Working backwards from the present day, step by step, archaeological
evidence gives an undoubted period of 2000 years, to the first
century B.C., during which no measurable change of sea-level has
taken place in the south of England.
To this must be added a few centuries for the growth of the marshes
on which Glastonbury and similar lake-dwellings were built, and
for the growth of various other marshes at present sea-level known
to be earlier than the Roman invasion. Also we must allow for the
accumulation of various shingle-spits and sand-dunes then already
partly formed.
In general, somewhere about one-third or one-half of this
accumulation seems to have taken place before the Roman invasion.
This adds another 1500 years; so that about 3500 years ago, we get
back to the beginning of the period of unchanging sea-level in which
we are still living, and begin to see evidence of earth movements
still in progress.
Whether this 3500 years will take us back to the beginning of the
Bronze Age in Britain is not yet proved; but so far we seem to
discover metals in the whole of the deposits formed whilst the
sea-level remained unchanged, and only stone weapons in even the
newest of the submerged forests. For the present, we may therefore
take it that the two changes nearly coincided. The use of metals
began in Britain about the time that the earth-movements ceased—that
is to say somewhere about 1600 B.C.
Whether this period of 3500 years will really take us back to the
commencement of the Bronze Age is doubtful, for Stonehenge had
already been built, and though only stone hammers seem to have been
there used, yet one slight streak of bronze or copper has been
noticed. Of course, there may have been a similar occasional use of
bronze at the time of the last submerged forest; but we have as yet
no evidence of this, and the possible correspondence in date between
Stonehenge and the last of the submerged forests remains merely a
suggestion.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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