhabited throughout the Romano-British period. Link

there is a legend in south wales that a tidal wave hit the south coast wiping out all the coastal settlements and destroying the oak groves that were all along the coast. A find similar to this one was made in Swansea a few years ago, again after bad weather uncovered it. They found hundreds of oak stumps along the mud flats there. There is a local legend that says there was an oak grove that stretched from Kenfig to the Gower and was used by the local princes to travel between their castles.