I'm in a wood, a rather pretty wood.
And a rather special kind of wood. But more about that later. First, let me talk about a persistent myth, which is
that Britain and Europe were a sort of forest. A great big forest until
the agricultural and/or industrial revolution. No, they weren't. This has been
known definitely since the 1960s. Archeologists have very firmly established that,
in fact, in Britain for example, the time when the greatest amount of land was
being cultivated, yes, was under the plough was the bronze age. And a lot of uplands like Dartmoor and
Exmoor and so forth were, in fact, created then. They were, before Man came along and chopped
down all the trees, then they were forests. But then came the farmers and they cleared those
uplands, farmed them during the bronze age. Then the climate changed and the things
collapsed a bit and now we have those upland moors,
Dartmoor and Exmoor and others like them. And we think, a lot of us, think that they're natural.
No they're not. That's actually a man-made landscape. This is not an ancient woodland that I'm
standing in today. This is only actually about two hundred years old.
So the oldest trees are about two hundred years. And there are many, of course, far younger
than that. But still you don't have the full range of
ages of tree here. What makes this special, is that
it's not been managed. Every time a tree falls, they
just leave it there. Nothing gets cleared away. They don't sweep the leaves
away. They leave lots of the ground cover there. So there's lots of food for birds to eat and lots
of places for ground-nesting birds to nest. About half the species around here are ground-nesting and rotting trees are just a larder for birds, they've got all sorts of larvae, insects and grubs
and so forth. All sorts of food sources that they can make full use of. And you will see
lots of trees around here that have got... that have rotted, that have opened. And they're full of all sorts of insects. If you knock them, all sorts of creepy crawlies come out. And you can see where the birds have come along and pecked and other animals have come and scratched away
the rotting wood to get to the goodies inside. So that's what the people here want to do.
They want to attract wildlife. Some creature has been digging here. I don't know what creature and
I don't know what for. Some other creature has been burrowing here,
very shallowly. A little scrape there and another one there. And another one there. Another one there. That one goes little deeper. Something has been digging here and I think I see why. Oops, they're paying attention to me.
Time to leave, I think. When a tree falls down, rather then being
sawn down, it doesn't break cleanly. And I think that makes it far easier
for the insects to get in there and burrow and make their
little homes and feast away. This wood has not been managed for
seventy-five years. So that's very unusual today. We're used to the look
of a modern, managed piece of woodland. And a lot of people imagine, that that's
what a natural wood looks like. And very often you will see in movies, they will shoot a medieval sequence in a wood. Because it's a very cheap backdrop, isn't it?
And people will say: "Oh, well, there you go - it's a wood.
Of course it's all authentic." Botanists might spot that they've got: "Hang on..." "...are those horse-chestnut trees? Is that sycamore?
Are those rhododendrons?" Yes, those are rhododendrons. And so they'll, you know, spot these species
that shouldn't be there. if it's meant to be England in 1320. But people generally accept a wood. "Oh, that's authentic. It's a wood." But a medieval wood would have looked different.
Would it have looked like this? Generally, no. Because this is an unmanaged wood. And medieval woods were far more managed than
we are used to woods being today. Every village would have clumps of woodland around it and those were extensions of the farms,
or the gardens if you like. They were farming wood. They were
farming timber. They were gardening the woods for all sorts of wild plants... I shouldn't call them wild I suppose. All sorts of plants they would use for various
uses in the home, herbs and so forth... but principally timber. And they would want a variety of species of tree,
and they would want trees to grow straight, or grow crooked, because they wanted bits of
wood to grow in various shapes. And they would also coppice a lot. Coppicing is something, that is very common today. But in the medieval period it was very common. You cut a tree in such a way as to encourage it
to grow long thin straight poles and then you harvest those poles and you've
got long thin straight things in order to weave together, to make wattle and daub
walls and wicker fencing and so forth. We don't make houses out of wattle and daub any more,
so we have no call for coppicing. But that was very common in the medieval period. If browsing animals eating the leaves would
be a problem, as it often was, then another option was pollarding,
where you cut the tree higher up, but it meant that you needed a ladder
to harvest the poles. Today you can often see old trees,
that were once pollarded, but then were left to keep growing. So a medieval wood would have been
far more garden-like. People needed to get into the wood and get the stuff...
get the wood out of the wood. Get the timber out of the wood. For instance... They're fuelling their homes with wood,
so they'll need to get carts in and out and get access to all the trees. So they are going to
clear away a lot of the ground cover. This however, is quite a different look.
This is more primeval. This forest has been deliberately neglected
for seventy-five years. That's not enough time really, for this to
reach a perfect equilibrium. We haven't got to, what some people would call,
'climax vegetation' yet. Although, as a lot of biologists will tell you, there's
no such thing exactly as 'climax vegetation'. The climate is constantly changing. There is no perfectly stable state, which
any forest might reach. But this is something close to what an
unmanaged woodland, that has been unmanaged for ever, would look like. Another thing you'll find in a forest such as this
is some really funky fungi. "Am I funky?" "Oh, can I be funky too?" "Are we funky?" "We are funky!" Yes, yes. You are all funky fungi. "I'm not funky." One thing, that mankind has been doing for
a very long time, is burning down woods like this. Yes, those guardians of nature - hunters-gatherers have been burning woods like this
for their own convenience. You see, it's actually quite difficult to spot the game,
and it's quite difficult to chase after the game, if you've got so much dead wood and
undergrowth and so forth. Plus, a lot of what does grow here is bracken. And not many things like eating this. What's better, is to have a much clearer area,
so you can see the game and chase the game somewhat more easily. And there are loads of new, young, tender shoots coming through for them to eat. So what you do? Well, you
set a fire that burns away all the undergrowth. A lot of the larger trees might survive,
but the smaller ones will go. And then you create clearings, and sunlight
gets to those clearings and the ash acts as a very effective fertiliser
and new shoots burst through. And the deer come along and go,
"Oh, look at all this lovely food!" "It's so easy for me to get to, and - oh dear! I seem to have been shot by a hunter-gatherer." So there you go. Mankind has been manipulating
the forest environment for millennia. Subs by Ivan Rezny
That was exceptionally informative.
"Oh dear, I seem to have been shot by a hunter-gatherer."
Mostly the hunter, I think.
That was great, thanks for sharing! Its an interesting to look at the assumptions we make for fantasy / medieval settings and their societies.
I love Lindybeige, his channel is excellent, and he is very charming, informative, and willing to admit when he doesn't know something. Some of his more political videos aren't my favorite, but that's only a few videos compared to his loads of historical videos, and those are all great.
Ad a Canadian, the idea of a managed forest (outside of logging operations) is foreign to me.
Funky!!
Interesting bit on the fire burnt clearings. Good way to jink modern players sensibilities is to have the local village burning the shit out of nearby forests...or face degrees of starvation.
Suspect the fungi were affecting his mind in that part of the video. Still, good to see Hugh Laurie in a forest. ;)
I don't like Lindy as much as Skallagrim or Matt Easton but this is good. Of course how much of this relates to D&D type settings is debatable given , you know, all the rampaging monsters and humanoids. I'm pretty sure the areas outside of direct control of civilization are going to be more wild and dangerous than anything historically possible.
If 4th Ed got one thing right, it was the Points of Light setting. If monsters and ancient evils were really a thing then at best what you'd end up with is bastions of human civilization holding against the tide of things that would want to eat or enslave you.
Thats very interesting.