Pentre Ifan & Carreg Coetan Arthur

If one were going to highlight every Neolithic stone in Wales, let alone Europe they would need even less of a social life than we have here at The History of Europe Podcast. But, we have friends and they both would like us to hang out more so we're just going to aim for 30-35% of all the Neolithic Knowledge out there. We figure that batting .300 - .350 will get you into Cooperstown so if we can tag somewhere along those lines we'll be inducted into some sort of Prehistoric Shrine ourselves. In case you're wondering what cap we'll be forever enshrined in bronze in we haven't yet decided. I'm partial to my Brooklyn Dodgers cap though.

Pentre Ifan or Arthur's Quoit.

In our quest to be given a seat of honor at some fictitious Historical Hall of Fame though we'll continue touching on Neolithic Wales and look at a couple of Megalithic constructions, Pentre Ifan & Carreg Coetan Arthur. Pentre Ifan is located in the West of Wales in the county of Pembrokeshire. Pentre Ifan is a the Welsh's largest neolithic dolmen. It's quite stunning to look at. If you remember a dolmen is fancy speech for a portal grave and quite popular in Western Europe among the Megalithic Neolithic, Chalcolithic and Bronze Age cultures. This particular dolmen dates from around 3500 BC and was probably a communal burial site. The table slab that sits atop the other stones is roughly 5 meters long and is almost 2.5 meters off the ground. It's estimated to way over 16 tonnes. That's tonnes (2,204.6 lbs) not the measly ton (2000 lbs). These prehistoric Welsh were out to put the Mega in the Megalithic when they built Pentre Ifan.

Carreg Coetan Arthur

Carreg Coetan Arthur is another dolmen located in Pembrokeshire, Wales. It's basically, the little brother of Pentre Ifan. It was constructed sometime around 3300 BC and is a bit smaller. It's table capstone is only about 4 meters long. Like, Pentre Ifan, the Carreg Coetan Arthur was origanally buried under a mound of earth and rock, but time has eroded these barriers away. Now these slabs of Megalithic construction sit in the countryside to remind us that men have been building elaborate graves for thousands upon thousands of years. Another cool little anecdote about these two dolmens is the name Arthur. Arthur is a mainstay of Welsh folklore. The name Arthur is still connected to Carreg Coetan, but Pentre Ifan (meaning the village of Ivan in Welsh) has also been called Arthur's Quoit. (Quoit is just another colloquial name for Dolmen or passage grave). So, while the legend of Arthur might not be Neolithic, his fame casts a shadow that dates back to a time before he was even conceived. Not bad for a shadow, though I'm sure Plato still wouldn't have been impressed...

Bryn Celli Ddu & Barclodiad y Gawres

Bryn Celli Ddu

Bryn Celli Ddu is a prehistoric grave located in Anglesey, an island off the northwest coast of Wales. Like other prehistoric graves of the isles, it's a passage grave. But, it wasn't always that. The passage grave was built sometime during the Bronze Age. Prior to this construction, the site hosted a henge, a lovely henge at that. This henge at Bryn Celli Ddu, which means the mound in the dark grove in Welsh, featured a stone circle (think Stonehenge). The grave dates from around 3000 BC, but post holes for the lovely henge once thought to be contemporaneous with the grave have proved to be much older.

Rendition of the lovely henge before the construction of the grave

Barclodiad y Gawres

Barclodiad y Gawres is another prehistoric grave on the island of Anglesey. Like Bryn Celli Ddu it is a passage grave with a mound on top. Also like Bryn Celli Ddu it's Welsh meaning behind the name is much more easy to pronounce and more fun, Barclodiad y Gawres means 'apronful of the giantess' in Welsh. While Bryn Celli Ddu is fascinating for what's on top of the grave (as well as a serpent carved rock inside), Barclodiad y Gawres is cool for its internal stuff. Inside of this Neolithic grave were six stone carvings, the most recent of which was discovered just in 2001. Amazingly, the designs of these carvings match so many others in much of Neolithic Europe that it just boggles the mind. How did all these Neolithic Europeans think so much alike artistically?

The Red Lady of Paviland

The Red Lady's Skull

It sounds like a title to a nursery rhyme, but the Red Lady of Paviland is a major point in European History. In 1823, William Buckland discovered a nearly complete human fossil covered in red ochre  in the south of Wales. Little did he know that he had discovered not only the first human fossil, but he discovered the oldest evidence we have today of ceremonial burial. Buckland however believed he had found the bones of a Roman era female, but recent studies on the fossil have pointed to the fact that the remains are of a young male from around 33,000 years ago.

Actual picture of the burial.

Along with the remains of the young "lady" was the skull of a mammoth. This points a little bit to what type of lifestyle the red lady led. He probably hunted game, which meant he was at least semi-nomadic. Another factor that points to his being part of a semi-nomadic tribe is that a study on his bones revealed that some 15-20% of his diet was fish. This shouldn't be surprising considering that the location he was found at is close to the ocean. However, at the time of his burial the site was some 70 miles from the sea. This meant that either he died on the coast and was carried up 70 miles to bury or that the tribe he was a part of traveled from coast to inland and back again chasing their food.

The ceremonial burial of the red lady marks a time in which human beings were probably blazing new paths in religious life. The use of red ochre would become a common burial practice over much of Europe in later times. In fact though, as old as the Red Lady's burial is it isn't the first time red ochre was used to bury the dead. Neanderthals had used red ochre in burial ceremonies dating back hundreds of thousands of years. So, while the Red Lady might have been a first for anatomically modern humans, he wasn't quite the trendsetter we've made him out to be.

Grrr. Penmaenmawr. Grr.

Welsh words are improbably long and look difficult to pronounce. Thankfully, they are easy to type.

Penmaenmawr is a little town in the parish of Dwygyfylchi, in Northern Wales. There are a whole bunch of prehistoric sites located in and around this small town of less than 4000 people. This is because the hills around the area provided an ample supply of rock for a prehistoric axe making factory to be built in Cwm Graiglwyd. (The Welsh word Cwm means valley or combe, which is a special valley that's enclosed on all sides but one). The stone axes produced in this cwm were some of the best in prehistoric Britain.  These axe heads, like the one pictured to the right were very similar to the axeheads created in the Langdale axe industry.

The Langdale Axe Industry sprang up around what is now Great Langdale, England. This industry was roughly contemporaneous with the axes being produced in Penmaenmawr. In another similarity between these two areas, both seemed to like to produce megalithic structures, especially passage graves. Some of the axes made in Great Langdale and in Penmaenmawr have been found as far south as Cornwall. While this is merely speculation it would make sense that since all three of these areas are on the Western coast of the United Kingdom, that the interchange between these neolithic stone craftsman would have occurred by boats that dotted up and down the coast to facilitate trade. As is the usual case with trade, ideas and culture travel right along with the goods being transported. This could explain the similar architectural fascinations by people so far apart.

The landscape near Penmaenmawr is dotted with megalithic structures. About a half mile south of the quarry the neolithic Welsh used to make their famous axes they built a Meini Hirion, also known as a Druid's Circle. Right next to this Meini Hirion runs a contemporary road from the area of Conwy to Bwlch-y-ddeufaen, roughly nine miles of track that is only passable by foot nowadays. Back then that would have been silly to say because that was the only way to get around, unless of course all these Stone Circles actually happen to be teleportation devices. This road was likely used to carry goods from one village to another and facilitate some type of communal worship at the various meini hirion structures that are all over Wales. While Penmaenmawr has been relegated to a tiny little town in modern times, it was important enough throughout the ancient world to warrant the construction of one of the largest Iron-Age Hill Forts of Europe. The quarries around Penmaenmawr would once again bring a bit of life back into the area in the 19th century but as the quarrying business declined, the population and significance of the town did as well. Of course, its historical significance can never be diminished and it is for this reason it has received an illustrious blog post by a well renowned historian... me.

Neanderthals in Wales

The prehistoric era in Wales is a humongous breadth of years, stretching from the earliest inhabitants of the country by humans and their ancestors more than 200,000 years deep into the Paleolithic up until the Roman invasion of the nation in 48 AD. That span is much too large to cover in a single blog, but since we haven't paid any attention to this little section of the United Kingdom at all in either the podcast or the blog we thought it would be nice to give them a little love.

Neanderthal teeth from the Bontnewydd Palaeolithic site

To begin with let's visit Wales when it was inhabited by modern human's close cousins, the Neanderthals. If you remember, Neanderthals had the run of Europe (and the Middle East) from around 300,000 years ago to 30,000 years ago when they either died out or interbred themselves out of existence with modern humans. In 1981 the oldest Neanderthal remains in Wales were found that date back to around 230,000 years ago. The cave and surrounding area where they were found has since been named the Bontnewydd Palaeolithic site and has yielded a number of Neanderthal artifacts including bones, teeth and tools. This site, though not the only Neanderthal site in Wales, has been acclaimed as important because it marks the farthest northwestern point of early Neanderthal activity in Europe. These deeply entrenched Mousterian Neanderthals would have hunted along the vale of Elwy to survive during one of the many interglacial periods of the paleolithic.

In addition to the Bontnewydd Palaeolithic site a number of caves on the Gower Peninsula have produced some of the richest treasure troves of Aurignacian Neanderthal materials in all of the United Kingdom. Much of these come from the limestone caves in the region, one of which housed the Red Lady of Paviland who we'll cover in another blogpost because the Red Lady was not a Neanderthal (nor was it a lady but that's beside the point). Much of the Aurignacian Culture in fact points more to Modern European Humans, but there is some scant evidence that the Neanderthals occupied these caves at some period before the Aurignacian arrival.

Excavating in Coygan Cave.

Another site that has produced numerous Neanderthal artifacts in Wales centers around Coygan Cave. Coygan Cave seems to have been used by Neanderthals roughly 60,000 - 40,000 years ago towards the end of the Neanderthal reign in Europe. A number of hand axes from the Neanderthal period have been found in this area. As the Neanderthals were dying out for probably an amalgamation of reasons, the cave was occupied by hyenas, who probably were laughing at the Neanderthal's misfortune as we all know that hyenas are generally mean-spirited. It was about this time too that Modern Europeans starting showing up in Wales. To avenge their cousins the modern humans of Wales would eventually drive the hyenas from the isles. Who's laughing now?