Decent Societies Must Recognize The Value Of Care Work
Nancy Folbre – Photo: en.wikipedia.org
04-26-2026 ~ Capitalism only cares about profits, so it is not surprising that care work is undervalued in capitalist societies. Yet care work is one of the fastest-growing sectors of the US economy, while “adults spend, on average, about as much time in unpaid work as they do on paid work,” as renowned socialist and feminist economist Nancy Folbre points out in the interview that follows. Subsequently, she makes an argument for structural reforms in the care economy and highlights strategies for organizing care workers. Folbre is professor emerita of economics and director of the Program on Gender and Care Work at the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She is the author of several books, including, most recently, Making Care Work: Why Our Economy Should Put People First
C. J. Polychroniou: Your new book, Making Care Work, has an anti-capitalist subtitle: Why Our Economy Should Put People First. Could you explain the connections you see between capitalism and the undervaluation of the work of caring for ourselves and others?
Nancy Folbre: In many societies, capitalist institutions such as market exchange and wage employment were shaped by preexisting patriarchal institutions, including laws barring women from property ownership, access to higher education and well-paying jobs. The dynamics varied across countries and were shaped by patterns of imperial power, but patriarchal institutions served the purpose of keeping the cost of producing and maintaining the labor force relatively low by creating a “reserve army” of wives and mothers who also worked to the advantage of men. The economists and national income accountants of the late 19th and early 20th centuries reinforced women’s subordination by insisting that their unpaid work was a moral obligation rather than a productive contribution that deserved economic recognition.
Echoes of this view are apparent today, in a perverse campaign to slash public care programs and impugn the very concept of public service. The market-centric mania that has taken hold pretends to be “pro-family” but seems aimed primarily at sending women back to the home to help cut social spending. A crass, self-serving elite wants us to define economic success by the growth of stock market indices and cryptocurrency. They couldn’t care less about our health or the long-run sustainability of our national prosperity.
C. J. Polychroniou: How should we define care work and is there a way to measure its true value? What does “undervaluation” really mean?
Nancy Folbre: I define care work as the production, development and maintenance of human capabilities. This can take the form of self-care, of active care for others that involves personal interactions that generally involve some concern for the well-being of the care recipient, indirect care devoted to the care of the environment for direct care, and “on-call” care that involves being present and available to someone who might need active care.
Care for dependents such as children, people with disabilities, and the frail elderly is a particularly important aspect of care work, but as Bruce Springsteen puts it, “everybody’s got a hungry heart.” Most of us derive considerable satisfaction from caring for others as well as being cared for.
There’s no way to put a precise number on the value of unpaid care work. All we can do is provide lower-bound estimates by asking questions like, “What would it cost to hire someone to replace this activity?” For instance, a parent staying home to keep on eye on a sleeping child knows that they could, in principle, hire a babysitter to take their place. We can also ask, “If this person wasn’t engaged in care work, how much could they be earning on the job?” Willingness to sacrifice income is an indicator of the personal satisfaction a caregiver derives.
As I explain in Making Care Work, data from time-use surveys shows that in the US today, adults spend, on average, about as much time in unpaid work as they do on paid work. Partly this reflects the activities of students and retirees, who are less likely than others to be employed, but it also testifies to the hours that people devote to activities such as cooking, cleaning, shopping, yard work, household management, child care and elder care.
Surveys are not as effective at capturing the responsibilities of on-call care, which often restrict paid employment. However, because we have data on how much time people spend on various activities, and we also know what people are paid for different jobs, we can estimate the total value of unpaid work and even compare it to the value of all the goods and services bought and sold in the US — what’s called (misleadingly) the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The US Bureau of Economic Analysis makes this calculation, and their estimate of the value of unpaid work is about 25% of GDP.
But this is an underestimate—and an “undervaluation” for several reasons. First, it doesn’t count the on-call time that many parents provide for children under 13, and which often limits the time they can devote to paid work outside the home. Second, it sets a value on all unpaid work equal to a housekeeper’s wage, which reflects the low bargaining power of a paid labor force consisting largely of immigrants and people of color. Third, and most importantly, it doesn’t include any consideration at all of the social benefits generated by work that develops individual and social capabilities, which includes the value of increased mental and physical health, enhanced skills, and stronger families and communities. Read more
What Happens To Maritime Order After The Iran War?
John P. Ruehl – Independent Media Institute
04-24-2026 ~ Disruption in the Strait of Hormuz continues to test U.S. control over global sea lanes, after several prior shocks. Washington’s wavering commitment carries implications for China and the broader international system.
With the United States and Iran escalating confrontations along the Strait of Hormuz—including seizure of ships—the waterway has become “pivotal to negotiations” between the two countries.
Washington escalated to direct interdiction of Iranian-linked shipping near the strait on April 19, with U.S. forces boarding and seizing an Iran-bound container ship, as part of the blockade imposed by it. Meanwhile, on April 22, Iranian forces seized two ships, casting doubt on Trump’s earlier declaration that the strait is “open for business.”
Weeks of joint U.S.-Israeli strikes, backed by Gulf partners, have failed to decisively degrade Iranian military capabilities or critically destabilize its government, while Iran has also been unable to force an American retreat. The crisis has caused traffic through the Strait of Hormuz to plummet. The waterway is one of the most “critical oil transit chokepoints,” with roughly 25 percent of the world’s seaborne oil and about 20 percent of its liquefied natural gas (LNG) passing through it.
Even for crews willing to transit the narrow strait, soaring insurance costs have also held back trade. Despite Washington establishing a $40 billion maritime insurance fund to encourage and secure maritime trade, contradictory signals from the U.S. and Iranian sides, including inconsistencies from their official channels, have added to the uncertainty, preventing traffic from recovering. Commodity prices and financial markets initially reacted sharply, but have become less sensitive to sensationalist political rhetoric.
The crisis has been compared to attacks on shipping in the Strait of Hormuz in the 1980s during the Iran–Iraq war. The U.S. Navy escorted tankers through the strait and allowed foreign vessels to reflag as American, retaliating when its forces were targeted, and pushing both Baghdad and Tehran to scale back attacks. The affair effectively cemented Washington’s role as the global guarantor of maritime trade, an assumption now being tested once again by renewed U.S. intervention.
While Washington continues to seek to keep the strait open, there appears to be a growing willingness to tolerate disruption, consistent with the Trump administration’s “America First” orientation, especially with U.S. energy imports having diversified away from the Middle Eastern dependence, which is complemented by increasing domestic production. With Iran suffering from a blockade, the disruption to traditional resource flows and elevated oil prices has also benefited U.S. producers and exporters.
Forcing the strait open is also not straightforward, with U.S. Naval Forces now exposed to Iran’s arsenal of low-cost drones and ballistic missiles. Securing it by force risks human and material losses high enough to make a standoff approach more attractive. It would be far more beneficial to hold naval ships at a distance while managing economic pressure to sustain traffic through the strait. While Operation Epic Fury, which aimed to dismantle Iran’s security infrastructure, marks a show of strength for U.S. forces, its constraints show a new operating reality in the age of mass drones and ballistic missiles rather than a return to uncontested military control.
What the ongoing crisis in the Strait of Hormuz also reveals is how ambiguous and unevenly enforced maritime law remains, a reality long masked by U.S. hegemony. Neither Iran nor the U.S. has ratified the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, and few international bodies or countries are able to provide neutral mediation. Both operate on competing national interpretations of legal rights and obligations in the strait that have compounded obstacles to wider negotiations.
Mounting Strains
Rather than reacting to crises, Washington’s approach to the Strait of Hormuz reflects an effort to anticipate and exploit disruption, shaped by a series of tests to its maritime order in recent years. Since 2023, Houthi rebel drone and missile attacks on shipping in the Red Sea have kept tanker traffic below pre-crisis levels, even after U.S.-led military intervention and a 2025 ceasefire. That agreement now appears fragile amid Houthi threats to resume attacks and Iran’s push to them “to prepare for a renewed campaign against Red Sea shipping if the U.S. escalates its military actions against Iran, according to European officials,” stated to Bloomberg News.
Simultaneously with the Houthis’ Red Sea campaign, nearby Somali piracy has also rebounded. Driven in part by foreign fishing and toxic waste dumping in Somali waters, piracy grew rapidly off the country’s coast in the late 2000s and early 2010s before a sustained international effort led by the U.S., NATO, and the EU brought it under control. Its resurgence is indicative of the weakening of international maritime security cooperation and the limits of U.S. enforcement capacity.
There has also been a state-to-state maritime disruption before the Hormuz crisis. Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, war efforts have significantly reduced Black Sea traffic and undermined internationally-brokered agreements, turning much of it into a “no-man’s land.” Russian access to the Black Sea and the Danish straits has also been restricted by Western enforcement measures.
However, the global Western enforcement architecture that has helped support American maritime dominance for decades is itself coming under strain amid tensions within the transatlantic alliance. The Trump administration’s renewed interest in Greenland, in particular, has raised tensions with Denmark and other EU members, exposing cracks in Western unity that complicate collective action at sea even before the current crisis in the Strait of Hormuz.
The Trump administration’s focus on expanding U.S. power in the Americas also entails countering China’s extensive global trade influence, seen most visibly in the current competition over the Panama Canal. Read more
Democracy Depends On Broad-Based Taxation—History Is Clear About That
04-16-2026 ~ Political debates about democracy often focus on culture, leadership, or polarization. But history points to a more prosaic—and more powerful—driver of political outcomes: how governments raise revenue.
Across thousands of years of human history, the strongest predictor of whether power is shared or concentrated is not population size, technological sophistication, or even ideology. It is whether governing institutions are funded primarily through internal revenues—taxes, participatory fees, and labor contributions drawn broadly from the population—or through external resources that rulers can monopolize without negotiation.
When governments depend on internal taxation, bargaining is required. Taxes are not simply extracted; they are negotiated, enforced, justified, and institutionalized. Revenue collection requires administrative systems, transparency, and at least minimal procedural fairness. Over time, these fiscal relationships provide taxpayers with varying degrees of voice and leverage. Representation, voice, and accountability are not moral add-ons to taxation—they are structural consequences of it.
Historical evidence consistently shows that states financed through broad-based taxation tend to distribute power more widely. By contrast, regimes that rely heavily on external revenues—war booty, royal estates, slave labor, monopolized trade routes, or extractive (spot) resources—are far more likely to concentrate power, suppress participation, and tolerate high levels of inequality. External revenue sources free rulers from reliance on citizens, insulating power from popular pressure.
This pattern holds across eras and political forms. Internally funded governments required more impersonal, merit-based bureaucracies capable of assessing, collecting, and redistributing taxes. Externally funded regimes were more likely to develop patrimonial systems in which offices were allocated based on loyalty rather than competence. In fiscal terms, democracy and autocracy are not merely ideological opposites—they are alternative revenue strategies with political consequences.
The lesson runs deeper. Taxation is not just a source of revenue; it underpins a social contract. Taxes formalize mutual obligations between governments and those they govern; they undergird trust. When citizens perceive that taxes are relatively fair and that revenues fund shared goods—roads, markets, defense, public spaces—compliance increases. When taxation becomes regressive, opaque, or disconnected from benefits, resistance, evasion, and political instability follow. These dynamics are present in ancient and modern states alike.
One of the most persistent myths about governance is that inequality is a natural or lockstep byproduct of complexity. Historical comparisons show otherwise. High inequality correlates closely with systems that minimize internal taxation and maximize extractive control over external resources. Where rulers do not need taxpayers, they have little incentive to limit accumulation at the top. Power, wealth, and decision-making reinforce each other in tight, mutually sustaining loops.
This is why slogans like “no taxation without representation” are never merely rhetorical. They condense a deep historical truth: representation emerges when governments need to rely on their people financially. Remove that reliance, and representation withers—even if formal democratic institutions remain intact.
These insights are not confined to the distant past. Over the last four to five decades, the United States and other democracies have moved away from strongly progressive, broad-based taxation toward systems that rely more on consumption taxes, debt financing, and financialized gains. At the same time, public investment has stagnated, inequality has soared, and political voice has become increasingly skewed toward wealth. History suggests these trends are causally connected, and not coincidental.
Crucially, the historical record also shows that political trajectories are not fixed. Systems oscillate. States that once relied on internal taxation can shift toward external revenue streams—and toward concentrated power. The reverse is also possible. Fiscal structures change, and when they do, political institutions may shift as well.
Modern debates about democratic decline, therefore, focus too narrowly on norms and elections while neglecting the fiscal foundations that make those democratic practices sustainable. Elections without a shared tax base are fragile. Accountability without broad revenue dependence is hollow.
If democracies today are to restore trust, widen participation, and check concentrated power, the historical lesson is unambiguous: they need to rebuild and evenly implement inclusive tax systems. That means not only who pays but also how revenues are collected, how transparently they are managed, and how visibly they return to the public in the form of shared opportunities, services, and goods. Fair, progressive revenue collection from a broad swath of the citizenry is not a sign of oppression, but a ticket toward widespread inclusivity.
Democracy does not survive on values alone. It survives on economic balance sheets. And across historical eras, a more equitable balance has always leaned toward those who contribute, participate, and petition for a voice in return.
By Gary M. Feinman
Author Bio: Gary M. Feinman is an archaeologist and the MacArthur curator of anthropology at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago.
Credit Line: This article was produced by Human Bridges, a project of the Independent Media Institute.
Orbán’s Defeat In Hungary Signals Far Right’s Weakness, Not The Left’s Strength
C.J. Polychroniou
04-15-2026 ~ Magyar’s win is a significant loss for the far right, but he has not provided a vision for a progressive future.
According to most mainstream media accounts, a “political earthquake” has taken place in Hungary. The European far right’s poster boy and MAGA darling Prime Minister Viktor Orbán was defeated in a landslide on Sunday by political upstart Péter Magyar. The outcome of this election is indeed politically significant, as the ousting of Orbán by Hungarian voters will curtail Donald Trump’s foreign policy efforts to undermine the European Union (EU) by using Hungary as a Trojan horse in Brussels.
The Trump administration has made it abundantly clear that it wants to see a “nationalistic” Europe ruled by far right leaders. Its real interests, however, lie in weakening the EU as part of Washington’s new national security strategy in which the U.S. reasserts itself as a global hegemon. In forging a new world order, the Trump administration wants allies who are obedient subordinates. Trump’s support for Orbán was not based solely on ideological grounds but was also driven by a specific strategy for Europe, one in which the continent was to be subordinated to the interests of U.S. imperialism.
That said, the key question is this: Could the end of Orbán’s 16-year reign also mark the beginning of the end of the far right’s modern political surge? Indeed, the far right has faced other major setbacks across Europe in recent days and Donald Trump’s approval rating in the U.S. has taken a significant hit in recent surveys. The problem with concluding that the defeat of Orbán somehow represents the start of a new political era marked by the decline of right-wing authoritarianism, however, is that while the far right may currently be experiencing setbacks, the left is still struggling to articulate an alternative vision attractive enough to capture the public’s interest.
Moreover, the winner of Hungary’s so-called historic election is a former Orbán loyalist who ran on a pledge to rebuild Hungary’s relationships with the EU and NATO. Magyar also campaigned on an anti-corruption and anti-state-capture platform, which is rather typical of every mainstream politician in central and eastern Europe, but it is highly unlikely that he will shift away from Orbán’s reactionary policies on immigration. In fact, as researchers Eric Maurice and Levente Kocsis have shown, Magyar’s Tisza party’s voting behavior in the European Parliament reveals a strong convergence with Orbán’s own Fidesz party on “politically sensitive issues” such as Ukraine and immigration and “opposing language on rights and equality.” And while Magyar has spoken of wanting to move Hungary closer to the EU, he has avoided taking a clear stance on LGBTQ+ rights. This is hardly a political vision for a progressive future.
Since the early 2010s, far right parties and movements have gained significant political traction throughout Europe. Their success has been driven by a variety of social, economic, political, and cultural factors, just as in the case of the MAGA movement in the United States. Using radical and forthright political rhetoric to take advantage of ordinary people’s concerns and fears over the consequences of neoliberal globalization, as well as the impotence of liberal and socialist parties in articulating a meaningful socioeconomic alternative, far-right leaders have been able to connect with the politically discontent among working- and middle-class voters as well as younger generations. In this context, quasi-fascist demagoguery, once considered a political taboo in postwar Western polities, has emerged as an ideological weapon designed to alter political norms and “transform the morally extraordinary into the ordinary,” as Jason Stanley put it in his book How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them.
Viktor Orbán’s first term as prime minister of Hungary was from 1998 to 2002, but it was during his second term, starting in 2010, that he emerged as a strongman leader. Since then, he and his party, Fidesz, promoted the most successful variant of right-wing authoritarianism in the West by dismantling the country’s legal system and suppressing opposition. His government did so by winning four straight elections. This is no small feat and speaks volumes of the power of demagoguery in capitalist societies. Orbán’s political rhetoric relied on the spread of fear and misinformation, proving yet again that democracy erodes from the top. He kept hammering away at the EU’s approach to immigration, which he claimed threatened Hungary’s national sovereignty and cultural identity. But he also differentiated between migrants from other Eastern European countries and those from the Middle East and Africa, as well as between Muslim and non-Muslim immigrants. He described Muslim migration as an “invasion.” This anti-migration position, playing on the racist fears of the population, undoubtedly helped Orbán win successive elections.
But it was Orbánomics, a form of economic nationalism, that motivated Hungarian voters to keep reelecting Orbán and his Fidesz party. Using unorthodox economic policies, Orbán succeeded in reducing unemployment and stimulating growth under favorable economic conditions. He also placed families with children at the center of his economic policy by offering various tax benefits and a long line of subsidies. At the same time, the economy shifted under his reign to a form of crony capitalism that had detrimental effects on economic performance and increased corruption. From 2020 to 2025, the Hungarian economy experienced significant decline and entered a period of “stable stagnation.” Orbánomics had reached the end of the line and Hungarian voters were finally ready to ditch Orbán and his Fidesz for a new government.
The election of Péter Magyar does not appear to represent an ideological shift among Hungarian voters. Magyar is not a liberal, let alone a progressive. Aside from his stance toward the EU, he did not directly challenge Orbán’s policy agenda during his campaign but simply confined himself to talking about corruption and governance. It isn’t even clear that his position on the Ukraine war will be any different from Orbán’s, or that he will stand up to Trump. Read more
From Latin America To Iran, U.S.–Vatican Tensions Enter A New Phase
John P. Ruehl – Independent Media Institute
04-15-2026 ~ Recent crises are exposing deeper fractures in a relationship shaped by more than two centuries of cooperation, suspicion, and rivalry.
Cuba’s deepening crisis has once again pulled the Vatican into a familiar role. In March, it was revealed that Cuban officials turned to the Holy See to help persuade U.S. President Donald Trump to ease its oil embargo, underscoring the Church’s position as one of the few actors capable of mediating between Washington and Havana. Since Cuba relaxed religious restrictions in the 1990s, the Vatican has reemerged as a major institutional force on the island, helping to facilitate the normalization of U.S.–Cuba relations in 2015.
Yet tensions with the Trump administration are complicating the role the Church has traditionally played in diplomatic mediation. In late 2025, the Vatican sought to mediate in Venezuela by offering asylum to former President Nicolás Maduro in Russia to avert military escalation, which ultimately failed. Days after the January 2026 raid by the U.S. to capture Maduro, Pope Leo XIV warned against further conflict in his “state of the world” address, after which Cardinal Christophe Pierre, the Vatican’s U.S. representative, was summoned to a tense, closed-door meeting at the Pentagon, where U.S. officials later denied issuing veiled threats.
The divide has further widened over Iran. As an early critic of war, the pope called on the U.S. on March 31 to halt its campaign, naming Trump for the first time publicly. Shortly after, the pope condemned Trump’s rhetoric about destroying Iran as “completely unacceptable.” Amid the fallout, the pope’s planned 2026 visit to the U.S. has been postponed indefinitely.
On April 13, matters further escalated after Pope Leo XIV said that he had “no fear of the Trump administration,” responding to Trump’s criticism of him on social media as being “weak on crime,” according to the New York Times.
These tensions follow decades of outwardly stable relations between Washington and the Holy See. Catholics make up roughly 20 percent of American adults and remain well represented at the highest levels of government, including former President Joe Biden, Vice President J.D. Vance, and six of the nine Supreme Court justices. The current pope, notably, is the first American to lead the Church.
Underneath this overlap lies a more complicated history. Early American suspicion of centralized religious authority, tied to predominantly Protestant culture, has evolved into recurring domestic and foreign political disagreements with the Vatican. While the two sides share some common ground, competing spheres of influence are becoming more pronounced under Trump.
Given that the U.S. was founded in part on a rejection of entrenched religious hierarchy, early friction with the Vatican was almost inevitable. At the time, however, the Papal States were already in decline against the growing power of neighboring monarchies in Europe, and American leaders paid little attention to the Holy See as either a strategic concern or domestic threat. Catholics made up only a small minority of relatively elite communities until about 1845, within a larger society dominated by a Protestant political and cultural order.
This changed with waves of Irish and later Italian immigration in the 19th century, with the number of Catholics growing from five percent of the population in 1850 to 17 percent by the end of the century. The Catholic Church built extensive networks of social services, education, and jobs, and became a major social and political force.
This led to backlash, including nativist movements that warned of immigrants’ allegiance to the pope and conspiracy theories of Vatican involvement in Abraham Lincoln’s assassination. Tensions also emerged beyond U.S. borders, with Washington using the Monroe Doctrine to justify backing liberal movements across Latin America, which often stripped the Catholic Church of land, legal privileges, and political authority, while simultaneously encouraging Protestant missionary expansion.
Although the decline of the Portuguese and Spanish empires left the church without much of its formal authority in Latin America, the end of royal patronage resulted in the Catholic Church becoming a more centralized and globally coordinated institution. Greater control over episcopal appointments and governance helped the Vatican “[consolidate] its grip on the new regional structures, linking them to the reconstruction of its global project,” with a form of Catholic continentalism becoming a post-imperial alternative to cementing its power in the Americas, according to a 2019 study published in the publication Territory, Politics, Governance. Instead of collapsing with the empires that brought it there, the Church evolved beyond them, sometimes placing itself in competition with Washington. Read more
Exploring Lyonesse: Where Myth, History, And Rising Seas Collide
Samantha Sudol – Photo: LAProgressive
04-12-2026 ~ From Arthurian epics to submerged cities, Lyonesse shows how folklore and history intertwine to shape a region’s cultural identity.
For centuries, the waters off Cornwall’s Atlantic coast have kept a secret: the legendary drowned land of Lyonesse. Stories of a prosperous kingdom swallowed overnight by the sea have persisted in Arthurian tales, medieval manuscripts, and Cornish folklore, blurring the line between myth and memory. Some accounts speak of a lone survivor, others of divine punishment, while traces of sunken forests, buildings, walls, and bells beneath the water hint at a landscape lost to rising seas.
Lyonesse is more than a fairy tale: it offers a lens for understanding how humans remember environmental change. From medieval romances to Victorian revivals, the story has captivated imaginations, shaping cultural identity and inspiring speculation about the power of nature and the fragility of human settlements. Here’s what we know, and what may forever remain a mystery about Britain’s most enigmatic lost land.
Legend of Lyonesse
In medieval literature, Lyonesse is most closely associated with Tristan in the 13th-century Prose Tristan, which established him as King Meliodas of Lyonesse’s son. Tristan and Iseult’s tragic love story, fueled by a love potion, unfolds in the kingdom of Lyonesse before it sank, linking romance and legend to a drowned landscape.
Lyonesse is a recognizable location in Arthurian literature, appearing in medieval romances and later popularized in Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s 19th-century Idylls of the King. Sir Thomas Malory’s 15th-century Le Morte d’Arthur also reinforced its existence in the Arthurian canon. Accounts of the kingdom’s drowning vary. Some say a man named Trevelyan survived to tell the tale of how the land vanished, while others liken Lyonesse’s fate to the biblical punishment of Sodom and Gomorrah.
Its submergence is also reminiscent of Cantre’r Gwaelod in Wales and Ys in Brittany, where low-lying lands are said to have been flooded due to fatal human negligence or other moral failings. Lyonesse is generally believed to have lain between Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly. This raises the question: was the flooding purely myth, or could it encode a memory of real environmental change? Overall, this tale underscores the enduring power of myth, the preservation of Cornish cultural identity, and reflections on ecological change.
Sunken Lands: Isles of Scilly
Two key areas that have a firm connection to the Lyonesse legend are the Isles of Scilly and St. Michael’s Mount. The Isles of Scilly form an archipelago on Cornwall’s southwestern edge and are made up of more than 50 islands and rugged islets. It was theorized that the Isles of Scilly were once a large island called “Ennor” (Old Cornish for “great island”), which flooded around 400 AD as sea levels rose. Records show speakers referred to the Isles in the singular in 240 AD and 400 AD. Evidence of settlements dates back to the Stone Age, followed by centuries as an important ship park. The Isles acted as a royalist stronghold during the English Civil War, with the surrounding waters recording more than 1,000 shipwrecks.
In the 1920s, archaeologist O.G.S. Crawford interpreted the submerged walls as evidence of sunken land, a conclusion later supported by studies of postglacial sea-level rise. In 1927, he wrote:
“The line of stones was undoubtedly the remains of a wall of human construction, some of them still standing upright… its general appearance left no doubt whatever in our minds with regard to this… here before us was tangible proof that the land had sunk since prehistoric times; for no one makes walls like this below high water mark.”
This research suggests that a real drowned landscape could underlie the legend of Lyonesse, further presenting how a factual event may have inspired a myth. Read more