Thanks, Iceflower.
I can well imagine it would have taken four strong men to drag QMII away from this exhibition!
And if she smiled more her head would simply split in half!
It is indeed most interesting, because what happened in DK some 6.000 years ago is continually being updated.
During the last ice age the ice stopped right across Jutland, with the rest of DK being buried under ice. But it was still a good place to live for hunter-gatherers, also when the ice started to retreat some 12.000 years ago.
When the ice had gone DK was first marsh-land, the tundra and then dense forest, very most oak and similar slow-growing trees. Beech which is such a dominant feature of Danish fauna came later.
Initially it was thought most people lived in the forests, but it turns out they were almost empty of people until some 8.000 years ago. Most actually lived along the shallow coastline. Fishing and harvesting clamps, and we are talking tons of clamps! - It was food-wise a very rich society. Much more secure than hunting in the forest.
But the climate changed and at least one major disaster must have wiped out countless small communities along the shore-lines off what is now Britain, the Netherlands, Germany and DK. That happened after a massive collapse in either North America or Norway (perhaps both) send a tsunami down what became the North Sea.
And this is when people started to settle along the rivers and even inside the forest.
Then some 6.000 years ago strange people began to arrive from the south. The brought with them weird animals and they lived in permanent settlements and farmed the land. But first and foremost they bred!
A farmer-woman could easily have twice as many children as a woman from a hunter-gatherer society.
The interesting bit is: what happened?
Interbreeding?
Trade? Warfare?
Or did the first people simply migrate away? - Because at that time the coastlines were more or less abandoned, certainly along the sparse west coast of Jutland.
Genetically speaking traces of the first people have been found as far away as the Baltic Countries. So perhaps most did migrate to the still rich coastlines of the Baltic Sea?
Hunter gatherers simply don't have the resources and manpower to keep up a state of war for long anyway.
So the answer to the above questions is probably: All of them.
These farmers who took over, became the Jutes, the Cimbrians, the Angles and Saxons, who much later invaded England.
Around the same time the Danes came west from what is now Sweden and probably Zealand.
Also interesting is that according to one theory at least, the original hunter gatherers were darker-skinned. I.e. like southern Europeans today. That was due to their, according t the theory, much more protein-rich and varied diet. While the farmers were more fair-skinned, due to a deficiency of a certain vitamin in their diet.
AFAIK there have never been found traces of Neanderthals in DK, so perhaps they never came so far north?
I hope you'll be back, Gerry.
Linear Mode
