Homes in Britain may have had 'mod cons' as many as 4,000 years ago, according to archaeologists.
They have discovered what are believed to be some of the country's earliest cold storage larders, which are precursors to the fridge, at a Bronze Age site.
The larders, an early form of refrigeration used to keep milk and meat from going off, were uncovered by a team investigating six roundhouses found at a housing development site at Dunstaffnage, near Oban, Argyll.
They are the first north of the Border to have ring ditches inside.
Dr Clare Ellis, of Argyll Archaeology, who led an evaluation at the site, believes the ditches are cellars for keeping food cool.
"This is a new design, not recognised or seen before in Scotland. The general consensus was that ring ditches occur outside the roof supports of roundhouses, but still within the roundhouse structure, and were erosional features where animals were kept," the Daily Mail quoted her as saying.
"But these are inside the roof support area and the theory is that they are low cellars that would have had wooden floors over them. We think they are an early form of cellar, an early larder storage system.
"In the Iron Age they had banana-shaped cellars and this would appear to be the precursor to that. They are on the coolest side of the house. It's like an early form of refrigeration, where they would keep cheeses, milk, dried meat, salted fish and grain," she said.
While archaeologists have discovered older areas for the storage of food on Orkney, dating back to Neolithic times, the Dunstaffnage findings are the earliest roundhouse stores of their kind to be uncovered.
Dr Ellis said that another important find was the discovery of air vents coming out of the ring ditches and the hearths.
"These channels coming out are wood-lined vents to let air through and to allow the washing out of some of the ring ditches occasionally. This is a new design that's not really been recognised or seen in Scotland before," she said.
All the discovery come from the Bronze Age and radio carbon dating will be used to place the settlement to within 40 years.
"It's unusual to get so many roundhouses surviving together in this way. They are not particularly huge so they were probably just ordinary people living here, but I think, in relative terms, it could have been quite a populated landscape," Dr Ellis added. (ANI)
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Reader Comments
it's interesting to know that there were these sort of techniques so many years ago. These days, it seems like cold storage has been refined into climate control and regular self storage doesn't seem to be sufficient anymore as we are allowed access to better methods of storage. I should think that climate controlled storage is rather expensive though, and this primitive method of keeping things from spoiling in storage can hardly be used in countries around the world that don't already have temperature on their side...
It's amazing to find out how people from the old days made use of technology in the most simplest form - even in the case of this cold storage method! It's something to take a note from in case I ever decide to go on a camping trip out of the Northern Beaches and find myself trying to make a life for myself in the wilderness, hey?
Given how many times human civilisations rose and fell maybe those "inventions" were things they remembered, or things that were passed on to them by their much more advanced ancestors?
Accessible technology within the means of tribe or family has other benefits that that which depends on a globalist corporate technocratic state and is completely outside of any organic community resource.
The worship of tech is the worship of our own 'clever' self-specialness, and leads to 'seeing' human problems - that is - psychic emotional conflicts - in terms of technical solutions. These technical solutions mask the symptoms of the core issue while propagating many more seemingly unrelated symptom-problems that also get 'technical'' answers that also propagate symptoms... can you see a 'negative economy' growing here?
Humans are already conditioned to robotic reaction as a result of the sacrifice of a relational being to the hierarchies of tech, under the matrix of substitute 'reality. But the core psychic-emotional conflicts or problems remain at the foundation, unmet, unowned and unchanged. They bring about the very events and conditions that they are - but as a result of suppressions and displacements, the symptoms seem like the violations, treachery or rejection of Others or failure of Life that is a weak, broken, inadequate, fallen nature. Thus calling on technical upgrade and replacement by the mind that is itself the symptom of such a sense of denial.
Separating off from Life as if to become 'more' or act as a 'power' over Life - is a false view of Life through the limiting distortion of a mind divided and ruling out wholeness.
The insights, inspirations, intuitions and understandings that arise within Life are not the cause or effect of a special sense of self in power over Life. But that is the 'script' humanity is running 'as if' true.
Stories are not wrong if they are enjoyed and bring appreciation of new perspectives. But they are not the truth.
Knowing the power of illusions is remaining free from the seductions of the illusion of power.
PS Ice 'houses' or stores may go back before the brick built versions that remain. People are not stupid unless and until they choose to become stupid. Then they look back at their forebears as 'stupid' instead of in kinship and gratitude. Wisdom cannot be acquired or technically taught or instilled. Wisdom is the result of embracing and owning experience through all its steps or mis-steps.
The worship of tech is the worship of our own 'clever' self-specialness, and leads to 'seeing' human problems - that is - psychic emotional conflicts - in terms of technical solutions. These technical solutions mask the symptoms of the core issue while propagating many more seemingly unrelated symptom-problems that also get 'technical'' answers that also propagate symptoms... can you see a 'negative economy' growing here?
Humans are already conditioned to robotic reaction as a result of the sacrifice of a relational being to the hierarchies of tech, under the matrix of substitute 'reality. But the core psychic-emotional conflicts or problems remain at the foundation, unmet, unowned and unchanged. They bring about the very events and conditions that they are - but as a result of suppressions and displacements, the symptoms seem like the violations, treachery or rejection of Others or failure of Life that is a weak, broken, inadequate, fallen nature. Thus calling on technical upgrade and replacement by the mind that is itself the symptom of such a sense of denial.
Separating off from Life as if to become 'more' or act as a 'power' over Life - is a false view of Life through the limiting distortion of a mind divided and ruling out wholeness.
The insights, inspirations, intuitions and understandings that arise within Life are not the cause or effect of a special sense of self in power over Life. But that is the 'script' humanity is running 'as if' true.
Stories are not wrong if they are enjoyed and bring appreciation of new perspectives. But they are not the truth.
Knowing the power of illusions is remaining free from the seductions of the illusion of power.
PS Ice 'houses' or stores may go back before the brick built versions that remain. People are not stupid unless and until they choose to become stupid. Then they look back at their forebears as 'stupid' instead of in kinship and gratitude. Wisdom cannot be acquired or technically taught or instilled. Wisdom is the result of embracing and owning experience through all its steps or mis-steps.
I wonder if by closer examination, whether we'll be able to find something that a lot of researchers miss and perhaps create a revolutionary new way of self storage! I'm sure that some of the scientific reasons behind why these old cold storage units or rooms have succeeded in food preservation in the past can be discovered and implemented in a modern manner to help us preserve food well in the present.
It is interesting to learn of ancient storage systems which work just as well as today's technological advances. It goes to show that they lived just as well as we do today with technology on our side. Though the competence of the storage solutions might not be on par with what we have today, at least there is something that they had managed to come up with totally from manual means. That is super impressive indeed!
some time ago. Although it seems like a lot more of the interesting discoveries are happening this century, I’m really not surprised that there were a lot of very interesting and successful concepts in play in the past to ensure that life would be improved in the littlest of ways, even if it is creating an underground cooler through digging ditches. You've just got to see how far we've come by looking at how we've harnessed an idea and created technology that makes the process that much easier!