Talk:Prehistoric settlement of the British Isles

message: The text in the section 'Origin myths - Ireland' says "The last of these was the invasion by the Gaels who came from Spain;" If correct (I assume that this is what the Book of Invasions implies), the text should either say "The last of these was the invasion by the Gaels, who came from the area now known as Spain;", or "The last of these was the invasion by the Gaels, who came from the Iberian Peninsula;". As that area wasn't really known as Spain until the 15th century. Yours, Daicaregos (talk) 08:51, 13 April 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Thank you. Daicaregos (talk) 12:33, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Origin myths - Ireland 

message: This article's change of name to 'Prehistoric settlement of the British Isles' does not seem to be what was agreed. Please change it back. Daicaregos (talk) 17:20, 8 July 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: There was no consensus to change it from its existing name.  What are you referring to? --Bill Reid | (talk) 18:25, 8 July 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: The page move request was from Settlement of the British Isles to Prehistoric settlement of Great Britain and Ireland. However, the move has been made to 'Prehistoric settlement of the British Isles'. As you say, there was no consensus for this change. Daicaregos (talk) 06:51, 9 July 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: There was a consensus for change to "prehistoric settlement", what there was not a consensus for was the ending. I personally thought it should go back to the name it had before (Britain and Ireland) but as there was not a consensus for that, I made the minimum change possible. --PBS (talk) 08:15, 9 July 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Are you sure that moving a page to a name different to that of the page move request agrees with due process? I would support to a page move to that requested i.e. Prehistoric settlement of Great Britain and Ireland, but I do not support the name it has been changed to. Daicaregos (talk) 10:12, 9 July 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes I am sure. If I had moved it to the name I preferred, (which is the same as you) then I can see that some people would have complained. The consensus above agreed with adding prehistoric to the name, but could not agree which name to move it too. As the name was already at British Isles, the name change was the smallest change I could make within the agreed consensus. --PBS (talk) 11:55, 9 July 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm happy with this change, the rationale that this was the smallest change within the agreed consensus makes sense to me. Dougweller (talk) 13:02, 9 July 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree with the move made to "Prehistoric..."  Any further move to "...Great Britain and Ireland" (rather than "...British Isles") would be contentious and should be subject to a further discussion, though personally I'd support it.  Ghmyrtle (talk) 14:39, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

text: It may make sense, but any page name change should be explicitly noted on the talkpage before the change is made. Daicaregos (talk) 13:17, 9 July 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: The conversation in the previous section is quite acceptable, particularly as  User:Dougweller and I have fallen into line with the others who expressed a preference for "British Isles", and as you also think "prehistoric settlement" is to be preferred over "settlement", which do you think is closer to your preferred name "settlement of the British Isles" or "prehistoric settlement of the British Isles" (given that "Great Britain and Ireland" is not on offer)? --PBS (talk) 14:14, 9 July 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Page rename  

message: Be careful folks, you'll get the article 'protected'. GoodDay (talk) 20:45, 1 November 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Generally a good idea for modern articles, but over part of the period that we are covering this was a single island. And at the end of the period the Romans called the two islands collectively the Great Britain and Little Britain, based purely on their comparative sizes. Both together were Britain, or the British Isles. As happens usually in such cases, the larger entity acquired the name and the smaller entity developed a consciousness of being to some degree unrelated to the name. (Compare the relation of the Netherlands, and to a lesser degree Austria, to Germany.) But this happened after the period covered in this article. Therefore talking about Great Britain and Ireland isn't really appropriate in this article, especially not if done consistently. It's just like we don't talk about Ireland and Northern Ireland. Or like we don't talk about Germany, Austria and the Netherlands in an article on the Middle Ages. (We just call it "Germany".) Hans Adler 21:15, 1 November 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Seeing as this takes place before 1922, in agreement. GoodDay (talk) 21:19, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

text: The land bridge between Europe and GB - Doggerland - existed until c. 6200BC, long after Ireland and GB separated - c. 12,000BC according to Prehistoric Ireland.  Ghmyrtle (talk) 21:10, 1 November 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I guess I just misremembered things. Hans Adler 21:19, 1 November 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: 'Fraid so - I've just checked Oppenheimer and he concurs with what I said - see maps in his ch.4. Ghmyrtle (talk) 21:20, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

text: I am still leaving the sentence out, since the separation between the islands happened during the palaeolithic, so it would need a bit more formulation work. Hans Adler 21:24, 1 November 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Seems like a bad idea. M. J. Kelly ("Ireland before 3000 B.C." in Ó Cróinín (ed) Prehistoric and Early Ireland) says: "It is now clear that the earliest occupation of Ireland dates to the middle of the eighth millennium bc..." (pp. 64-5). But Ireland and Scotland may still have been connected by a land bridge for a millennium after human settlement began as he also tells us (p. 59) that "it is now argued that the separation of Ireland and Scotland had already been completed before 6000 bc" and also (p. 67) that "it is not impossible that the first inhabitants of what came to be the island of Ireland arrived by walking". Angus McLellan  (Talk) 21:27, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

text: ?? - please clarify.  Ghmyrtle (talk) 21:48, 1 November 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: It currently reads as if the Islands, not the people, were migrating. Þjóðólfr (talk) 21:50, 1 November 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Aha!  Changing it... Ghmyrtle (talk) 21:53, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

text: That's the opposite of "no longer considered valid": Rather, it is something that still needs refining to produce definitive results. Given that's true of just about every other source of evidence being used in discussion of British pre-history, I don't see how it is relevant.--96.251.65.222 (talk) 17:21, 10 January 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Edit spats 

message: Hey ya'll. Instead British Isles, howabout Great Britain and Ireland? GoodDay (talk) 20:49, 1 November 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Generally a good idea for modern articles, but over part of the period that we are covering this was a single island. And at the end of the period the Romans called the two islands collectively the Great Britain and Little Britain, based purely on their comparative sizes. Both together were Britain, or the British Isles. As happens usually in such cases, the larger entity acquired the name and the smaller entity developed a consciousness of being to some degree unrelated to the name. (Compare the relation of the Netherlands, and to a lesser degree Austria, to Germany.) But this happened after the period covered in this article. Therefore talking about Great Britain and Ireland isn't really appropriate in this article, especially not if done consistently. It's just like we don't talk about Ireland and Northern Ireland. Or like we don't talk about Germany, Austria and the Netherlands in an article on the Middle Ages. (We just call it "Germany".) Hans Adler 21:15, 1 November 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Seeing as this takes place before 1922, in agreement. GoodDay (talk) 21:19, 1 November 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Compromise

message: I added a claim from one of our sources  that in the palaeolithic Ireland was already an island, while Great Britain was still separated. That's inconsistent with what I remember from Stephen Oppenheimer's Origins of the British (I think he says the land bridge between Great Britain and the continent disappeared first, and the separation of the two islands happened afterwards.) It's also inconsistent with what a later paragraph says. So I removed it again. I think this needs clarification. I am not sure that our source is reliable.
In any case I found a later Times article that makes it clear that the question of palaeolithic humans in Ireland is open. Hans Adler 21:04, 1 November 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: The land bridge between Europe and GB - Doggerland - existed until c. 6200BC, long after Ireland and GB separated - c. 12,000BC according to Prehistoric Ireland.  Ghmyrtle (talk) 21:10, 1 November 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I guess I just misremembered things. Hans Adler 21:19, 1 November 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: 'Fraid so - I've just checked Oppenheimer and he concurs with what I said - see maps in his ch.4. Ghmyrtle (talk) 21:20, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

text: I am still leaving the sentence out, since the separation between the islands happened during the palaeolithic, so it would need a bit more formulation work. Hans Adler 21:24, 1 November 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Seems like a bad idea. M. J. Kelly ("Ireland before 3000 B.C." in Ó Cróinín (ed) Prehistoric and Early Ireland) says: "It is now clear that the earliest occupation of Ireland dates to the middle of the eighth millennium bc..." (pp. 64-5). But Ireland and Scotland may still have been connected by a land bridge for a millennium after human settlement began as he also tells us (p. 59) that "it is now argued that the separation of Ireland and Scotland had already been completed before 6000 bc" and also (p. 67) that "it is not impossible that the first inhabitants of what came to be the island of Ireland arrived by walking". Angus McLellan  (Talk) 21:27, 1 November 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Island or peninsula

message: I could understand if they had migrated from Laurentia Ref but across Europe? C'mon. Þjóðólfr (talk) 21:42, 1 November 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: ?? - please clarify.  Ghmyrtle (talk) 21:48, 1 November 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: It currently reads as if the Islands, not the people, were migrating. Þjóðólfr (talk) 21:50, 1 November 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Aha!  Changing it... Ghmyrtle (talk) 21:53, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

text: That's the opposite of "no longer considered valid": Rather, it is something that still needs refining to produce definitive results. Given that's true of just about every other source of evidence being used in discussion of British pre-history, I don't see how it is relevant.--96.251.65.222 (talk) 17:21, 10 January 2014 (UTC)
thread_title: The British Isles have a long history of migration from across Europe?

message: I am far from sure these are a good idea. One one point: John Waddell is a highly respectable Irish archaeologist prof, & Irish prehistoric specialist, now Emeritus from the NUI Galway (also once of the National Museum), & author of the standard undergraduate's introduction to The Prehistoric Archaeology of Ireland, 1997, now 2nd edn. At least in Ireland the idea of Bronze Age Celtic languages has been around for a good time, so I don't know why you boggle. At least he can write competent English, unlike those Russian geneticists. But if "Celtic presence" is a quote from him, I missed the phrase - the page numbers give the whole article. Johnbod (talk) 19:50, 31 July 2013 (UTC)
thread_title: Dab's sweeping changes

message: do we have a citation for the statements by Christopher Smith and Francis Pryor concerning the population sizes. The first set of statements in particular appear to be very specific, meaning citation is vital.Walker Slake (talk) 19:56, 11 November 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Chris Smith's estimate appears in Late Stone Age Hunter's of the British Isles and I'd guess that Francis Pryor stuck it in Britain BC] but it may be in his landscapes book too. They're both very speculative figures but you're right about citation (and archaeologists use the figures far too often!) - I'll try and pull up page numbers next time I have the actual books to hand. PatHadley (talk) 16:57, 12 November 2013 (UTC)
thread_title: Mesolithic population

message: The British Palaeolithic: Hominin Societies at the Edge of the Pleistocene World By Paul Pettitt, Mark White "There are no convincing examples of human presence in Britain after -33 ka bp. An AMS radiocarbon measurements on several artefacts of bone and ivory from Paviland yielded underestimates and the remeasurement of one of the spatulae could still be an underestimation (See Text Box 7.1) and it has been noted above that the provenance of a human humerus from Eel Point, the age of which might suggest a dispersal -28 ka bp. is of questionable provenance and there are no late Gravettian artefacts known from Britain, at least based on continental parallels. Glacial ice had begun to buid up once more over the British Isles shortly after this (see Text Box 7.1). Presumably, after the brief but favourable conditions of Greenland Interstadial GI6, the climatic downturn ensured that no subsequent opportunities were available for humans to return until well after the Last Glacial Maximum, a period of absence of up to 18,000 years, assuming there was no Solutrean dispersal (see Chapter 8)." This contradicts the article, including what I added. Dougweller (talk) 12:40, 23 November 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't blame them, AGMs are nearly always boring, though the garden ones are useful. AGM lists no relevant meaning; did we mean LGM? Johnbod (talk) 14:38, 26 November 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Absence during the AGM 

message: I do not see the point of this article. It is just a brief and unreliable summary of the information in Prehistoric Britain and Prehistoric Ireland. It mentions Neanderthal occupation of Jersey 250,000 years ago, but as the Channel Islands are off France they can only be considered part of the British Isles in modern political terms. The article then states that Neanderthals reached "the rest of Britain" (sic) about 130,000 years ago, citing Swanscombe and Bontnewydd. This is nonsense. Swanscombe is  Heidelbergensis 400,000 years ago, Bontnewydd is 230,000 year old Neanderthal, and there were no humans in Britain between 180,000 and 60,000 years ago. I suggest making this a disambig to Prehistoric Britain, Prehistoric Ireland, Prehistoric Scotland, Prehistoric Orkney and any other relevant articles. That will be far more useful to readers than the present article. Dudley Miles (talk) 09:59, 31 August 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: Dougweller, Johnbod, Ghmyrtle, Dbachmann you have commented on this page in the past. Do you have any views on my suggestion? Dudley Miles (talk) 17:44, 7 September 2017 (UTC)
replies: text:  I'm happy with that, anything useful should be placed in the correct article of course. It's not as though those who have this on their watchlists haven't had a chance to respond. Doug Weller talk 11:09, 18 September 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  This article is not needed