April 9, 2007 — House buyers today usually peruse properties with a checklist of desired features in mind. This aspect of human behavior has apparently not changed much over the millennia, according to a new study that found prehistoric cave dwellers in Britain did exactly the same thing when choosing their homes.
The recently released three-year-long survey of approximately 230 caves in the Yorkshire Dales and 190 caves in the northern England Peak District determined that people there from 4,000 to 2,000 B.C. selected caves based on at least five criteria.
"There was a higher frequency of prehistoric usage of those caves with larger entrances and deeper passages, also of caves that were higher in altitude and caves with entrances that faced towards the east or to the west," co-author Andrew Chamberlain of the University of Sheffield’s Department of Archaeology told Discovery News.
He added that most of the caves linked to human activities tended to have level areas outside of the entrances.
Funded by the English Heritage’s Historic Environment Enabling Program, Chamberlain and his colleagues focused on caves in the two chosen English districts because recreational spelunkers often visit these areas and concern about cave conservation there is high. They excluded artificial caves, mines, tunnels, grottoes and passages revealed by mining, quarrying or hydrologically, as for sink holes.
The archaeologists discovered that the Peak District attracted more prehistoric cave users than the Yorkshire Dales, suggesting that today’s "location, location, location" real estate mantra might have also been true 6,000 years ago.
"The (Peak District) region is a more productive area for agriculture today," said Chamberlain, "and the same may have been true in prehistoric times and thus there may have been more people in the Peak District."
He said it is also a possibility people there simply utilized caves more. Chamberlain explained that caves served a multitude of purposes aside from housing the ancients. Early people also conducted ritual activities and performed burials in them.
