Creswell crags is a small limestone gorge not far from the Derbyshire peak district. Amidst the soft rolling landscape of a modern arable setting it cuts an anomalous and peculiar scar on the landscape (ignoring the far bigger scar created by the nearby opencast mining operation). But what makes the gorge stand out most is that it is a time capsule from an era far older than anything else I have yet dealt with on this blog.
During a recent visit to the Crags I was impressed by the depth of time this small Limestone gorge and its collection of caves represent. Quite apart from the geology of the crags (which presumably started with the formation of a layer of limestone strata in carboniferous times) the impressive human interest value of the site goes back many thousands of generations, right back, in fact, to over 40,000 years ago when Neanderthals occupied the gorge. According to Creswell Crags’ wiki page its caves not only hosted Neanderthals but also saw phases of human occupation around 30,000 years ago and then again around 14 to 13 thousand years ago. The latter were seasonal hunter gatherers who arrived from the continent and used the caves during the cold British summer of a glacial interstadial. It was this latter group who left the recently discovered (2003) sensational cave art – sensational because it is the only known cave art in Britain.
The Paleolithic human prehistory of Creswell Crags makes the other ancient sites I have mentioned in this blog look more like memories of yesterday; even the Neolithic, Bronze Age and Iron Age structures of Britain are recent by comparison. From our perspective a time of 13000 years ago might feel as though the benefits of the end of the ice age were just round the corner, but no; the end of the ice age was still 3000 years off and that equated to hundreds of generations of these nomads' short and hard lives; life as they knew it was going to continue for them just as it had for many generations before that. For these people each year was just another year in what to all and intents and purposes was an endless cycle. I doubt they had much sense of history. A sense of history requires, like a landscape, features to act as landmarks in order to give it character, identity, distinctiveness and a sense of time passing by. The concept of an historical progression may never have occurred to them
Given that today we are familiar with the idea of some kind of origin from which history unfolds and changes, it raises the question of just how a people trapped in a seemingly endless cycle viewed the world. What were their beliefs about the origins, nature and purpose of their world? Did they even have such beliefs? Whatever they believed, it would, of course, have been mediated from one generation to the next by an oral tradition that was propagated down the centuries and millennia. I tried to put myself in the position of one of these wandering cave dwellers: In the dark caves at night as sleep stole over them, did they have questions in their minds about their lot? Did they wonder if life had always have been like this and for how long? Did they wonder what life would be like thousands of years hence? Could they even conceive such questions? Or perhaps they were assured that their oral traditions provided all they needed to know and thought no more of the matter. When one draws back and imagines these people contemplating such questions, there seems to be as much chance of an ant crawling around on the face of a mountain grasping his full context. Or alternatively if our ant is the ant equivalent of a Young Earth Creationist he can postulate that the mountain is no bigger than a cosy ant hill and thus feel less lost in his surroundings.
Do the artworks at Creswell Crags give us any clues about the beliefs of these hunter-gatherers? Trouble is, the very meaning of the cave art is itself an enigma. All we can do is use our imagination and knowledge of similar cultures in an attempt to connect with these ancient peoples. The archeo-anthropologists are probably best qualified to speak on this issue: The cave art may have been a teaching aid for trainee hunters, helping them to identify their quarry, perhaps via some form of ritualized initiation. There appears, however, to be no cosmological questions addressed by their art: Only what was needed to survive in a harsh environment was upper most in the minds of these people.
The humble cave dwellings of the Creswell Crags nomads differs markedly from the other two places we visited on the same trip – the impressive Elizabethan Wollerton Hall in Nottingham and Castle Acre priory – both very modern constructions by the standard of this post. After the deep time signified by Creswell Crags, these places, which in comparison go back to times we know so much about, seem prosaic and commonplace. As a living space Wollerton Hall, in particular, is as far removed from the setting of Creswell Crags as could possibly be:
…and yet on turning a corner in this now museum I came across a sight that for obvious reasons reminded me sharply of Creswell Crags:
....yes, a row of trophies bagged by that now politically incorrect animal the trophy hunter. What was once common place necessity 15000 years ago, in later times became the privileged pass time of the rich in an agriculturally based economy. The trophy hunter displays his trophies because his respect for his quarry reflects some glory and dignity upon him. So perhaps this vestigial hunter instinct throws some light on the enigmatic cave art of Creswell Crags.
