How did a blood-red flint from Helgoland end up inside the Mount Saint Peter caves?

In the year of our Lord 2014, your outlaw archaeologist had bought a new plaster trowel and poked around a bit in a place that I will not disclose for the time being.

Without much effort, a few interesting stones soon emerged from the floor. You must understand that everyone had already searched the place countless of times with metal detectors, so all iron-containing material had long been excavated. I even secretly saw Kevin Amendt wandering around with a metal detector.

No one paid close attention to the many stones found on the plateau though, except for your archaeologist.

Besides a Neolithic pounding stone that I will show below on this page, a very special blood-red silex, or flint stone also emerged. This round stone filled the entire hand and was apparently used as a pounding stone or something similar, as you could see impact traces on the tip.

The “shell” of the stone was light brownish of colour, slightly darker than limestone, and the inside was dark red in color. I had never seen this before. Furthermore, the stone was really very hard. I took a photo of it, and there is a small chance that I will ever publish that photo along with this article. The photo might also still be on the grotto forum, where this find was also shared back in 2014.

However, the rubbish Society of Underground Limestone Galleries did not even consider it worth registering in their online finds list, because they do not take archaeology seriously at all apparently!

At the time, it was also difficult to explain such a find.

Now, a few years later, search engines have become much more powerful thanks to AI. I asked Grok where red silex could be found, and the result will surprise you!

"Red silex (or red flint / roter Feuerstein) is a very special and fairly rare type of flint/chert with an intense red or blood-red color due to iron oxide (hematite). The most famous and important location in Europe – actually the only true source of this unique red variant – is on the German North Sea island of Helgoland (Heligoland) and especially on the small neighboring island of Düne.

Where exactly to find it?

Main location: The northern beach (Nordstrand) of Düne (the small airport island next to Helgoland itself).

Here, the red nodules and cobblestones regularly wash up on the beach. It is a popular spot for beachcombers, collectors, and archaeology enthusiasts.”

Well, what a surprise!!

Are we perhaps dealing with an artifact from the Cimbri here? They came from the area near Helgoland. That island is now as much as 55 km off the coast of Germany, right in the middle of the North Sea. You don’t end up there by chance.

The AI explains further:

"2. Red Helgoland flint was distributed much earlier

The unique red flint from Helgoland (actually mainly from the island of Düne) was already extensively traded and transported during the Neolithic period (from around 4000-3000 BC, TRB/Funnelbeaker culture) and the Bronze Age – often by sea.

Artifacts of it have been found in:

Denmark (since 2006, around 20 red + 10 gray Helgoland flint finds are known, especially in South Jutland and beyond)

Northern Germany (Lower Saxony)

The Netherlands (especially Drenthe, sometimes >300 km from Helgoland)

This happened thousands of years before the Cimbri migration (which only took place in the late Iron Age / around 120 BC). The distribution occurred through prehistoric trade networks, probably by boat along the coast and Wadden Islands, at a time when Helgoland was still (partly) connected to the mainland or easily reachable by canoe/vessel.”

Well, our AI computer has little experience with wandering around Europe in the Iron Age. So the idea that you leave your own flint behind because there will be some to find in future areas naturally doesn’t hold up. Only a computer could think of that. Making fire was an essential part of survival in antiquity, so a knife and flint must have been part of everyone’s basic equipment. There was also no hardware store, so most tools had to be created on site.

But what is that red flint doing there then?

For those new to this topic of “The Real History of Mount Saint Peter”: We know that the Cimbri and Teutones undertook a mass migration around 120 BC from Jutland, and the group split at “the treasure.”

You could see this treasure as Mount Saint Peter itself, an easily defensible place that also consisted entirely of limestone and flint. If I were a prehistoric civilization, I would settle there permanently right away. All raw materials were available: plenty of wood nearby, a beautiful river next to the hill, and unlimited flint right underneath your feet. Flint was a valuable resource from 500,000 BC to the 19th century that was highly sought after. Armies couldn’t do without it. And the black silex from Mount Saint Peter is of high quality. Flint is the second hardest stone after diamond and only occurs in limestone.

The smaller group of Cimbri stayed on Mount Saint Peter while the larger group continued toward Italy, where they were eventually defeated in 101 BC by the consul Quintus Lutatius Catulus in the Battle of Vercellae.

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cimbrian_War)

It would take until 57 BC for the general Gaius Iulius (Caesar) to appear at the hill that the smaller group of Cimbri had chosen as their residence 60 years earlier. Around this time, they were called the “Aduatuci,” and I suspect that the area around the Dark Room, the southernmost part of the Ternaaien-Beneden cave system, was made by them. The building style differs, and the pillars are much larger than elsewhere.

This group was no match for the mass murderer Gaius Iulius either, and after their defeat, the remaining people were sold as slaves. According to the report to the Senate, there were 50,000 of them.

When we ask Grok how many slaves we would need to construct the entire tunnel system, you would need 4000 slaves to build it in just 2 years. Of course, it could also be that 4000 legionaries did this job in 2 years, but that is not really likely. The Romans were known for using slave labor, especially in mines. The idea that it took hundreds of years to consistently build the tunnel system in Mount Saint Peter is not realistic, because the building style is uniform everywhere and differs greatly from the rest of the Limburg limestone caves, which are all technically much less impressive.

Alright. Back to our artifact!

So, through real science, we have tracked down a red silex in Ternaaien-Beneden that must come from the island of Helgoland in the North Sea. (!!!) 

Unfortunately, the stone itself was stolen from your archaeologist, so we will have to search for a new one soon.

Fortunately, via Google, I found a man from England who found exactly the same stone in Chelmsford, under similar circumstances. It is reported that the rock does not come from that area and must also originate from the lost “Doggerland,” of which the island of Helgoland was part.

The blood-red Silex stone found in the Ternaaien-Beneden cave is a 100% match with the stones in the image above.

Image source: https://stephenkuta.com/n161-blood-red-flint-british-find/

The theory that the Cimbri left these behind in Ternaaien-Beneden to make fire is, in my opinion, very plausible.

Thank you for reading my article!

Yours sincerely,

The Real Archaeologist

of Mount Saint Peter

Bob De Zomer 

(RVW)

P.S. A dark green serpentine, a stone type the Romans were very fond of, was also found at the Castle of Caestert and given to Aldo Haan for his birthday in 2013. What Aldo did with it is unknown, but I suspect the stone was left above at the viewpoint of Quarry de Keel.

[Image caption: Green Serpentine.]

[Image caption: The pounding stone that was found together with the blood-red Silex in Ternaaien-Beneden.]

This is the described flint: