What can we learn from going back to a site that was first excavated by Grahame Clark in 1949-51, and that has since become the type site for the early Mesolithic? The answer is a new understanding that overturns much of what we have been taught about the lives of early settlers in northern Europe, as Chris Catling now reports. If you had been alive about 11,000 years ago, living at Star Carr, you might well think yourself one of the luckiest people ever born. Dimly remembered stories handed down the generations and recounted by older members