After the Ice: What was Mesolithic Britian Like?

After the ice melted, what happened? How did we get to the green and pleasant hills that we recognise today in the British isles? From new animals (some familiar, others quite foreign to us today!) to dense forests, the British Isles was virgin land for ancient humans to inhabit. Join Alex on this journey

[AlexIlesUK]

Hello all,
I have been made aware that I've mistakenly put my outro at the start of the video! Please persist through it and enjoy the content and I will re-upload the video in the future. Currently it's a very busy time of tours for me, but I will do it! Thank you for your patience and support in watching!

[cactuskeith]

Wondrful video. After lengthy reading and managing wildlife for decades Ive concluded our landscape was a mix of wood and mostly open scrubby grass, heath and marsh post tundra period. Ill leave just a few notes: Hazel only flowers and seeds well in open ground. All our woody shrubs cope with moderate herbivore destruction. Eg Hazel coppices. Oaks can cope with limbs ripped by biggest herbivores. Pollen analysis Worcestershire suggests open landscape for most of time. Key evidene is almost all uk plants evolved millions of yrs ago and need light. Even classic wood flora..such as primrose and blue bell. Oak and birch only colonises open ground. (Are exceptions eg ivy copes in dark) Woodlands moved around pre enclosure..but biodiversity was abundant. Now its diminshed and restricted so we dont see natural processes. Fire and wind innsandy areas like heaths probably important in keeping landscapes open. Large herds of herbivores grazing. Boar prevent regen. Bison retreat to forest in modern day Poland etc but would roam open ground. Most big herbs eg deer do feed in open if safe. Giant elk only open woodland or ground. Beavers probably kept wetlands very open. (Hippos in brief warm period!) Add in impact of tiny critters. Eg studies in yellowstone impact of wolves in meadows. We cant understand complex natural webs. Also last million yrs humans evolved with likes of mammoth and had axes. We would contribute to open landscape. Replacing native herbivores with domestic livestock kept landscape open. All until 17th century. Only recently changed. Suggest we now have more static woodland than before. Uniform Plantations of deciduous and conifer devoid of wildlife. What we are missing is freedom for habitats to move resulting from herbivorous action and are lacking a mosaic of scrub. The term wood or forest implies dense cover perhaps we should use a long phrase like mossic of open habitats.

[nachomanandycabbage]

Just found this Page today, brilliant videos 👌

[Bringing_History_To_Life]

Hey. Not sure if you know but your outro was at the beginning of this video

[callumcheetham]

Nice informative video. Do you have sources that I could use to do further research?

[daviddonnelly]

Highly informative Alex. What form of hilltop villages did these mesolithic hunter gatherers develop. Fortified? Was conflict between these groups common? Or did low population densities initially preclude such conflicts? Thank you.