The Geological Story of the Isle of WightHughes, J. Cecil (John Cecil)
Science
The Geological Story of the Isle of Wight
Hughes, J. Cecil (John Cecil)
Geology -- England -- Isle of Wight; Geology, Stratigraphic -- Tertiary; Paleontology -- England -- Isle of Wight
history of the river we have just traced, we come to the new race of
men, the Neolithic.
When Neolithic man appeared the land stood higher than at present,
though not so high as during great part of the Pleistocene. Britain
was divided from the Continent, but the shores were a good way out
into what is now sea round the coasts, and forests clothed these
further shores. Remains of these, known as submerged forest, are found
below the tide mark round many parts of our coast. Peat as at
Southampton Docks, is found under the estuarine mud off Netley. The
wells at the Spithead Forts show an old land surface with peat more
than 50 feet below the tide level. The old bed of the Solent river
lies much lower still--124 feet below high tide at Noman's Land Fort;
this channel was probably an estuary after the subsidence of the land
till it silted up with marine deposits to the level on which the
submerged forest grew.
When the Solent and Southampton Water were wooded valleys with rivers
flowing down the middle, the Isle of Wight rivers were tributaries to
the Solent river, and the forest, as might be expected, extended up
their valleys, and covered the low ground of the Island. Under the
alluvial flats are remains of buried forests. In digging a well at
Sandford in 1906 large trunks of hard oak were found blocking the
sinking of the well. When the land sank the sea flowed up the river
valleys, converting them into strait and estuary, and largely filling
up the channels with the silt, which now covers the peat. In the silt
of Newtown river are found bones of _Bos primigenius_, which was found
with the Neolithic remains in the peat of Southampton docks.
The remains of Neolithic man are not only found in submerged forests,
but over the present surface of the land, or buried in recent
deposits. He has left us the tombs of his chiefs, known as long
barrows--great mounds of earth covering a row of chambers made of
flat stones, such as the mounds of New Grange in Ireland, and the
cromlechs or dolmens still standing in Wales and Cornwall. These
consist of a large flat or curved stone--it may be 14 feet in
length,--supported on three or four others. Originally a great mound
of earth or stones was piled on top. These have generally been removed
since by the hand of later man. The stones have been taken for road
metal, the earth to lay on the land. The great cromlech at Lanyon in
Cornwall was uncovered by a farmer, who had removed 100 cart loads of
earth to lay on his stony land before he had any idea that it was not
a natural mound. Then he came on the great cromlech underneath.
Another form of monument was the great standing stone or menhir, one
of which, the Longstone on the Down above Mottistone still stands to
mark the tomb of some chieftain of, it may be, 4,000 years ago.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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