London, Aug 11 (IANS) It is cramped, draughty and unlikely to win any design awards. But the newly discovered circular structure is the country’s oldest known home, built in 8,500 BC.
Built more than 6,000 years before Stonehenge, it provided shelter from the icy winds and storms that battered the nomadic hunters roaming Britain at the end of the last Ice Age, reports The Daily Mail.
The remains of the 11 foot-wide building, discovered near Scarborough in North Yorkshire, have been dated to at least 8,500 BC. It stood next to an ancient lake and close to the remains of a wooden quayside.
Chantal Conneller from the University of Manchester said it was between 500 and 1,000 years older than the previous record holder, a building found at Howick, Northumberland.
‘This changes our ideas of the lives of the first settlers to move back into Britain after the end of the last Ice Age,’ she said. ‘We used to think they moved around a lot and left little evidence.’
‘Now we know they built large structures and were very attached to particular places in the landscape.’
None of the wood used to make the building has survived. Instead, archaeologists found tell-tale signs of 18 timber posts, arranged in a circle. The centre of the structure had been hollowed out and filled with organic material.
The researchers believe the floor was once carpeted with a layer of reeds, moss or grasses and that there may have been a fireplace.
Conneller said the hut was used for at least 200 to 500 years – and may have been abandoned for long stretches.
Previous archaeological digs have unearthed head-dresses made from deer skulls close to the hut, along with remains of flints, the paddle of a boat, antler tools, fish hooks and beads.
