The Age of the Flood
This time period is the most misunderstood and the most dramatic by far.
The Ice Age lost its grip of the planet and vast areas of land became submerged. We know that Humans from the time of Homo Erectus preferred to live on the sea shore, and it is becoming increasingly obvious that many ancient archaeological remains are currently lost beneath the oceans.
If we stop and think for a moment, for the last 150,000 years, Homo Sapiens Sapiens have been modern humans! They are us! What were we doing? Our mentality was still primitive, that is true, but our mental capacity was there, right from the start. By 40,000 BCE there is ample archaeological evidence that modern thought and language capacity were in place and fueling evolution. We were relatively few in number, but free to develop and explore. What did we do?
The geology of Europe was constantly changing and the Alaskan land bridge was still in place. The Gravettian Culture flourished in southern France and Spain from approximately 28,000 to 22,000 years ago, and the Trans Alpine Badagoulian Culture flourished from 25,000 to 13,000 years ago, but then in 23,000 BCE another mini Ice Age caused a Global Winter for another 6,000 years, with the largest ever expansion of the ice sheets right down to France and Spain, even across most of North America. Academics suggest that such severe conditions caused Homo Sapiens Sapiens to leap to new innovations to survive, and new spear shapes evolved during this time. It is thought that mummification in Africa and Spain first began at this time, possibly inspired by frozen and desert dried corpses of loved ones at a time when life was extremely brutal and short. Crisis again leads to a leap in human understanding, this time about pain and loss?
The Ahrensburg Culture in southern Germany dates to about 11,200 BCE
The Solutrean Culture begins in eastern France about 16,000 years ago.
Recent research suggests that pre Clovis spear heads found their way to North America from France as our ancestors used Eskimo technology to strike out across the Atlantic ice sheets to discover the New World.
By 16,000 BCE the Global Winter began to receed and massive floods from this time produced the Scab Lands in America. More extinctions of giant beavers and giant sloths followed. The Magdalenian culture of southern Germany dates to this time, and it spreads eventually from Belgium to Poland. The north west corner of Europe develops the Creswellian Culture about 15000 years ago.
By 15,000 BCE, the Jomon culture in Japan had begun to develop pottery, indeed, some archaeologists believe they had been making pottery since 27,000 BCE! Was Japan a meeting place of all those travellers across the land bridge to the Americas? A jumping off point for the long march into the unknown, with new people coming and going and exchanging new technologies? We always assume that people are only going one way, into the Americas, but what if they were also returning back into Asia as well? They may have been hunting seasonal animals across the ice sheets and then returning to bases in Asia, only gradually migrating down into the lands beyond. This may have taken thousands of years, not a one way desperate migration.
Megalithic cultures around the world were transforming the landscape and returning to seasonal hunting and gathering sites to conduct community festivals to meet, gossip and exchange marriage partners and group members and trade. They were using ritual and carving figurines. They also began to domesticate animals, as opposed to using animals just for the hunt. All over the World, peoples moved in migratory currents, developing special sacred sites along the way that would be returned to millennia after millennia.
The roots of the Sanskrit language may date to about 15,000 BCE, and we can trace this root language as the origin of all Indo European languages, which include all of the European peoples into the Middle East and the Americas. There is ample evidence of irrigation projects as early agriculture began as early as 12,000 BCE. Emer Wheat is being farmed, and archaeologists have founds traces of this in Iraq.
In India, the Proto Harappan culture emerges and builds cities for the first time, only for them to be lost under the sea as the Ice Age finally ends.
Specific cultures can be identified, for example the Aurignacians in Egypt, Spain, Gaul and Britain, but remember that we are all identical Homo Sapiens Sapiens! All around the World, distinct cultures are evident, Azilians, Tardenoisians, Cabiri and Capasians in North West Africa, Iberians in Spain and Europe, Badarians in Egypt (possibly of Iberian stock), Hamitics, Berbers, Libyans, Nubians, Fulas, Semites, Abyssinians, Gallas, Mediterraneans, Somalis, Guaches. And in the New World Tiamanacos at Lake Titicaca, and Flores in Indonesia - and many others proliferate as the last of the mass extinctions of giant animals occur. These are different cultures and not different races! This notion of different races is misleading and based on old misunderstandings from very politically incorrect ideas of Empire, and this will become more and more evident as we proceed.
There is definite evidence for mummification in North West Africa from 14,000 BCE. By 11,000 BCE trade routes can be discovered in the archaeological record, obsidian, amber and most importantly of all flint. Dolmens (standing stones) begin to be erected in Britain, Europe, Japan and North Africa, most likely early markers for the change of seasons and the trigger for planting to begin and the herds to appear. By 10,000 BCE, humanity underwent a techological explosion. We developed pottery universally, fired figurines and domesticated dogs, cats, goats, sheep, pigs and cows. This is the time when over seventy diseases jump from animals to humans, including tuberculosis.
Belief structures in the form of Shamanism were widespread. A Deer antler headdress has been found in England dating to about 9,500 BCE. We are in the time of the flood myths! The Vedas in India describe events as Indra releases the Dragons (ice waters), (and incidentally Ayurvedic medicine dates back to this time), and the Sangam flood myths of the Tamils are first sung. Plato dates his myth of Atlantis to this very time. Aboriginal myths of the Rainbow Snake also date to this time. The Germanic epic the Edder talks of a great flood, and the Native American myths of the Hopi Indians and myths as far south as Brazil all talk of flood. The Aztec Pyramid texts refer to sanctuary for the people in the next great flood. The lost City of Bali in the Bay of Bengal still snags the nets of modern day fishermen off the coast of Southern India, and off the coast of Gujerat, the two Proto Harrapan cities have just been rediscovered under the sea.
Humans have been trying to colonise Britain since 700,000 BCE in all of our various guises, but the ice sheets drove us back again and again. Settled colonies finally established themselves by 12,000 BCE, and in England the first house in the British Isles was being built in Northumbria. The British Channel forms about this time, isolating Britain from Europe, though we are still joined to Denmark, and we are related to the peoples there, so remember this when the Vikings arrive and historians call them a different race!
Humanity is poised for the modern age!