Red Lady of Paviland
Encyclopedia
The Red Lady of Paviland is a fairly complete Upper Paleolithic
-era human male skeleton dyed in red ochre. It was the first human fossil to have been found anywhere in the world and is also the oldest ceremonial burial anywhere in Western Europe so far discovered. The bones were discovered between 18 and 25 January 1823 by Rev. William Buckland
, during an archaeological dig at Goat's Hole Cave; one of the limestone
caves between Port Eynon
and Rhossili
, on the Gower Peninsula
, south Wales
. Buckland believed the remains to be those of a female, dating to Roman Britain. However, later analysis of the remains showed them to have been of a young male, and the most recent re-calibrated radiocarbon dating
in 2009 indicates that the skeleton can be dated to around 33,000 years before present (BP)
.
Later that year, writing about his find in his book Reliquiae Diluvianae (Evidence of the Flood), Buckland stated:
When Buckland first discovered the skeleton in 1823, he misjudged both its age and its sex. As a creationist
, Buckland believed no human remains could have been older than the Biblical
Great Flood, and thus wildly underestimated its true age, believing the remains to date back to the Roman
era. Buckland believed the skeleton was female in large part because it was discovered with decorative items, including perforated seashell necklaces and jewellery thought to be of elephant ivory but now known to be carved from the tusk of a mammoth. These decorative items combined with the skeleton's red dye caused Buckland to mistakenly speculate that the remains belonged to a Roman prostitute or witch.
, as well as the oldest known ceremonial burial in Western Europe
. The skeleton was found along with a mammoth
's skull, which has since been lost. Scholars now believe he may have been a tribal chieftain. The next human remains found in Britain, of Cheddar Man
, are much younger and separated by the period of the Ice Age.
By the time a second archaeological excavation was undertaken to Paviland Cave in 1912, it was recognized through comparison with other discoveries that had been made in Europe, that the remains were from the Palaeolithic - although before carbon dating was invented in the 1950s there was no way of determining the actual age of any pre-historic remains. Early carbon dating has tended to underestimate the age of samples and as radio carbon dating techniques have developed and become more and more accurate so the age of the Red Lady of Paviland has gradually been pushed back. In the 1960s Kenneth Oakley published a radiocarbon determination made on the actual bones of the 'Red Lady' at 18,460 ± 340 BP. Tests made in 1989 and 1995 suggested he lived about 26,000 years ago (26,350 ± 550 BP, OxA-1815) at the end of the Upper Paleolithic
Period. In 2007 a new examination of the remains by Dr Thomas Higham of Oxford University and Dr Roger Jacobi of the British Museum suggested they were 29,000 years old. In 2009 a recalibration of the test results suggested an age of 33,000 years. Although now on the coast, at the time of the burial the cave would have been located approximately 70 miles inland, overlooking a plain. When the remains were dated to some 26,000 years ago it was thought the Red Lady lived at a time when an ice sheet of the most recent glacial period, in the British Isles called the Devensian Glaciation, would have been advancing towards the site, and that consequently the weather would have been more like that of present day Siberia
, with maximum temperatures of perhaps 10°C
in summer, -20° in winter, and a tundra
vegetation. The new dating however indicates he lived at a warmer period. Bone
protein
analysis indicates that the "lady" lived on a diet that consisted of between 15% and 20% fish
, which, together with the distance from the sea, suggests that the people may have been semi-nomad
ic, or that the tribe transported the body from a coastal region for burial. Other food probably included mammoth, the woolly rhinoceros
and reindeer
.
When the skeleton was first found, Wales had no museum in which to keep it, so it was housed at Oxford University, where Buckland was a professor. In December 2007 it was loaned for a year to the National Museum Cardiff
. Subsequent excavations of the area in which the skeleton was found have yielded more than 4,000 flints, teeth and bones, and needles and bracelets, which are on exhibit at Swansea Museum
and the National Museum in Cardiff.
and premiered in Carmarthen, west Wales, on 1 April 2010. The project featured a cantata, 'Y Dyn Unig' (The Lonely Man), composed by Andrew Powell, with libretto by Menna Elfyn
, for tenor, harp, mixed choir, children's chorus and brass band. The work was first performed by Robyn Lyn (tenor), Royal Harpist Claire Jones, Cor Seingar and the Burry Port Town Band, was conducted by Craig Roberts and presented by science author Mark Brake
.
Upper Paleolithic
The Upper Paleolithic is the third and last subdivision of the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age as it is understood in Europe, Africa and Asia. Very broadly it dates to between 40,000 and 10,000 years ago, roughly coinciding with the appearance of behavioral modernity and before the advent of...
-era human male skeleton dyed in red ochre. It was the first human fossil to have been found anywhere in the world and is also the oldest ceremonial burial anywhere in Western Europe so far discovered. The bones were discovered between 18 and 25 January 1823 by Rev. William Buckland
William Buckland
The Very Rev. Dr William Buckland DD FRS was an English geologist, palaeontologist and Dean of Westminster, who wrote the first full account of a fossil dinosaur, which he named Megalosaurus...
, during an archaeological dig at Goat's Hole Cave; one of the limestone
Limestone
Limestone is a sedimentary rock composed largely of the minerals calcite and aragonite, which are different crystal forms of calcium carbonate . Many limestones are composed from skeletal fragments of marine organisms such as coral or foraminifera....
caves between Port Eynon
Port Eynon
Port Eynon is a village and community in the city and county of Swansea, Wales. The community has its own elected community council...
and Rhossili
Rhossili
Rhossili is a small village and community on the southwestern tip of the Gower Peninsula near Swansea in Wales. Since the 1970s it has fallen within the boundaries of Swansea. It is within an area designated as the first Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty in the United Kingdom...
, on the Gower Peninsula
Gower Peninsula
Gower or the Gower Peninsula is a peninsula in south Wales, jutting from the coast into the Bristol Channel, and administratively part of the City and County of Swansea. Locally it is known as "Gower"...
, south Wales
Wales
Wales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and the island of Great Britain, bordered by England to its east and the Atlantic Ocean and Irish Sea to its west. It has a population of three million, and a total area of 20,779 km²...
. Buckland believed the remains to be those of a female, dating to Roman Britain. However, later analysis of the remains showed them to have been of a young male, and the most recent re-calibrated radiocarbon dating
Radiocarbon dating
Radiocarbon dating is a radiometric dating method that uses the naturally occurring radioisotope carbon-14 to estimate the age of carbon-bearing materials up to about 58,000 to 62,000 years. Raw, i.e. uncalibrated, radiocarbon ages are usually reported in radiocarbon years "Before Present" ,...
in 2009 indicates that the skeleton can be dated to around 33,000 years before present (BP)
Before Present
Before Present years is a time scale used in archaeology, geology, and other scientific disciplines to specify when events in the past occurred. Because the "present" time changes, standard practice is to use AD 1950 as the origin of the age scale, reflecting the fact that radiocarbon...
.
Discovery
The story begins not in 1823 but during the previous year, when Daniel Davies and the Rev John Davies, respectively surgeon and curate at Port Eynon on the south coast of Gower, explored the cave and found animal bones, including the tusk of a mammoth. The Talbot family of Penrice Castle was informed and Miss Mary Theresa Talbot, then the oldest unmarried daughter, joined an expedition to the site and found 'bones of elephants' on 27 December 1822. William Buckland, Professor of Geology at Oxford University and a correspondent of that well-connected family, was contacted. He arrived on 18 January 1823 and spent a week at Goat's Hole - a week in which his famous discovery took placeLater that year, writing about his find in his book Reliquiae Diluvianae (Evidence of the Flood), Buckland stated:
"I found the skeleton enveloped by a coating of a kind of ruddleOchreOchre is the term for both a golden-yellow or light yellow brown color and for a form of earth pigment which produces the color. The pigment can also be used to create a reddish tint known as "red ochre". The more rarely used terms "purple ochre" and "brown ochre" also exist for variant hues...
... which stained the earth, and in some parts extended itself to the distance of about half an inch [12 mm] around the surface of the bones ... Close to that part of the thigh bone where the pocket is usually worn surrounded also by ruddle [were] about two handfuls of the Nerita littoralis [periwinkle shells]. At another part of the skeleton, viz in contact with the ribs [were] forty or fifty fragments of ivory rods [also] some small fragments of rings made of the same ivory and found with the rods ... Both rods and rings, as well as the Nerite shells, were stained superficially with red, and lay in the same red substance that enveloped the bones."
When Buckland first discovered the skeleton in 1823, he misjudged both its age and its sex. As a creationist
Old Earth creationism
Old Earth creationism is an umbrella term for a number of types of creationism, including gap creationism and progressive creationism...
, Buckland believed no human remains could have been older than the Biblical
Bible
The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...
Great Flood, and thus wildly underestimated its true age, believing the remains to date back to the Roman
Ancient Rome
Ancient Rome was a thriving civilization that grew on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 8th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea and centered on the city of Rome, it expanded to one of the largest empires in the ancient world....
era. Buckland believed the skeleton was female in large part because it was discovered with decorative items, including perforated seashell necklaces and jewellery thought to be of elephant ivory but now known to be carved from the tusk of a mammoth. These decorative items combined with the skeleton's red dye caused Buckland to mistakenly speculate that the remains belonged to a Roman prostitute or witch.
Findings
The "lady" has since been identified as a man, probably no older than 21. His are the oldest anatomically modern human remains found in the United KingdomUnited Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
, as well as the oldest known ceremonial burial in Western Europe
Western Europe
Western Europe is a loose term for the collection of countries in the western most region of the European continents, though this definition is context-dependent and carries cultural and political connotations. One definition describes Western Europe as a geographic entity—the region lying in the...
. The skeleton was found along with a mammoth
Mammoth
A mammoth is any species of the extinct genus Mammuthus. These proboscideans are members of Elephantidae, the family of elephants and mammoths, and close relatives of modern elephants. They were often equipped with long curved tusks and, in northern species, a covering of long hair...
's skull, which has since been lost. Scholars now believe he may have been a tribal chieftain. The next human remains found in Britain, of Cheddar Man
Cheddar Man
Cheddar Man is the name given to the remains of a human male found in Gough's Cave in Cheddar Gorge, Somerset, England. The remains date to approximately 7150 BC, and it appears that he died a violent death. It is Britain’s oldest complete human skeleton....
, are much younger and separated by the period of the Ice Age.
By the time a second archaeological excavation was undertaken to Paviland Cave in 1912, it was recognized through comparison with other discoveries that had been made in Europe, that the remains were from the Palaeolithic - although before carbon dating was invented in the 1950s there was no way of determining the actual age of any pre-historic remains. Early carbon dating has tended to underestimate the age of samples and as radio carbon dating techniques have developed and become more and more accurate so the age of the Red Lady of Paviland has gradually been pushed back. In the 1960s Kenneth Oakley published a radiocarbon determination made on the actual bones of the 'Red Lady' at 18,460 ± 340 BP. Tests made in 1989 and 1995 suggested he lived about 26,000 years ago (26,350 ± 550 BP, OxA-1815) at the end of the Upper Paleolithic
Paleolithic
The Paleolithic Age, Era or Period, is a prehistoric period of human history distinguished by the development of the most primitive stone tools discovered , and covers roughly 99% of human technological prehistory...
Period. In 2007 a new examination of the remains by Dr Thomas Higham of Oxford University and Dr Roger Jacobi of the British Museum suggested they were 29,000 years old. In 2009 a recalibration of the test results suggested an age of 33,000 years. Although now on the coast, at the time of the burial the cave would have been located approximately 70 miles inland, overlooking a plain. When the remains were dated to some 26,000 years ago it was thought the Red Lady lived at a time when an ice sheet of the most recent glacial period, in the British Isles called the Devensian Glaciation, would have been advancing towards the site, and that consequently the weather would have been more like that of present day Siberia
Siberia
Siberia is an extensive region constituting almost all of Northern Asia. Comprising the central and eastern portion of the Russian Federation, it was part of the Soviet Union from its beginning, as its predecessor states, the Tsardom of Russia and the Russian Empire, conquered it during the 16th...
, with maximum temperatures of perhaps 10°C
Celsius
Celsius is a scale and unit of measurement for temperature. It is named after the Swedish astronomer Anders Celsius , who developed a similar temperature scale two years before his death...
in summer, -20° in winter, and a tundra
Tundra
In physical geography, tundra is a biome where the tree growth is hindered by low temperatures and short growing seasons. The term tundra comes through Russian тундра from the Kildin Sami word tūndâr "uplands," "treeless mountain tract." There are three types of tundra: Arctic tundra, alpine...
vegetation. The new dating however indicates he lived at a warmer period. Bone
Bone
Bones are rigid organs that constitute part of the endoskeleton of vertebrates. They support, and protect the various organs of the body, produce red and white blood cells and store minerals. Bone tissue is a type of dense connective tissue...
protein
Protein
Proteins are biochemical compounds consisting of one or more polypeptides typically folded into a globular or fibrous form, facilitating a biological function. A polypeptide is a single linear polymer chain of amino acids bonded together by peptide bonds between the carboxyl and amino groups of...
analysis indicates that the "lady" lived on a diet that consisted of between 15% and 20% fish
Fish
Fish are a paraphyletic group of organisms that consist of all gill-bearing aquatic vertebrate animals that lack limbs with digits. Included in this definition are the living hagfish, lampreys, and cartilaginous and bony fish, as well as various extinct related groups...
, which, together with the distance from the sea, suggests that the people may have been semi-nomad
Nomad
Nomadic people , commonly known as itinerants in modern-day contexts, are communities of people who move from one place to another, rather than settling permanently in one location. There are an estimated 30-40 million nomads in the world. Many cultures have traditionally been nomadic, but...
ic, or that the tribe transported the body from a coastal region for burial. Other food probably included mammoth, the woolly rhinoceros
Woolly Rhinoceros
The woolly rhinoceros is an extinct species of rhinoceros that was common throughout Europe and Asia during the Pleistocene epoch and survived the last glacial period. The genus name Coelodonta means "cavity tooth"...
and reindeer
Reindeer
The reindeer , also known as the caribou in North America, is a deer from the Arctic and Subarctic, including both resident and migratory populations. While overall widespread and numerous, some of its subspecies are rare and one has already gone extinct.Reindeer vary considerably in color and size...
.
When the skeleton was first found, Wales had no museum in which to keep it, so it was housed at Oxford University, where Buckland was a professor. In December 2007 it was loaned for a year to the National Museum Cardiff
National Museum Cardiff
National Museum Cardiff is a museum and art gallery in Cardiff, Wales. The museum is part of the wider network of Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales...
. Subsequent excavations of the area in which the skeleton was found have yielded more than 4,000 flints, teeth and bones, and needles and bracelets, which are on exhibit at Swansea Museum
Swansea Museum
The Swansea Museum in Swansea, Wales, UK is the oldest museum in Wales. The building was built for the Royal Institution of South Wales in 1841 in the neo-classical style.-Main museum:...
and the National Museum in Cardiff.
Red Lady Arts Project
The story of the Red Lady was the focus of an arts project supported by a Steps to New Music Award from the Arts Council of WalesArts Council of Wales
The Arts Council of Wales is a Welsh Government sponsored body, responsible for funding and developing the arts in Wales.Established by Royal Charter in 1946, as the Welsh Arts Council , when it merged with the three Welsh regional arts associations...
and premiered in Carmarthen, west Wales, on 1 April 2010. The project featured a cantata, 'Y Dyn Unig' (The Lonely Man), composed by Andrew Powell, with libretto by Menna Elfyn
Menna Elfyn
Menna Elfyn is a Welsh poet, playwright, columnist, and editor who writes with passion of the Welsh and identity. She has published ten volumes of poetry and a dozen more of children’s books and anthologies. She has also written eight plays for stage, six radio plays for BBC, two plays for...
, for tenor, harp, mixed choir, children's chorus and brass band. The work was first performed by Robyn Lyn (tenor), Royal Harpist Claire Jones, Cor Seingar and the Burry Port Town Band, was conducted by Craig Roberts and presented by science author Mark Brake
Mark Brake
Mark Brake is an author and freelance academic. He was formerly a professor of science communication at the University of Glamorgan.- Education :Brake was born at Mountain Ash, Wales, UK...
.
Further reading
- R.M. Jacobi, T.F.G. Higham, 'The "Red Lady" ages: New Ultrafiltration AMS determinations from Paviland', in "Journal of Human Evolution" (2008)
- S. Aldhouse-Green, "Paviland Cave and the 'Red Lady': a Definitive Report" (2000)
External links
- British Archaeology magazine, Oct. 2001, "Great Sites: Paviland Cave"
- Paviland Cave - Explore Gower
- Campaign to return the "Red Lady" to Wales
- Geographical location of the cave where the remains were found
- Oxford University Museum's geology collection
- Devensian Glaciation
- BBC Wales: Ancient skeleton goes on display
- Paviland Cave from Gathering the Jewels