[HN Gopher] Mass frog burial baffles experts at iron age site ne...
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       Mass frog burial baffles experts at iron age site near Cambridge
        
       Author : benbreen
       Score  : 36 points
       Date   : 2022-06-20 00:13 UTC (22 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com)
        
       | paleotrope wrote:
       | Athelstan's All You Can Eat Frog Paddy?
        
         | krapp wrote:
         | Toad in the Hole special.
        
       | vidanay wrote:
       | And since that day, we have known that you can't grow frogs the
       | same way you can grow potatoes.
        
         | [deleted]
        
       | bombcar wrote:
       | The long ditch is argument against a food source as the supply
       | (where the people dumped the bones, etc) - but it COULD be a
       | water ditch or something and they'd throw the frogs in when
       | "weeding" them out of something, but you'd expect the ditch to be
       | deeper or the frogs to show evidence of being crushed or similar
       | before being thrown in.
        
       | theklub wrote:
       | Might need to rename this event,
       | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Frogs
        
       | tomcam wrote:
       | What, you were expecting Stoke-On-Trent?
        
       | teela_na wrote:
       | Perplexing for sure. I first read this in my fave newsletter
       | Ancient Beat. James manages to break things down into easy-to-
       | digest chunks that I so appreciate. Here's his summary,
       | "Archaeologists have uncovered a huge number of frog and toad
       | skeletons in a 14-meter ditch near an iron age roundhouse in the
       | UK. According to Dr. Vicki Ewens, "To have over 8,000 bones
       | coming from one ditch is extraordinary." As to why they are
       | there, no one knows. The bones have no cut or burn marks, so they
       | probably weren't eaten (though they could have been boiled). Many
       | ancient civilizations saw the frog as a symbol for fertility, so
       | it's possible that it was ceremonial. Or the frogs could have
       | simply been trapped by chance. It's a mystery. Here's a link to
       | James' substack for more of his curated archaeology news
       | breakdowns https://ancientbeat.substack.com/p/-ancient-
       | beat-16-mass-fro...
        
       | mrlonglong wrote:
       | That might have been one of these fabled frogs raining down. It
       | does happen occasionally, waterspout drags frogs off a lake
       | somewhere and it later rains with frogs. Most likely explanation
       | IMHO.
        
         | thedougd wrote:
         | Came to suggest the same thing. Locals could have been
         | completely freaked out and found it extra fit to burry them as
         | well.
        
           | [deleted]
        
       | madaxe_again wrote:
       | As they touch upon, it's more than likely they ended up there
       | accidentally.
       | 
       | I recently dug a series of vertically walled pits in a forest,
       | for a foundation.
       | 
       | It rained. I came back to find several of them absolutely heaving
       | with toads and salamanders, who I of course rescued.
       | 
       | It's easy to see how, in a past when wildlife was _radically_
       | more abundant than it is now, a single step sided ditch could
       | have ended up a mass amphibian grave.
        
       | jb1991 wrote:
       | I've buried a few frogs and it's actually rather addictive. The
       | first time it feels like a silly chore, because your frog died,
       | but then it stays with you and can't wait to bury the next one.
       | Eventually if you're not careful you end up burying lots and lots
       | of frogs and it is completely plausible to me that others have
       | felt similarly and led to events like this.
        
         | ss108 wrote:
         | Bro what
        
           | genericone wrote:
           | Just accuse everything of being GPT-3 and your outlook on
           | humanity improves.
        
         | ncmncm wrote:
         | /s ?
        
       | krylon wrote:
       | TL;DR - the frogs may not have been intentionally buried by
       | humans the way we bury dead humans.
       | 
       | Sounds a little bit like an opener to a Lovecraftian story,
       | although the real explanation is in all likelihood way less
       | exciting (but fascinating all the same).
        
         | enasterosophes wrote:
         | Ia Tsathoggua!
        
         | SketchySeaBeast wrote:
         | Yeah, this is basically _The Frogs in the Walls_.
        
       | hnplj wrote:
        
       | savant_penguin wrote:
       | This is the kind of news that gets you jumpy
        
       | hash07e wrote:
       | Maybe a KeK worship?
       | 
       | Or Kek Wars?
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | kderbyma wrote:
       | Frog prince
        
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       (page generated 2022-06-20 23:01 UTC)