Extensive ancient yew forests | National Geographic

A University of Cambridge reported that the about research, in which the East Anglian Fens the past of its territory was investigated. THE Fens a swampy lowland region whose marshes have been drained since the 17th century, today very rich agricultural lands dominate the countryside. The researchers have now received information about a much earlier state, more than 4,000 years ago.

The farmers of the region regularly found the remains of logs in the peaty soil, which, although disturbing during earthworks, is of great value to science. The examination of the logs revealed that most of the logs are the remains of a yew tree that lived 4-5 thousand years ago. (The yew tree was a sacred plant for the inhabitants of Great Britain, and their infamous English longbows were made from it.) The yew forest of the Fens suddenly died 4,200 years ago, and the remains of the fallen trees have been preserved by the acidic peat to this day.

Experts believe that this could have been because the North Sea could have flooded the flat region and the plants died due to the salty seawater.

Examining the annual rings of the trees also provides an opportunity to compare the events here with contemporary climatic events in other parts of the world, such as those associated with the collapse of the Old Kingdom in Egypt.

The yew tree is quite a common tree in the university parks of Cambridge, or in the cemeteries of southern England, but it is completely absent from the Fens today. While today endless potato or sugar beet fields stretch across the excellent soil of the Fens, 5,000 years ago the yew forests were just as endless. Logs found during today’s agriculture are often only piled on the edge of fields. Cambridge researchers took samples from hundreds of logs with the farmers’ permission. Although the trees in the mounds looked like they had been cut recently, analysis showed them to be very old. Their annual rings also tell about the rainfall and temperature of the time.

The trees lived an average of 400 years, and the experts were able to read and piece together roughly a thousand years of climate history from them. In addition to the yew tree, there were also some oaks in the huge forest, but they died out sooner.

During the destruction of forests, there was a huge drought in China and the Middle East, which contributed to the collapse of many civilizations of the time. The researchers suggest that this may have been related to the sudden sea level rise that the northwestern European region experienced, which caused the destruction of the yew forests.