Happisburgh
| Happisburgh | |||
|---|---|---|---|
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| Coordinates | 52 ° 49 ′ N , 1 ° 32 ′ E | ||
| OS National Grid | TG 39 31 | ||
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| Residents | 1372 (as of 2001) | ||
| surface | 9.63 km² (3.72 mi² ) | ||
| Population density | 92 inhabitants / km² | ||
| administration | |||
| Post town | NORWICH | ||
| ZIP code section | NR12 | ||
| prefix | 01692 | ||
| Part of the country | England | ||
| region | East of England | ||
| Shire county | Norfolk | ||
| District | North Norfolk | ||
| Civil Parish | Happisburgh CP | ||
| British Parliament | North Norfolk | ||
| Website: Happisburgh.org.uk | |||
Happisburgh ( [ ˈheɪzbrə ] ) is a village in the English county of Norfolk . The oldest known fossil footprints from early relatives of anatomically modern humans ( Homo sapiens ) were discovered here.
The local area is 10.78 km². In the 2001 census, prior to the establishment of Walcott , the population was 1,372.
Attractions
St. Mary's Church
The 15th century tower of St. Mary's Church is an important point of reference to warn seafarers of the nearby sandbanks . In 1940 a German bomber dropped a previously jammed bomb on its flight home, the shrapnel of which can still be seen in the pillars of the side wing of the church. The octagonal baptismal font, also from the 15th century, is decorated with carved lions and satyrs.
lighthouse
The red and white striped lighthouse , half a mile south of the church, is the only independently operating lighthouse in Britain. It is also the oldest operating lighthouse, built in 1790, in East Anglia .
Coastal erosion
The town is badly affected by coastal erosion , mainly due to climate change , which has already caused several houses to collapse. From 1959 on, defensive structures were built to stop the water from entering the sea.
Prehistoric site
At Happisburgh there is an archaeological site that is important from a paleanthropological point of view, in which stone tools were found in 2010 that were 780,000 years old, well before the previously assumed first colonization of Great Britain by early humans 700,000 years ago. This is significant in so far as the previous idea that early humans only penetrated so far north in a relatively warm interglacial period with a Mediterranean climate had to be given up. The sediments of Happisburgh testify to a much colder ice age climate, which roughly corresponded to the climate of today's southern Scandinavia .
In 2013 human footprints were also discovered there, making them the oldest human footprints that have so far been found outside of Africa. The tracks had survived hidden under sand, but were exposed by a storm surge in 2013. Just a few weeks later, they were carried away by the flood. In 2020 it was published that the traces most closely resembled the footprints of Homo erectus known from Ileret ( Kenya ) .
The sediments examined are from the then bank of the Thames , about 25 km inland from the then coast. People were able to immigrate overland at the time because Britain was connected to the mainland due to the much lower sea levels.
Personalities
- Charles William Peach , natural scientist and geologist
- Richard Porson (1759–1808), scholar of classical studies
gallery
Saint Mary's Church
lighthouse
View of the coastal erosion
Site of the fossil footprints
Close-up of the footprints
(with the lens cover of a camera as a size comparison)
.jpg)
Web links
- Website of Happisburgh (English)
- Information from Genuki Norfolk on Happisburgh
- Happisburgh Literary History (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Census population and household counts for unparished urban areas and all parishes ( Memento from June 21, 2009 on WebCite )
- ^ Happisburgh Lighthouse Open Days. Retrieved December 14, 2009 .
- ^ Franziska Luisa Ochs: Everyday climate. How climate change and environmental migration meet in a coastal town in England. Marburg: Tectum 2017, ISBN 978-3-8288-3877-2 (dissertation, case study on Happisburgh)
- ^ A b Nicole Wedemeyer: Unexpectedly early settlement of Northern Europe . Spektrum.de, July 7, 2010 (with a detailed video in English).
- ^ Earliest human footprints outside Africa found - in Norfolk. In: Current Archeology. February 7, 2014.
- ^ New discovery at Happisburgh: The earliest human footprints outside Africa. The British Museum, accessed February 8, 2014 .
- ↑ N. Ashton, SG Lewis, I. De-Groote, SM Duffy, M. Bates, R. Bates, P. Hoare, M. Lewis, SA Parfitt, S. Peglar, C. Williams, C. Stringer: Hominin Footprints from Early Pleistocene Deposits at Happisburgh, UK . In: PLOS One. February 2014 doi: 10.1371 / journal.pone.0088329
- ↑ without the author's name: Europe's oldest footprints. In: Spectrum of Science . No. 4, 2014, p. 10.
- ↑ Ashleigh LA Wiseman, Chris B. Stringer , Nick Ashton et al .: The morphological affinity of the Early Pleistocene footprints from Happisburgh, England, with other footprints of Pliocene, Pleistocene, and Holocene age. In: Journal of Human Evolution. Volume 144, 2020, 102776, doi: 10.1016 / j.jhevol.2020.102776 .