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Where did the first Torbay Folk go?

Around four thousand years ago the inhabitants of Torbay died out - and we don’t know why. Kevin Dixon explores the mystery.

This near extinction took place over several hundred years but we know from DNA evidence that they did disappear. ese lost locals were the Neolithic communities who were responsible for megalithic monuments such as Stonehenge and Torbay’s oldest building, the Chambered Tomb or Passage Grave at Broadsands. In their place came migrations of people from continental Europe.

Dated to 3768-3641 BC, the Broadsands tomb is older than Stonehenge and is representative of the nal part of the Stone Age, the Neolithic, which spanned from around 4000BC to 2,500BC. e peoples of the Neolithic Revolution had adopted agriculture and settled down in one place. To make room for new farmland, mass deforestation took place while new types of stone tools began to be produced. e Neolithic also saw the construction of these monuments in the landscape, the earliest being chambered tombs, to later be replaced by stone circles and other landmarks – the greatest of which are at Stonehenge, Avebury and the immense Silbury Hill. ese megaliths seem to be linked with the new ways that people thought, in their religion, and how they ordered their society. e Broadsands tomb is a stone mound megalithic chamber, which had a single entrance passage. Discovered in 1956 by local archaeologist Guy Belleville, the tomb was excavated by C Ralegh Radford in 1958. Archaeologists found three rst inhumations of two adults and one infant alongside Neolithic pottery – an adult male aged at least forty, a young adult male who was over 5ft 6ins tall, and the infant. ere may have been more as the remains had later been cleared to the sides of the chamber and trodden into the oor. It was when two human thighbones still embedded in soil were dated that we found that the inhumations took place between 3768 and 3641 BC.

It appeared as if several ritual res had been lit before a new pavement was put in position, possibly a ritual cleansing prior to reusing the chamber. en there was a later inhumation of a young male below the age of twenty alongside later Neolithic pottery.

Oddly, evidence from stable isotope analysis showed that the occupants of the tomb had a diet almost wholly

Left: The toppled tomb at Broadsands, and right: how it may have looked when complete.

based on land based food. Very little sh was being eaten when the Beaker population seems to come in. despite these folk living so close to the sea – unless they is downturn in the climate, alongside an overweren’t locals. Guy Belleville also found worked ints, exploitation of land by Neolithic farmers, may have arrowheads and parts of polished int axes about half a caused a decline in food production. It could be that mile from the tomb. ere appears to be no other de nite the Beaker folk arrived to nd that much of the original examples of a Passage Tomb in the southwest of England population had already disappeared - they just occupied and they are unusual in Britain, though they are common an empty land. Intriguingly, Stonehenge’s great stones in Portugal and Brittany, suggesting some kind of link were put in place immediately before the Beaker people with the continent. arrived. e entire population of Britain in the early Neolithic It doesn’t look as though this was a violent invasion. may have been only around 100,000 people and not e Beakers came in small groups and over a long period much is left, of centuries. particularly in Torbay, which has largely been built on. But “ Archaeologists found three rst inhumations of two adults and one infant alongside Neolithic pottery – an adult male aged at least forty, a young adult male who was over 5ft 6ins tall, and the infant. Also, evidence shows that interpersonal violence was we aren’t the higher in descendents Neolithic Britain than it was in the Beaker period. On of those original Neolithic builders. As with the rest of the other hand, there is a suggestion that some Beaker Britain, our Neolithic locals were almost completely folk carried plague with them. Perhaps our original locals replaced by newcomers about 4,500 years ago. had not been in contact with this pathogen before and

Bringing Bronze Age technology to Britain was a had little resistance to it. migration by a people from the Beaker culture, which e new Beaker arrivals had a very di erent way of spread across Europe and can be tracked through its living. ey didn’t construct massive stone monuments distinctive pottery. e Beaker people replaced 90% needing the work of hundreds of people. ey favoured of the British gene pool in a few hundred years. ey more modest round earth barrows, burying their dead would have looked di erently to our tomb builders with bell-shaped pots, copper daggers, arrowheads, stone who had olive-brown skin, dark hair and brown eyes. In wrist guards and perforated buttons. Many of these comparison, the Beaker folk had lighter skin, blue eyes barrows can still be seen on Dartmoor and, presumably, and blonde hair. Torbay would have featured others on our hilltops that

We don’t know what killed o the original Torbay folk. have now been lost. It may be that the incoming Beaker people had better It’s also suggested that it was the Beaker people that technologies, social organisation, or ways of feeding introduced the Celtic language to Britain; new forms of themselves. communication would most likely have accompanied ere is also the possibility that our early farmers such a massive population change. were already facing population collapse through climate So we still don’t know why the original Torbay folk change around 5,500 years ago. After a population peak at vanished; just that new locals came in and have been here around 3,500 or 3,600 BC, Britain’s population declines ever since.  to a low level until about 2,500 BC and then increases. Note: Bones and relics from the tomb can be seen at Around 2,500 BC the population is very low and that’s Torquay Museum.