The Story of the East Riding of Yorkshire — John Shaqi
The Story of the East Riding of YorkshireBrowne, Horace B. (Horace Baker)
History
The Story of the East Riding of Yorkshire
Browne, Horace B. (Horace Baker)
Yorkshire (England) -- History
Draw on a map of the East Riding a line from Sewerby, through Driffield
and Beverley, to Hessle, and you are drawing the line of the old
sea-beach when the upheaval previously mentioned had taken place. This
was the shore of a land inhabited by races of animals now found living
only in tropical regions. The elephant, rhinoceros, hippopotamus and
hyena ranged the land for food, and bones of these creatures have been
found in considerable numbers in the caves that exist at Kirkdale in the
North Riding.
* * * * *
Then came a great change. The climate of Northern Europe became colder
and colder till there prevailed what scientists call the ‘Great Ice
Age.’ This was the time of formation of huge glaciers which spread from
the mountains of Scandinavia, Scotland, and north-west England
southwards and eastwards into the sea, until they met and made its whole
area a slowly moving mass of ice. With the ice were carried sand,
gravel, clay, boulders torn from projecting rocks, and bones of Arctic
animals, such as the walrus, the reindeer, and the Irish elk; and as the
ice gradually melted, all these were deposited at the base of the line
of chalk cliffs, or even on the summit of the cliffs where these were
low. From the gravel pits at Burstwick excavations of ballast for the
embankments of the North Eastern Railway brought to light animal bones
in such quantities that many tons were sold to chemical manure
manufacturers, and it is probable that many tons still remain
undiscovered.
[Illustration:
_Photo by_] Relics of the Ice Age. [_C. W. Mason_
]
A walrus tusk from Kelsey Hill and the tooth of a mammoth from the
cliffs at Atwick.[2]
Footnote 2:
The weight of this tooth is 9½ lbs. One side has been worn down and
polished smooth by the friction of the ice in passing over it.
In this way was formed the ‘great mass of gravel, clay, and sand ...
east of the Yorkshire Wolds’ which we know as the Plain of Holderness.
Here is what one of our foremost local geologists has to say of its
beginnings:—
‘Let us imagine the probable appearance of East Yorkshire on the final
melting of the ice. Huge fans or sheets of gravel occur at Bridlington
and other places as a result of the floods. Rounded hillocks of gravel
and clay stand out in all directions; the hollows in between are filled
with water, forming miniature lakes or meres. Of animal or plant life
there is little or none. The climate gradually becomes milder; at first
Arctic plants and animals exist in small numbers. Later, the margins of
the meres become clothed in vegetation; peat is eventually formed, and
huge trees of Oak and Fir thrive. The Red Deer, Beaver, Short-horned Ox,
Otter, and Wild Horse, haunt the woods, and finally primitive man makes
his appearance.’
[Illustration:
SKULL AND ANTLERS OF A RED DEER FOUND IN THE HORNSEA
PEAT-BED.
]
III.
MEN OF THE STONE AGE.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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