Amazing and fascinating story. Going to get that book if I can soon.
Why would Stone Age people (possibly Neanderthal or Neanderthal hybrids?) spend all this time carving out huge tunnel networks across Europe? What were they sheltering from? It must have been a huge task and effort with the tools available to them by our understanding.
Perhaps life underground, sheltering from some danger or horror above? It could explain why Neanderthal and other skeletons are found in caves stunted, suffering from rickets and other such problems. A life spent away from the sun, hiding. Digging. To protect themselves from what?
We could be looking at the original bunkerlads. Hiding from a fallout, perhaps a past civillisation or perhaps a natural occurance (such as a solar maximum period together with a weakened protective magnetic sphere). Many texts from the past talk about great disasters and wars with advanced peoples or gods. The Indian texts being a great example.
This has all happened before and will happen again.
This makes me wonder what capabilities, drive or vision these "primative" people had. What could inspire people to do this over a vast area for what must have been thousands of years? It's not the sort of thing you do because the Guardian fashion column sez so. It'd be interesting to see what genetic changes and markers line up with such discoveries now and in the future. What links up with booms and what links up with bottlenecks and the winnowing.
That article is based on conjecture and rubbishness. They've found a few hundred metres here and there - I think the largest they've found in one place is 750 - and they've decided that there must have been several hundred times that amount.
It's not logical. The interesting part of this story is the burrowing instinct, which is obviously still part of our psyche. As you said, bunkerlads remain. The guesswork about "motorways of the past" and "storage rooms" and bollocks like that isn't useful.
Yes, I think what they've done is their usual DM effort - they've taken a few excited moments of conjecture or hyperbole from the researchers getting carried away, assumed that was the baseline and then piled more on top. At first glance at the story you'd think there was a prehistoric Channel Tunnel you could ride ten horses abreast through from London to Munich. They probably only just held back on mentioning drive-throughs, Flinstone style.
They do that too often. They over egg a good story and lead you to disappointment (having had your expectations built up to unrealistic levels) for what should be an interesting story.
The instinct and bunkerlad elements is what interests me. Even if these are seperate distributed hideyholes as it looks the bunkerlad element is still the point of interest and big question. What could ingrain a burrowing instinct in us for so long? From the trees to aquatic behaviour to...hiding in dingy holes from something and for so long it's written in the bones of us? What horror for so long could manage it? It could indicate a long period of natural disasters on a scale we've not experienced or one long-term one, such as the radiation possibility. Perhaps a natural fallout from outside impact or tectonic activity? It's a vision on a par with many a post-apocalyptic story. Our DNA is gifted to us from people able to survive that somehow. Amazing.
One of the ice ages could inspire such effort, assuming it would help. Might be bomb shelters of a sort to protect from meteor impacts. A large cloud or long period of impacts might drive people to hide in such a way. Especially when they are resting.
It's a network in the sense that a network of bunkers and hardened structures were back in WW2 or a network of Orange mobile phone shops across the country or similar. They really should make that clear rather than this ambiguity.
They could easily take advantage of natural networks too, lengthening, opening up and connecting them. This would seem the sensible thing to do and could prove very useful to them. A hardened and very safe network and home that could survive all weathers and attacks.
Of course when you link this up with the current digging frenzy going on across the world by private individuals and governments along with the stockpiling then it gets interesting. Is it a sort of herd or species instinct for trouble, the "morphic field" as sci fi might put it? It could be our equivalent of the animals escaping before an earthquake happens.
I wonder if this has anything to do with the mysterious radioactive archaeological sites that have been found?
It seems that the more we find out about the past, the more wrong our assumptions were and the more sophisticated the people of the past turn out to be, our earlier arrogance undermined. Nothing wrong with a little more humbling to the species.
IT'Z is something that happens as part of the samsaric cycle. According to some traditions we are entering the Kali Yuga, or cycle of destruction. Environmental destruction, war, insane levels of greed and consumption and an increase in mental health problems.
It's also in some of the more arcane gter ma, or treasure teachings attributed to Padmasambhava found all over the Himalayas.
A special race of people adapted to living in tiny tunnel systems underground? Fairies. Got to be. After the discovery of the hobbit people it seems all the more likely.
Depends upon what the fairy looked like. If it was hot, why not? It can add to the rich genetic legacy of our species.
