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4,000-year-old flowers found at grave site

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Rowan
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4,000-year-old flowers found at grave site

Post by Rowan » Sat December 19th, 2009, 9:26 pm

When I first came across this article I thought it was too morbid to post here, but then I realised that it is ultimately historical news. History is partly why we're all a part of this forum.

Proof that pre-historic people placed bunches of flowers in the grave when they buried their dead has been found for the first time, experts have said.

Archaeologists have discovered a bunch of meadowsweet blossoms in a Bronze Age grave at Forteviot, south of Perth.

The find is reported in the journal "British Archaeology", out this week.

Pollen found in earlier digs had been thought to have come from honey, or the alcoholic drink mead but this find may finally rule that theory out.

Dr Kenneth Brophy, from the University of Glasgow, said the flowers "don't look very much. Just about three or four millimetres across."

"But these are the first proof that people in the Bronze Age were actually placing flowers in with burials."
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annis
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Post by annis » Sun December 20th, 2009, 2:13 am

Posted by Rowan
When I first came across this article I thought it was too morbid to post here, but then I realised that it is ultimately historical news.
I don't find it morbid, Rowan, but rather moving to think that over thousands of years our experience of sorrow for people we lose to death remains the same, and that we want to honour them in simlar ways.

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LoveHistory
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Post by LoveHistory » Sun December 20th, 2009, 3:40 pm

So you see we really haven't changed all that much on an emotional level despite the passage of 4,000 years.

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SarahWoodbury
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Post by SarahWoodbury » Mon December 21st, 2009, 1:01 am

Try 100,000 years! One particular find (Shanidar IV) is still subject to debate, but archaeologists have found pollen and flower residue on the bones of graves that old--and certainly among Cro Magnons 35,000 years ago. The more things change, the more they stay the same, eh?

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Post by LoveHistory » Mon December 21st, 2009, 4:10 pm

Then I guess we're really not much more "civilized" than cavemen, huh? LOL

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Post by zsigandr » Mon December 21st, 2009, 7:39 pm

I agree with Annis - I don't find this morbid, but rather touching. It is very interesting to read that thousands of years before our times, that humans were placing flowers with their dead. Perhaps this is the oldest tradition in human history?
Andrea

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Post by SarahWoodbury » Tue December 22nd, 2009, 2:01 am

This has the anthropologist in me going. . . there are footprints left behind in volcanic strata (the Laetoli footprints, they're called) that are 3.8 million years old. They show two hominids, one larger and one smaller, walking side by side. Within the footprints of the larger hominid are the much smaller footprints of a child, hopping along behind. Anthropologists view this as a family group, and I find it incredibly cool to think of that ancient child, walking in the footprints of his/her father . . .

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Post by zsigandr » Tue December 22nd, 2009, 8:40 pm

Oh that is definitely cool! Although we have come so far, some things have not changed.
Andrea

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Anna Elliott
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Post by Anna Elliott » Wed December 23rd, 2009, 12:49 am

[quote=""SarahWoodbury""]This has the anthropologist in me going. . . there are footprints left behind in volcanic strata (the Laetoli footprints, they're called) that are 3.8 million years old. They show two hominids, one larger and one smaller, walking side by side. Within the footprints of the larger hominid are the much smaller footprints of a child, hopping along behind. Anthropologists view this as a family group, and I find it incredibly cool to think of that ancient child, walking in the footprints of his/her father . . .[/quote]

There is also that scene in Dragonfly in Amber with the male and female skeletons in the cave--which I believe Diana Gabaldon based on an actual archaeological find? I'm pretty sure I read that somewhere.

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