[Ebbsfleet, Kent: one of the longest archaeological records in the world. A straight-tusked elephant just misses the High-Speed Eurostar to Paris by some 400,000 years. Base photo of Ebbsfleet International Station by Clem Rutter of Rochester, Kent, reproduced under the GNU Free Documentation license, Version 1.2 or any later version]

Goodwife Stott is currently enjoying reading Francis Pryor’s  excellent Britain BC: Life in Britain and Ireland before the Romans (HarperCollins, 2003/2004). Unfortunately, she keeps disturbing my Sunday newspaper reveries by crying out: “The climate’s changed again, and he says very quickly too!” She then shoves the page before my eyes, eagerly pointing out phrases like “the climate is suddenly growing warmer”. Irritating as this is, I receive it with an indulgent smile, and as a welcome antidote to the nonsense in the newspapers, especially in the The Observer, which always seems to present climate change as something unique to our self-obsessed age.

Over my coffee, I also recall the fascinating archaeological exhibition which currently greets Eurostar arrivals from Paris and Brussels at the wonderful new Ebbsfleet International Station near to where we live in North Kent. This beautifully-presented exhibition chronicles the immensely long history of human activity in our area, a story largely uncovered during the construction of the High-Speed Channel Tunnel Rail Link [see: Wessex Archaeology, ‘Background to Springhead’].

Continuous Change and Occupation

Amazingly, we live on a small portion of the Earth with one of the longest archaeological records in the world, one exhibiting continuous climate change, human adaptation, and industrial development. The internationally-famous skull of ‘Swanscombe Man’ (actually a young woman), dating from 400,000 BC, was discovered in Thames gravels just four miles away, associated with working flint tools. Industry was already with us then. At Baker’s Hole, some 2 miles away, there are the flint axes of ‘hunter-gatherers’ who inhabited the area around 180,000-200,000 BC. Other finds tell us of late-Palaeolithic and Mesolithic peoples (c.10,000 BC).

Then, from around 3,000 BC, we have the remains of a Neolithic agricultural settlement, which produced a distinctive decorated-pottery known as ‘Ebbsfleet Ware’. Bronze Age and Iron Age ditches and enclosures finally give way to the remains of an important Roman religious settlement, Vagniacis [“A place of marshes”], which flourished at Springhead on the local river, the Ebbsfleet, between the 1st and 3rd centuries AD. The historical Watling Street passed through the site. Large burial grounds, many temples, mosaics, and a villa give testimony to the thriving economy of this Romano-British centre. Then, from Saxon times, there are the remains of a water mill, and so on, and so on.

There is even a rather special link with the New World, with North America, the high Algonquin princess, Pocahontas [left, engraving of 1616], daughter of Chief Powhatan of the Algonquin Nation, lying buried with great honour beneath the parish church of nearby Gravesend. And the eternal story progresses, with the exciting new High-Speed Rail Link, a proposed massive statue [to be the Southern equivalent of the ‘Angel of the North’], and a planned new town around the station.

Constant Climate Change

Throughout this long tale of human endeavour, climate and sea-levels have changed over and over again, sometimes slowly, sometimes dramatically, with sub-tropical interludes, ice ages, permafrost, temperate floods, and drought. Likewise, the vegetation has swung between forest and heath, open meadow, swamp land and sea, between chilly tundra, boreal forests, mixed deciduous forests, and grassland.

And so have the animals. The Ebbsfleet International Station welcoming exhibition includes a dramatic fossil skeleton of a straight-tusked elephant (Elephas antiquus, or Palaeoloxodon antiquus; see picture insert above), an extinct species closely related to the extant Asian Elephant (Elephas maximus). It inhabited Europe during the Middle and Late Pleistocene (781,000 - 11,550 years before present).

The 400,000-years old Ebbsfleet specimen, a huge, fully-grown male, weighing ten tonnes and twice the size of a modern elephant, would most likely have been brought down by spear-throwing hunters. The fossil was found lying by the edge of what would have been a small lake, with flint tools scattered around it, suggesting that it was finally cut up by a tribe of early humans, related to Homo heidelbergensis [see picture].

Yet, despite all this often dramatic climate change, neither Ebbsfleet, nor the Earth, came to a crunching halt, while humans went on, adapting and altering their lives, growing stronger, healthier, and older throughout. Today, the people of Ebbsfleet live longer and with less hardship than any of these, our doughty ancestors.

The Sin Of Presentism

This is why I find it pathetic - indeed I am ashamed - when we, and newspapers like The Observer and The Guardian, get into a funk over a little climate change - currently, at most, 0.7 degrees Celsius over 150 years. It is nearly obscene, with all our resources, to think that we shall not be able to adapt once again - unless, that is, we have lost our evolutionary dynamism and drive. Going back in time has never been an option, nor part of our great story.

Just as ‘Swanscombe woman’ could have no possible concept of the Roman wonder that was Vagniacis, neither have we about Virtualia, the Ebbsfleet metropolis of the next 400,000 years.

Our present funk over climate change is an insult to the men and women of our past. We commit the sin of presentism.

So, I’m off to raise a glass to the men and women of Ebbsfleet, who adapted to live.