Britain's Earliest House Discovered

- The site, known as Star Carr, was first discovered in 1947 by a local amateur archaeologist named John Moore, who found flint, bone, and antler artifacts. This led to initial excavations by University of Cambridge archaeologist Grahame Clark between 1949 and 1951. - The house itself is a circular structure 3.5 meters wide, identified by a series of post-holes and a central hollow, and it predates the previously known oldest dwelling in Britain, at Howick in Northumberland, by at least 500 years. - The dwelling was situated on the edge of a now-vanished prehistoric lake called Lake Flixton during a time when a land bridge known as Doggerland still connected Britain to continental Europe. - Alongside the house, archaeologists have unearthed some of the earliest evidence of carpentry in Europe—a wooden platform made of split and hewn timbers. - Other remarkable discoveries at the site include 21 red deer antler headdresses, which archaeologists believe may have been used as hunting disguises or in shamanistic rituals. - The site has yielded an exceptionally rare collection of artifacts preserved in the lake's peaty soil, including an engraved shale pendant which is considered Britain's oldest Mesolithic art and nearly 200 barbed projectile points. - Analysis of animal bones reveals the inhabitants' diet, which included red deer, roe deer, elk, wild boar, and large wild cattle known as aurochs. - This discovery challenges the long-held view of Stone Age people as exclusively nomadic, suggesting that these hunter-gatherer communities built substantial structures and were strongly attached to particular locations in the landscape.