In 1854, in Switzerland, on Lake Zurich, settlements were discovered, partly standing in the water. Piles were driven into the bottom of the shallow water and platforms were placed on the piles. Sometimes - for each hut separately, sometimes - for the entire settlement. In some settlements, piles immediately support the roof and form a frame for the walls. In general, several related technologies.
Quadrangular houses in pile settlements were divided into sections. Each section probably housed a family.
The inhabitants of the piled buildings already had pottery. They cultivated wheat, barley, millet, peas, lentils, beans, parsnips, carrots, cabbage, parsley. Later - more spelt and oats.
They had flax and hemp, and they knew how to make clothes from them. In Switzerland, combed linen, threads, pieces of wicker and woven fabric are found.
The "pillars" had a dog, a pig, a goat, a sheep, a cow. In the latest settlements, a horse also appears.
The discovery of pile settlements was a major scientific event of that time. It was discussed, and not only in the circles of narrow specialists. In D'Ervily's book about the "prehistoric" boy 1, the main character, straight from the caves where they hunt the animals of the Ice Age, falls directly into pile settlement. D "Ervily" blinded "two different eras in his book, but there were pile settlements! Let them be much later than cave life and hunting for a wild horse.
For scientists, almost the main question was: why were pile structures built at all? Huge after all work, the purpose of which is not obvious.
Some pile settlements are huge - like Alpenka on Lake Zurich - 40 thousand square meters, 4 hectares. Considering that all this was built with stone tools, the work was done simply incredible.
As usual, there are a lot of assumptions:
- "pillars" wanted to be closer to the water in order to fish;
They were very afraid of wild animals;
They worshiped the lakes;
They sailed in boats, it was more convenient to attach the boats to the platform than to pull them ashore.
1 D "Hervilli D. Adventures of a prehistoric boy. M, 1966.
There are about a hundred more assumptions of varying degrees of mild and severe insanity. One of the assumptions, far from being the main one: the "pillars" tried to protect themselves from enemies.
Indeed: try to climb onto the platform of a pile settlement, even if the platform is not far from the shore. It is worth dragging onto the platform the bridges connecting it to the shore, and the space between the shore and the platform turns into a moat. And if the platform is far from the shore, it is not so easy to land troops even from rafts. After all, on the platform of any enemy, energetic people with spears and stone axes are impatiently waiting.
The appearance of pile settlements suggests that the ancient farmers understood well: they even have something to take. Indeed, you can only steal meat from a hunter - and then in winter. You can "grab" more stocks of good stone for tools and devour the hunter himself and his family members. To put it bluntly, it doesn't work that much.
But the farmer has a lot of things ... Stocks of bread, beans, millet ... That which can be carried away and stored for a long time. And at any time of the year. Yes, you can steal cattle. It's one thing to hunt a hefty elk or bison. Quite another thing is to slaughter a domestic cow.
To protect against whom were platforms built on lakes? From other farmers, or from hunters roaming around? Most likely, to protect both from those and from others. But the farmers of ancient Europe were newcomers, not local in their roots. Southerners, brunettes with long arms and legs, skinny and thin. Mediterranean race. In itself, the desire to “isolate themselves” from the outside world, including settling on the water, is very typical for “non-locals”. Always and for all peoples, a long time passes until the settlers feel confident in their new land. Child believed that during the "Neolithic Revolution" the population of Europe changed completely. Those who did not assimilate into the ranks of the newcomers and were not exterminated fled to the almost uninhabitable spaces of the North 1 . This is hardly a fair opinion.
Back in the late 1970s, the German scholar Heusler argued that "in Europe there has been a continuous development of culture and population up to the historically attested Indo-European languages and cultures" 2 .
In favor of the fact that the population has not completely changed, the appearance of the inhabitants of Northern Europe, from the Neolithic to our time, also speaks. The same Nordic race. As it arose at the beginning of the settlement of Europe by sapiens, it lives on until our time. And during the “Neolithic Revolution” she also lived ... Not in all of Europe, really. In southern and western Europe, population change took place. In it, the former Nordic population was either exterminated or quickly assimilated. Indeed, even if hundreds of hunters adopt their type of farming from farmers, there will still be ten times more aliens than them. The former population will quickly dissolve among the newcomers.
But north and east of the Alps, the population did not change at all! The beauty of paleogenetics is that it allows you to compare living organisms and any fossil remains of organisms. And establish a relationship between them.
Child G. At the origins of European civilization. M, 1952. "HauslerA. Die Indoeuropaisierung Criechenlands nach Aussage der Grab-und Bestattungssitten // Slovenska archeologia. 1981. XXX. S. 61.
It turns out that people live south of the Alps whose ancestors did not live in Paleolithic Europe. Their ancestors sadly (or maybe joyfully? What's the difference!) Hunted a variety of animals North Africa and the Near East, they collected wild plants ... Until the "Neolithic Revolution" made them numerous and powerful.
But north of the Alps live those whose ancestors hunted mammoths, painted animals and people on the walls of caves, threw blankets on horses, turned monochrome tours into spotted livestock.
Then their ancestors fled from the lands flooded by the Flood to the south, developed new ecological zones and gradually lost the achievements of the Paleolithic era.
But in them, the inhabitants of Northern Europe, a drop of the blood of those who came to Europe from the Near East 35-32 thousand years ago is preserved. And those who lived in Europe before them... The blood of the creators of Torralba, Drachenloch, Terra Amata, Monte Circeo...
Neolithic northerners
At the beginning of the IV millennium BC. in Northern Europe, a huge commonality appears: the culture of funnel-shaped goblets. This culture arises in the same territory where people of the Maglemose culture lived. Apparently, they were direct descendants of this culture. In the VI-V millennia BC. the carriers of the Maglemose culture mastered the beginnings of agriculture and began to breed cows ... Not all, but some of their groups, in northern Germany and Denmark.
In the IV millennium BC. culture of funnel-shaped goblets flooded vast expanses from southern Sweden to the Danube and from Bavaria to Poland, and in the 3rd millennium - to Volhynia. The name itself comes from the characteristic shape of one of the vessels - a goblet in the shape of a funnel with a neck. There are also vessels for storing loose bodies and liquids in this culture - pot-bellied, with a round or flat bottom.
Hoards of stone axes, polished mops and adzes, microliths inserted into bone sickles prove that this is the culture of the Stone Age.
Funnel-shaped goblets grew the same set of crops as the "piles": peas, lentils, beans, millet, barley, wheat.
In the settlements of funnel-shaped cups, sheds and rooms for drying bread, barns on stilts, and semi-dugout houses are found. Such houses are very different from structures on stilts. Pile long houses - yet for a more southern climate. Houses of funnel-shaped cups are the dwellings of people who have grown into the harsh earth, where there is a real winter with frosts and stable snows.
Funnel-shaped goblets buried the dead in ground burials, and later under small burial mounds. In all burials - people of the same Nordic race, well known to us.
Northern Europe did not assimilate into the hordes of newcomers from the Near East. The Nordic race acted more cunningly: it itself switched to agriculture and cattle breeding. No population change, not even mass assimilation. She reached a completely new level of cultural development without sacrificing herself.
Chapter 8 THE BEGINNING OF THE ARIES
The neolithization of Europe gave rise to the Indo-Europeans.
C. Renfrew
According to most serious researchers, the emergence of the ancestral Proto-Indo-European language is associated with the culture of funnel-shaped goblets. Was it the language of one small people, which was also spoken by other peoples of Northern Europe close to it? Was it a language created specifically for communication between multicultural and multilingual? Or the language of one of the tribes, adopted for communication between people of the same community? Scholars debate this. There are many opinions, and all of them are well founded.
In any case, it was at the beginning of the 4th millennium BC. began to disintegrate, to divide into daughter languages, this ancient proto-language. An ancestor language for all Indo-European languages spoken by more than half of humanity today.
Indo-Europeans began to be called that because they found common features between the languages \u200b\u200bof the inhabitants of India and Europe. We do not know what the funnel-beaker people called themselves. We know that some of their descendants who conquered Iran and Northern India called themselves Aryans, Aryans. There is still debate about what this word means. Either "the best"... Or "free"... Or "the best" and "free" at the same time...
It is not entirely correct to call all Indo-Europeans Aryans, but what can you do? Other words are unknown to us.
The Proto-Indo-European language, the language of funnel-shaped cups, reflected the realities of agriculture and cattle breeding. Crow-shaped cups became farmers and incredibly multiplied: now a lot of people could live in a small area.
Like all farmers, the Aryans soon settled everything they could, mastered their original territory. They became crowded, they began to look for new lands for resettlement. Preferably with a similar climate and natural conditions. Unlike the inhabitants of the Near East, they knew how to live and farm in a temperate climate. In the same IV millennium BC. a prominence escaped from Northern Europe - part of the Indo-Europeans went to the Balkans and the Black Sea region. This "southern group" of Aryans flooded the southern Russian steppes. Perhaps mammoths and woolly rhinoceroses still lived out their lives there ... Arias passed by them, splitting along the road. Some of them remained in the Balkans and gradually penetrated into Asia Minor, others flooded North Caucasus, crossed the Caucasian Range and began to develop Armenian Highlands and penetrate into the same Asia Minor.
Some of them reached Southern Urals, and then in several waves flooded Western Siberia to the Yenisei and Kazakhstan.
Others penetrated into Iran, settled it and moved to Northern India. The very word Iran, by the way, means "the country of the Aryans."
In the II millennium BC. new Indo-European tribes broke out of Europe. They flooded the Eastern Eupony, reached Siberia and, together with the first Indo-Europeans of the "southern" group, penetrated as far as China. To the dull yellow waters of the Huang He bend, where the monsoon forests end and the steppe and forest-steppe, familiar to the Aryans and beloved by them, begins. .
In Europe itself, they also did not sit quietly at all. In the II and the beginning of the 1st millennium BC, the Indo-Europeans settled in Scandinavia, Western Europe, the Apennine Peninsula, the Balkan Peninsula, Britain and Central Europe. Already in historical times, part of the Aryans conquered the Baltic states for the second time and Eastern Europe- Balts and Slavs.
Piled buildings are prehistoric settlements built on platforms supported by piling posts. About a thousand of these buildings have been perfectly preserved along the shores of alpine lakes and in the swampy areas of the Alps. Of the prehistoric pile settlements found in the Alps (Prähistorische Pfahlbauten um die Alpen), 111 sites are listed by UNESCO. Objects belong different states alpine region. On the territory of Baden-Württemberg […]
Piled buildings are prehistoric settlements built on platforms supported by piling posts. About a thousand of these buildings have been perfectly preserved along the shores of alpine lakes and in the swampy areas of the Alps. From prehistoric pile settlements found in the Alps (Prähistorische Pfahlbauten um die Alpen), 111 sites are listed by UNESCO.
The objects belong to different states of the Alpine region. In the territory Baden-Württemberg- the federal state of Germany - sixteen such buildings were found and three more in Bavaria: on Lake Starnberger See on the island of Roseninsel (Roseninsel im Starnberger See), in Unfriedshausen (Gde. Geltendorf) nördlich des Ammersees) and in Pestenaker (Siedlung Pestenacker) .
The settlements date back to 5000 - 500 years. BC. Lake and swamp soil has preserved fabrics and wood, plant remains to this day. Man-made items were found under the thick silt: wheels and dugout boats made of wood; clay vessels; amber objects; gold items.
Pile huts have become the richest source for research by archaeologists. Based on the materials found at the excavation sites, it is possible to determine the date of construction, to reconstruct the sequence of the emergence and growth of settlements. The research made it possible to make discoveries in the field of culture, trade, and agricultural activities of the inhabitants of ancient settlements.
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In Switzerland, several properties are listed UNESCO World Heritage:
Old town of Bern
Founded in the 12th century on a hill, it is located on a peninsula surrounded by the Aare River on three sides. After a devastating fire, the city was completely rebuilt in the same style. The original wooden buildings were replaced by new sandstone buildings built in the same style as the many 15th-century arcades and the most interesting 16th-century fountains. Medieval city was rebuilt in the 18th century, but retained its former character.
The Three Castles of Bellinzona
Jungfrau Mountains - Aletch Glacier
This UNESCO attraction includes some of the highest (top of Europe - with neighboring Mönch and Eiger in the vicinity), as well as the longest glacier in Eurasia ( Aletch). These impressive landscapes have played a prominent role both in European art and literature and in the development of tourism in Switzerland.
Tectonic arena of Sardona in the north-east of Switzerland it covers a mountainous area with several peaks, more than 3000 m high. This is an exceptional example of the formation of mountains due to the collision of plates, where you can see different tectonic levels, with older rock layers creeping over younger ones. This area became a key to solving geological issues and building the current scientific concept, playing the most significant role in the history of geology in the 18th century. This is not the only natural example of such formations, but the nominal Swiss Sardona is the most representative and accessible for visiting.
Pyramid shaped, covered with forest Mount San Giorgio behind is considered one of the finest collections of fossils left from marine life from the Triassic period (245 - 230 million years ago). Here traces of life have been preserved in a tropical lagoon, separated from high seas coastal reef. Thanks to this, the local lagoon flourished different types life, including reptiles, fish, amphibians, etc. Since the lagoon was located near the shore, traces of insects, insects and plants were also preserved among the fossils.
Prehistoric alpine pile settlements
This includes 111 small isolated remains of prehistoric piled settlements around the Alps, built around 5000-500 BC. Although only a small number of settlements have been excavated, they contain many useful information about life and trade in the agrarian Neolithic and Bronze Ages in Alpine Europe. 56 such settlements are located in Switzerland.
UNESCO monuments in other countries:
Prehistoric pile settlements Alpine mountains- these are 111 archaeological sites located on the territory of the European Alps. These settlements, scattered between Switzerland, Austria, France, Germany, Italy and Slovenia, were included in the 2011 list world heritage UNESCO (world heritage list).
Of the 111 monuments, 19 are in Italy and are located in five regions: Lombardy (10) Veneto (4), Piedmont (Piemonte) (2), Friuli Venezia Giulia (1) Trentino -Alto Adige (Trentino Alto Adige) (2). They can be found in the immediate vicinity of lakes or in areas of high humidity marked by an abundance of water (indeed, in Italy they are concentrated mainly near lakes Garda and Varese).
In Lombardy, namely on Lake Varese (lago di Varese), the most ancient pile structures dating back to the early Neolithic were identified, and in the area of Lake Garda (lago di Garda) they were collected the largest number, more than 30 villages located on both sides of the lake and reservoirs formed during the interglacial period. Small pile dwellings have also been found near the alpine lakes of Trentino Alto Adige and the reservoirs of Piemonte.
Thus, in Italy you can find many beautiful places where you will immerse yourself in prehistoric culture, starting from the charming island of Isolino Virginia in Biandronno on Lake Varese; the archaeological sites in Polcenigo, Desenzano del Garda, Manerba del Garda, Peschiera del Garda, Muscoline, are also open to the public. in Piadena, Cavriana, Monzanbano, Biandronno, Bodio Lomnago, Cadrezzate, Azeglio and Viverone, Arona, Ledro (Ledro), Fiavè, in Cerea and Arquà Petrarca on the shores of the Laghetto della Costa lake.
The settlements have been inscribed on the World Heritage List as they are unique, exceptionally well-preserved, culturally rich archaeological sites that are important sources of knowledge about the structure of the early agricultural communities in the region.
In particular, the Italian archaeological sites are residential settlements of prehistoric communities between 5000 and 500 BC. and serve as a prime example of the use of land and sea resources by ancient European cultures dating from the period between the Neolithic and the Bronze Age.
A feature of these settlements are "piles": huts built of straw, wood, reeds or other materials rested on a wooden platform, fixed on wooden piles driven into the bottom or bank of a river, lake, lagoon, swamp, and sometimes even dry earth.
Pile settlements give us accurate and detailed description the world's first agricultural communities. They are real photographs of the daily life of prehistoric people, showing their ways of cultivating the land and raising livestock and showing us their technological achievements.
The ancient pile builders of the Alps used the same general idea, however, they differ both in the location of the structures and in the methods of construction, which vary depending on the characteristics of the soil, climatic conditions and specific needs of residents.
Sometimes these settlements were built on piles that strengthened the shore of a lake or river, in other cases the piles were driven into the bottom of the reservoir, and the platform was attached above the surface of the water. In addition to the picturesque and amazing buildings themselves, archaeological finds are of great interest: fragments of ceramics, tool tips, tool blades, which are especially valuable for studying the life of the inhabitants of pile villages.
This is what the shores of Lake Constance looked like during the Neolithic and bronze age for about 4000 years, from the fifth millennium to the eighth century BC. e. An exhibition dedicated to prehistoric pile settlements in this region was held in 2016 in two museums in Baden-Württemberg at once.
prehistoric pile dwellings
In total, the exhibition featured about 1,200 exhibits from Germany and other European countries. Among them is a wheel disk of the third millennium BC. e., made of ash and maple. The disc was found in the vicinity of the city of Biberach.
prehistoric pile dwellings
Located on the water, they provided better protection from enemies and wild animals. Traces of almost two dozen such settlements have been found on the territory of Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg. In 2011 they were added to the UNESCO World Heritage List. This photo was taken in Unteruhldingen on Lake Constance, where there is a museum dedicated to them under open sky.
prehistoric pile dwellings
A fragment of a death mask (4200 - 3650 BC) and a reconstruction of the mask, made of red plastic, in the monastery of Bad Schussenried.
prehistoric pile dwellings
These flint-bladed knives with elderwood handles were discovered during excavations at the site of a prehistoric pile settlement at Allensbach on Lake Constance. The same knife, only smaller, was found with Ötzi, an ice mummy of a man of the Copper-Stone Age, discovered in 1991 in the Ötztal Alps in Tyrol.
prehistoric pile dwellings
Such a pile settlement, similar to a castle, arose around 1766 BC. e. in a swampy area near the Federsee lake in the Biberach region.
prehistoric pile dwellings
Ceramic vessels with applications in the form of breasts (4000 - 3750 BC). The exact location of discovery is unknown, but presumably - Lake Constance.
