archeology and anthropology here in hicksville

We have very good friends who live just a few farms away. A week ago we were invited to their house for a very nice dinner, and we ended up spending the evening engrossed in conversation about archeology and anthropology.

Neanderthals are often portrayed as dark and hairy, and it's widely held that they died out during the ice age. I found it very interesting to hear the idea that what if Neanderthals were fair skinned and blue eyed? What if they retreated to the north as "modern man" came up from Africa? What if instead of dying out entirely, they interbred with their conquerors resulting in the Northern European traits people have now?

The discussion then progressed to the flint tools made by Neanderthals and where they are found. We've found quite the interesting assortment of flint tools around here, and last weekend my daughter and I went for a walk with these friends for a lesson in identifying flint tools. It turns out that my daughter is really good at finding them.

We also talked about some strange rocks that they had found in the area. Yesterday we went to look at these. They are bigger than the usual rocks that make up the stone walls around the fields, they are often oblong, and they have flat sides. None of these things by itself is that unusual, but to find so many of these stones in the walls around one particular field is interesting. A lot of stones in these walls also have interesting markings in them. These markings look like X, V, and I--Yup, Roman numerals.


We wondered if there had been some sort of stone setting in this field like Ales Stenar (about an hour from here on the south coast). We wondered also if there could have been a Roman outpost out here. Other signs of Roman activity have been found near Malmo, so it's not that preposterous.

Here's a picture I took several years ago at Ales Stenar.