It can be argued not unreasonably that
the first thing ‘man’ made was the path. That the natural desire, indeed
imperative, to move from one place to another for water, food, shelter created
these paths through the flora. Our initial ‘homes’ where existing structures
but the routes we dissected through the land may have been of our making.
Perhaps early homo sapiens followed
those created by other animals or perhaps here was an early example of ‘man’
beginning to scar the surface of the planet by striking out alone.
Once paths or ways existed the next
emerging issue to how remember which led to where, the path led to safety at
the end of the day and the path to the hunting grounds. It was this challenge
that led to placement of signs, markers of memory.
The findings of D.M.Jeffries in his
text ‘Navigation of Early Man’[1]
point to some of the marked stones from the Etterridge Dig in Cornwall as being
‘wayfinders’ and not as previously postulated ‘religious offerings’. He further
proposes that many of these ‘wayfinders’ were replaced over time by initially
timber posts and subsequently stone ‘totems’ many of which became sites for
funeral path Celtic crosses.
Whilst it is easy to dismiss Jeffries
as someone looking for proof of his own theory it is possible that the recent
work of Barstairs and Clemence[2] in
America using thermal imaging, deep penetration radar and Google earth may have
identified some of our most ancient paths and trails. Of more importance are
the sites of crossings where the presence of ‘marker shadows’ exist.
2017/18 will see the excavation of
three of these key sites. These appear to be amongst the most worn and
therefore potentially the most travelled. Barstairs and Clemence hope that
these sites may prove migration was much earlier than previously thought and
was a managed process through route and wayfinding.
