Geological Time and Cigarette Papers

 Yesterday (one of those sunny September afternoons in clear light on shimmering flat sea and no breeze), Clare and I went  on a  Geology tour at West Runton beach  (Norfolk, twixt Sheringham and Cromer). It was led by a former curator of Cromer Museum, who was part of the group which discovered the Steppe Mammonth on this beach in the early 1990s.

He was excellent at explaining  the classification of Geological time since the Big Bang. He used the location to do so

We were standing on the concrete mooring platform at West Runton. From this mooring, our guide pointed to  Cromer Pier in the distance, some 2.5  miles away. His illustration went like this:

Cromer Pier from West Runton Beach

Imagine, he said, a timeline where the start is Cromer Pier representing the Big Bang, the start of our Universe. Then he pointed to a half centimetre crack at the edge of the concrete mooring upon which we were standing. At  some point in this crack, he said, would have occurred the latter stages of Pleistocene Epoch in the Cenozoic Era,  2.5 million – 12,000 years ago. The Holocene, our current Epoch in the Cenozoic Era, and the end of the timeline, would have been a fag-paper’s width within this crack....

Twelve thousand years and a fag-paper's width. A momentary perspective on our sense of what's important, our place in the scheme of things

Flag Fen

Britain’s ancient settlements, burial mounds and sites of ancient ritual are always attractive, enticing and enjoyable in their mysterious associations. The sense of mind activity in the ether (one way of putting it) is always a great driver for walks and visits to such sites. There are few such ancient sites where it is impossible not to feel some fallout from the buzz of a way of thinking and living which long preceded the scientific age.

Flag Fen, Towards Reconstructed Village

Recently, we came back from a visit to Flag Fen on the way back from Stratford-on-Avon. This is the site of Bronze age ( c 2500 BC and after) activity – a settlement of early farmers, who eventually (due to climate change, flooding etc)  built a 1 km causeway across a flooded plain, so as to continue inhabiting and managing the landscape.

Flag Fen - Old and New Crossings

This causeway eventually disappeared over time: so much so that the Romans built their own road about 100 yards parallel to it, not knowing the existence of a road already buried there from 1000 years previously. In recent times it has been rediscovered, after modern fenland draining.

Flag Fen - Original Timbers Preserved

Archaeology has unearthed many artefacts in the region, but especially large quantities of tools and personal items, deliberately broken and pegged down into the mud all along the causeway. These clearly were not “lost”, but deliberately offered up as a gift or sacrifice.

Real-world reflection - or a world beyond?

It is surmised that the rituals involved here, were emblematic of offerings to a world beyond the water. One can imagine the non-scientific mind and the  way it might interpret the rules of image reflection / refraction  in water. On the smooth surface appears a world in replica, populated by figures which move in time with the viewer. What world is this which lies beyond? What does it ask of me? Over time the answers are lost in mystery, but the gifts of precious objects are a witness to a very real conversation these minds were having.