Found: Europe's oldest civilisation

[Aeternitas]

Found: Europe's oldest civilisation

By David Keys, Archaeology Correspondent

11 June 2005

Archaeologists have discovered Europe's oldest civilisation, a network of dozens of temples, 2,000 years older than Stonehenge and the Pyramids.

More than 150 gigantic monuments have been located beneath the fields and cities of modern-day Germany, Austria and Slovakia. They were built 7,000 years ago, between 4800BC and 4600BC. Their discovery, revealed today by The Independent, will revolutionise the study of prehistoric Europe, where an appetite for monumental architecture was thought to have developed later than in Mesopotamia and Egypt.

In all, more than 150 temples have been identified. Constructed of earth and wood, they had ramparts and palisades that stretched for up to half a mile. They were built by a religious people who lived in communal longhouses up to 50 metres long, grouped around substantial villages. Evidence suggests their economy was based on cattle, sheep, goat and pig farming.

Their civilisation seems to have died out after about 200 years and the recent archaeological discoveries are so new that the temple building culture does not even have a name yet.

Excavations have been taking place over the past few years - and have triggered a re-evaluation of similar, though hitherto mostly undated, complexes identified from aerial photographs throughout central Europe.

Archaeologists are now beginning to suspect that hundreds of these very early monumental religious centres, each up to 150 metres across, were constructed across a 400-mile swath of land in what is now Austria, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and eastern Germany.

The most complex excavated so far - located inside the city of Dresden - consisted of an apparently sacred internal space surrounded by two palisades, three earthen banks and four ditches.

The monuments seem to be a phenomenon associated exclusively with a period of consolidation and growth that followed the initial establishment of farming cultures in the centre of the continent.

It is possible that the newly revealed early Neolithic monument phenomenon was the consequence of an increase in the size of - and competition between - emerging Neolithic tribal or pan-tribal groups, arguably Europe's earliest mini-states.

After a relatively brief period - perhaps just one or two hundred years - either the need or the socio-political ability to build them disappeared, and monuments of this scale were not built again until the Middle Bronze Age, 3,000 years later. Why this monumental culture collapsed is a mystery.

The archaeological investigation into these vast Stone Age temples over the past three years has also revealed several other mysteries. First, each complex was only used for a few generations - perhaps 100 years maximum. Second, the central sacred area was nearly always the same size, about a third of a hectare. Third, each circular enclosure ditch - irrespective of diameter - involved the removal of the same volume of earth. In other words, the builders reduced the depth and/or width of each ditch in inverse proportion to its diameter, so as to always keep volume (and thus time spent) constant .

Archaeologists are speculating that this may have been in order to allow each earthwork to be dug by a set number of special status workers in a set number of days - perhaps to satisfy the ritual requirements of some sort of religious calendar.

The multiple bank, ditch and palisade systems "protecting" the inner space seem not to have been built for defensive purposes - and were instead probably designed to prevent ordinary tribespeople from seeing the sacred and presumably secret rituals which were performed in the "inner sanctum" .

The investigation so far suggests that each religious complex was ritually decommissioned at the end of its life, with the ditches, each of which had been dug successively, being deliberately filled in.

"Our excavations have revealed the degree of monumental vision and sophistication used by these early farming communities to create Europe's first truly large scale earthwork complexes," said the senior archaeologist, Harald Staeuble of the Saxony state government's heritage department, who has been directing the archaeological investigations. Scientific investigations into the recently excavated material are taking place in Dresden.

The people who built the huge circular temples were the descendants of migrants who arrived many centuries earlier from the Danube plain in what is now northern Serbia and Hungary. The temple-builders were pastoralists, controlling large herds of cattle, sheep and goats as well as pigs. They made tools of stone, bone and wood, and small ceramic statues of humans and animals. They manufactured substantial amounts of geometrically decorated pottery, and they lived in large longhouses in substantial villages.

One village complex and temple at Aythra, near Leipzig, covers an area of 25 hectares. Two hundred longhouses have been found there. The population would have been up to 300 people living in a highly organised settlement of 15 to 20 very large communal buildings.

Source

[Agrippa]

The people who built the huge circular temples were the descendants of migrants who arrived many centuries earlier from the Danube plain in what is now northern Serbia and Hungary. The temple-builders were pastoralists, controlling large herds of cattle, sheep and goats as well as pigs.

If thats true its really an interesting new aspect of early European cultures in the Neolithicum. It might be the work of early Indoeuropeans, related to the Bandkeramiker and later Schnurkeramiker groups probably.
I'm very curious and hope that this will hypothese and findings will be uncovered in the news and articles soon with more information and potential weaknesses of the idea. Great topic.

[Carnyx]

These are excellent news indeed! Stonehenge was older than pyramids, then this civilisation bring us back 2000 years more ealier. Ho, ho but what happens with the "Ex Oriente Lux" motto that we are being taught by teachers and media since childhood? Personally, I've always been said that Europe really start to rise with foreigners' help (the silk road, the crusades, etc... and now extra european immigrants) and what have we here? An old european civilisation, and even a pre-Egyptian civilisation... It reminds me of a documentary I saw in highschool (some good propaganda), it was said that 30's PI archeologists (i.e. "evil" germans) were so "dumbs" that they hoped to find vestiges of an unknown european civilisation...
Europeans always depreciate their own culture and civilisation and are found of alien civilisation. But why can't we just be proud of what we are, like extra-europeans are simply proud to be what they are?

[Menydh]

Why can't we be just proud of being Europeans? Probably because nowadays "Pride" is a weared out word with so much Black Pride, White Pride World Wide, Gay Pride, and what not.

[Vojvoda]

Originally Posted by Aeternitas

The people who built the huge circular temples were the descendants of migrants who arrived many centuries earlier from the Danube plain in what is now northern Serbia and Hungary

http://donsmaps.com/lepenski.html

[Carnyx]

Originally Posted by Mynydd

Why can't we be just proud of being Europeans? Probably because nowadays "Pride" is a weared out word with so much Black Pride, White Pride World Wide, Gay Pride, and what not.

And because it's badly considering too.

[Awar]

Originally Posted by M.Duchemin

These are excellent news indeed! Stonehenge was older than pyramids, then this civilisation bring us back 2000 years more ealier. Ho, ho but what happens with the "Ex Oriente Lux" motto that we are being taught by teachers and media since childhood? Personally, I've always been said that Europe really start to rise with foreigners' help (the silk road, the crusades, etc... and now extra european immigrants) and what have we here? An old european civilisation, and even a pre-Egyptian civilisation... It reminds me of a documentary I saw in highschool (some good propaganda), it was said that 30's PI archeologists (i.e. "evil" germans) were so "dumbs" that they hoped to find vestiges of an unknown european civilisation...
Europeans always depreciate their own culture and civilisation and are found of alien civilisation. But why can't we just be proud of what we are, like extra-europeans are simply proud to be what they are?

Umm... dude, the people who founded that civilization originally came from the middle-east. So, no, this doesn't 'wreck' any old theory.

Besides, this civilization might have been pre-Egyptian, but wasn't really more advanced than Egypt.

[Carnyx]

Originally Posted by Awar

Umm... dude, the people who founded that civilization originally came from the middle-east. So, no, this doesn't 'wreck' any old theory.

Besides, this civilization might have been pre-Egyptian, but wasn't really more advanced than Egypt.

Yes, so you believe in this "Ex Oriente Lux" thing?
errh... I didn't say it was in advance on Egypt civilisation.
Did they come from ME? I suppose All Europeans come from somewhere.

[Awar]

Originally Posted by M.Duchemin

Yes, so you believe in this "Ex Oriente Lux" thing?

I believe in circumstance.

errh... I didn't say it was in advance on Egypt civilisation.
Did they come from ME? I suppose All Europeans come from somewhere.

Yep, but, both the gravettans and neolithic farmers originally came from the ME.

[Vojvoda]

Originally Posted by Vojvoda

http://donsmaps.com/lepenski.html

@Agrippa:

http://www.rastko.org.yu/arheologija...vinca_eng.html

The finds, unique in the Neolithic culture of south-east Europe, show that the first farmers of the Danubian valley belonged to a peculiar anthropological type, characterised by features of the ancient European population combined with those of graceous Mediterranean people. The same blend of old Balkanic, autochthonous elements and Mediterranean are observed in the Starcevo culture, namely in the first Vinca inhabitants.


Also:

Transition from Mesolithic to Neolithic in the Iron Gates Gorge: Physical Anthropology Perspective

The research presented here aims at discerning possible interactions between Mesolithic hunter-gatherers of the Iron Gates Gorge (Serbia-Romania) and the surrounding farmers. The region has, during the 7th and the 6th millenniums BC, witnessed the coexistence of Mesolithic culture of the Lepenski Vir –Schela Cladovei type and the Early and Middle Neolithic of the Balkans, represented in the region by Gura-Baciului and Starcevo. At the end of this coexistence, Neolithic settlements are confirmed on one of the examined sites (Lepenski Vir), as well as downstream from the Gorge, integrated into the Middle Neolithic Starcevo-Cris-Körös complex.

In order to examine the interactions of communities with different modes of subsistence (foraging and farming respectively), the nonmetric anatomical variants of the skull and postcranial skeletons were examined on the four sites with the largest number of individuals buried: Padina, Lepenski Vir, Vlasac and Hajducka Vodenica. The analyses were performed according to sites, chronological units, and combination of sites and chronological units. Another set of analyses, aimed at discerning environmental (occupation/nutrition) changes that could have affected the population in transition was performed on metric variables of postcranial skeleton.

The combination of these two sets of analyses argues for local continuity within the region, with high degree of initial heterogeneity, and temporal ordering as the most likely explanation for the pattern of change. A more pronounced difference at the time of availability of contact with Neolithic populations in the region argues for a limited “seeping in” of a non-local population that did not result in a change of either economic base or ideology. There is no evidence of an incoming population at the time of change to Neolithic economy and integration of sites into the cultural circle of the Balkan Neolithic, but rather of a local population accepting the new way of life.

Roksandic, Mirjana

[Rusalka]

Europe's late coming to the scene, if nothing else, is based on the climate of the time. There is a reason why civilization (civilization as we know it) sprung in areas like Mesopotamia.

[Dr. Solar Wolff]

This has been a debate for years in Archeaology. There are those who say domestication and agriculture, urbanization, etc., arose in Europe or arose independently from other areas including the Middle East. On the other hand, there are those who say (and have held sway) that agriculture, domestication of animals, large buildings, writing, occupational specialization, complex political structure, organized religion, a social heirarchy, etc. all came from the Middle East and without its influence, Europeans would still be making a living spearing fish from a stream and eating it in a thatched hut. The new dates for the European Megalithic and this new find bolster the independent European argument.

[Carnyx]

What appears strange to me concerning agriculture, is when I read some History magazines. Two days ago I examined a map that represented the hearts of agriculture (where agriculture sprang). I could see wheat in the fertile crescent, rice in China, corn in south america (Neolithic), mil in africa (why not) but I cannot see Europe...
So you want to make me believe that all peoples, all over the world (Middle Eastern, Asia, America and Africa), practiced agriculture without any alien helps, except europeans... Sorry but it's hard to believe. If agriculture born independently in some places as differents as America and Middle Eastern, so why not in Europe? It's not Sci Fi, just calculations.

I already know that some people here will fall me above.

[Gil]

Duchemin: Paleolithic cultures existed in Europe long before the Neolithic cultures appeared. What we know is that some time in the past, Neolithic farmers started to settle continental Europe, and with them they brought cultural differences, technological advance and, what enables us to study them, different genetic markers.

[Nemesis]

Archaeologists have discovered Europe's oldest civilisation.............

They were built 7,000 years ago, between 4800BC and 4600BC.

Am I missing something here?
Since when does 7000 yrs ago constitue "the oldest"???
Why do these archeologist totally discard the findings in the Balkans but then again maybe Hellas isn't part of Europe any more

We know of Dispilio and Sesklo that are dated at least 500-700yrs earlier than these finds. We know of agricultural finds in New Nikomedia 7000BC (over 2000yrs older than these) we know of the most Ancient shipping in the world (7.000 B.C.) and the most ancient burial of Europe (10,000 B.C.) found at Frahthi of Argolida , ......... the finds are endless and they all predate these by 500-2500yrs.

It seem like selective announcements by the archeologic community if you ask me. Don't get me wrong it is a great find and it probably will open a new dimension to history as we know it today, but why such selective circulation of find anouncements ???

[Agrippa]

I think you misunderstood something. Its not about the technology or the subsistence pattern ONLY but about the wide geographical distribution of a similar, or even the same culture and religion. This is a real civilisaiton with its own buildings, beliefs, technologies, social structures etc. and not just the ability of small groups here and there to make this or that - its the connection and the wide distribution of the same pattern at this early date which make this findings so special.