(Official flag of the County of Caithness, Scotland)
Ava traversed The Highlands during the early Bronze Age, about four thousand years ago. She lived in what is now known as the County of Caithness, Scotland. To her north, were the remote Orkney Islands; to her east was the vast North Sea.
Ava is my ancestral “Mother.” She died young, perhaps under 25, but not before she had at least one daughter. Through nearly four thousand years of successive generations of daughters, Ava and I are genetically linked.
(This initial rendering of Ava’s facial features, resembles family members alive today)
As we trek to COP29, the “Finance COP,” let’s pause to consider Ava’s Bronze Age terrain. What lessons can we learn from her Caithness, Scotland? What might be the ecological value of this land … in her early Bronze Age, now and into the future?
The Site
As we motored north to Caithness in search of Ava, my own daughters remained on vacation in Edinburgh. The journey was guided by McIntosh Tours, a family firm deeply familiar with their beloved Highlands. They had the coordinates for Ava’s excavation site, so they used their navigational skills to pinpoint the unmarked burial location in Achavanich, within the County of Caithness.
(The burial site was beneath a green gorse shrub, sprouting from flagstone bedrock, and surrounded by purple heather, verdant moss and wildflowers).
The burial site had been discovered in 1987, during a road construction project, and was excavated shortly thereafter by a regional archeological team, but was not studied by a panel of experts until more than twenty years later. The experts ultimately published their study in the 2018 in Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland. One finding of the study was that Ava was probably the daughter or granddaughter of immigrants from Europe. Her people were Bell Beakers, who brought different cultural practices, such as burying the dead rather than cremating them as had been the local custom at that time.
Ava’s burial site is a few miles from an open-ended stone circle, known as “Achavanich,” which may date back four thousand years as well. Perhaps it was constructed by Ava’s Bell Beaker people? The positioning of the stones and horse shoe shape of the “circle” are unusual for its era.
Both Ava’s burial site and the Achavanich stone circle appear to be evidence of the influence of immigrants, who brought their culture and practices to bear upon a new land.
The Bronze Age Environment
The 2018 study offers cautious suggestions about Ava’s Bronze Age environment. Her home may have been forested with alder, birch, hazel and Scots pine, in woodlands associated with heathland. She may have breathed in heather, herbs of grasses and marsh-St. John’s-wort, spores of which were found within her burial site. The meadowsweet, mosses, ferns and bracken she may have seen daily were typical of those growing in heathland. She may well have lived among grazing animals and eaten a protein-rich terrestrial diet, rather than relying upon the seafood abundant along the coast of the North Sea.
Today
The adjacent counties of Caithness and Sutherland are now home to “Flow Country,” a UNESCO World Heritage site. It is 1,500 square miles of bog peatland, the first peatland to be so preserved. One might visualize the vast expanse by considering locations in the United States; it is bigger than Rhode Island and smaller than Delaware.
Gone are the woodlands heavily forested with alder, birch, hazel and Scots pine.
Instead, there is a different form of life in the peatlands, a life reaching down nearly thirty-three feet below the surface of the bog.
But, of course, Scottish garlands of heather have survived within the bog ponds and continue to drape among the hills above Flow Country.
Today, although it is hard to imagine enough large animal life thriving in and around the bog to sustain the lives of Ava and her other Bell Beaker people during the Bronze Age, there are herds of Red Deer within Flow Country. Roe Deer are less common, since they prefer sheltered woodland to the open plains.
Preservation for the Future
So, why is this a UNESCO World Heritage site? What is its value in our future? Why should we finance its preservation?
Flow Country contributes to a network of peatlands remaining in the world today.
(Peatlands are 2.83% of the Earth’s land.)
The beautiful tranquility of the bog peatlands is one reason to preserve the area.
Another reason is carbon sequestration. The International Union for Conservation of Nature reports that peatlands store more carbon than all other vegetation types in the world combined and recommends that:
“Countries should include peatland conservation and restoration in their commitments to international agreements, including the Paris Agreement on climate change.”
The IUCN explained why this is so:
“In peatlands, year-round water-logged conditions slow plant decomposition to such an extent that dead plants accumulate to form peat. This stores the carbon the plants absorbed from the atmosphere within peat soils, providing a net-cooling effect and helping to mitigate the climate crisis.”
“In their natural, wet state, peatlands provide indispensable Nature-based Solutions for adapting to and mitigating the effects of climate change, including regulating water flows, minimising the risk of flooding and drought, and preventing seawater intrusion. Wet peatlands lower ambient temperatures in surrounding areas, providing refuge from extreme heat, and are less likely to burn during wildfires. This helps to preserve air quality.” (Id.)
Hence, “emissions from damaged peatlands and carbon savings from peatland restoration are eligible for national accounting under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. Governments can therefore include peatland restoration and re-wetting in national climate action plans.” (Id.)
Another way of explaining the value or worth of peatlands is to examine how they capture carbon. Peatlands play an important role in mitigating the threat of climate change, due to their ability to capture and store carbon dioxide. Green plants absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, but those plants release the carbon as they die “unless the plant material is preserved in some way.” The moss and other plants in peatland do not fully decay, so the bogs are able to store carbon for thousands of years. “Many peatlands have been growing undisturbed for thousands of years, so although they cover just 3% of the world’s surface they hold nearly 30% of all soil carbon.” (Id.)
Peatlands also contribute to water quality. Peatlands hold large quantities of water, which “is naturally high in quality, requiring little processing to become drinking water.” The high quality of the water enhances the habitat for species sensitive to pollution. For example, salmon thrive in the Flow Country’s rivers, “a valuable resource for the local economy.” (Id.)
And so, the lessons from the Bronze Age are that we should learn about the gifts nature has left us over thousands of years, to value those gifts and to preserve them into the future for the health of our planet and all who live upon it.
(The author walking in Flow Country on Tuesday, September 3, 2024.)
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