Archaeologists discovered 7,000-years-old Neolithic Settlement in the Czech Republic

Archaeologists have discovered a Neolithic settlement of about 7,000 years old near Kutná Hora, east of Prague in the Czech Republic.

It is unique in that no other settlements were built on its site in the following millennia, and it has been exceptionally well-preserved, including the floor plans of four long houses.

The life of the first Neolithic inhabitants was not simple and was closely linked to nature. They provided food by growing, raising livestock, but also by gathering or hunting.

Although working in the fields without a plough and using only wooden tools seems almost unimaginable from today’s perspective, these communities were successful – within a few centuries, they spread across most of Europe, superseding the original hunters and gatherers.

Prehistoric people settled in Dobren near Kutná Hora at the very edge of the area with sufficiently fertile soil and suitable climate for prehistoric agriculture.

Daniel Pilař, from the Institute of Archeology of the Czech Republic Academy of  Sciences, who researched the site, made a statement to Radio Prague: “This site was discovered early this spring as part of rescue excavations. We usually supervised construction work in our district and one day, in the middle of construction, we were surprised to find relics of a settlement that is not typical for this region. “When we saw the house plans, we immediately knew we were dealing with a Neolithic settlement,” he said.

The hitherto unknown settlement from the Early Stone Age was built more than 7,000 years ago by communities of the oldest farmers who came to the Czech territory from South-Eastern Europe.

Archaeologists found floor plans of four long houses – typical buildings of their time. Although the houses as such have not survived to this day, it is possible to find pits after their columns during research.

“The houses used to be between 4 and 6 m wide and between 10 and 40 m long. The houses themselves are not preserved because they were built from wood.

The columns are built most densely in the outer rows that formed the walls of the house. In them, the columns sometimes stood right next to each other. However, their inner rows have larger distances between them – usually more than a meter – so it was possible to move between them without any problems,” explains Daniel Pilař.

In addition to the houses, the researchers found many pits. These pits were used for the extraction of clay that was used for the construction of houses.

Experts found mostly pottery in the pits – it was used every day for cooking, serving, and even storage. Moreover, they were consumer goods, and when they broke, people easily replaced them with new ones. Occasionally, used tools – flint blades, sharpened axes and stone grinders – also ended up in the pits.

“This waste is very important for us because it offers a perfect insight into the everyday life of the Neolithic people,” said Pilař.

In the coming months and years, experts will be working on processing the data they have collected in the field, for example, by means of radiocarbon and luminescence dating, phytolith analysis, analysis of prehistoric trees, as well as tool marks and plant genetics research. This will involve a broad team of experts from different disciplines.

A woman in the Czech Republic found a medieval jackpot during a walk

A woman walking in the town of Kutná Hora in the Central Bohemian Region of the Czech Republic found a nearly 900-year-old treasure of more than 2,150 medieval silver coins, known as denarii.

The woman found some silver coins while walking through a field in Kutnohorsku and contacted officials, the Institute of Archaeology of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic said in a May 16 news release.

The treasure consisted of more than 2,150 silver coins minted between 1085 and 1107.

Experts believe they were manufactured in Prague and imported to Bohemia. The trove was stored in a ceramic container that was destroyed over the years, but archaeologists discovered the bottom of the container.

“The [discovery was] made of coin alloy, which, in addition to silver, also contains an admixture of copper, lead, and trace metals,” the Institute of Archaeology of the Czech Academy of Sciences (ARUP) stated in the press release. “Determining this particular composition can also help determine the origin of the silver used.”

Dubbed one of the greatest finds of the last decade, institute archaeologist Filip Velímský believes the discovery is like winning a prize in the lottery—even if someone else was the loser.

“It was probably placed in its place during the first quarter of the 12th century, at a time of internal political instability,” he said.

“At that time, there were disputes in the country between the members of the Přemysl dynasty about the princely throne of Prague,” he said.

According to ARUP, battles were common during the period and the depot could have been cash “for paying wages or spoils of war.”

Czech officials call the discovery “one of the largest finds of the last decade.”

According to the experts, that owner couldn’t have been just anyone. “Unfortunately, for the turn of the 11th to 12th century, we lack data on the purchasing power of contemporary coins,” he said. “But it was a huge, unimaginable – and at the same time, unavailable – amount for an ordinary person. It can be compared to winning a million in the jackpot.”

The artifacts were taken to a laboratory for further analysis and documentation, a process that will likely take a year. The artifacts will then be put on display in an exhibit expected to debut in 2025.

Thousand-year-old bone skate discovered in Czech Republic

Archaeologists from the central Moravian city of Přerov, Czech Republic have announced a unique discovery. While carrying out excavations in the center of the town, they found an ice skate made of animal bone dating back some 1,000 years.

In Přerov, a town on the River Bečva, specialists from the Comenius Museum have been conducting rescue excavations in the basement of a home on the Upper Square of the city.

The skate was made of animal bone, likely the metacarpal (shin bone) of a horse. Fragments of pottery found around the blade date it to the 10th or 11th century.

This find, offers a rare glimpse into the ingenuity and daily life of early medieval societies.

Archaeologist Zdeněk Schenk says it was most likely made of horse shin bone: “The object has a specific shape. On one side, it is curved into a tip which has a hole drilled in it and there is another hole at the back. They were used to thread a strap through, which was used to attach the skate to a shoe or to a wooden sledge.”

Unlike their modern counterparts used for recreation, these ancient blades served a more practical purpose, explains Schenk. “People back then wouldn’t have used them for leisure skating,” he clarifies. “Instead, they’d shuffle across frozen surfaces with the aid of sticks, or even attach them to sleds for transporting goods over ice.”

The bone blade is not the first such object found in Přerov. A similar find was made there in 2009 and more such blades have been unearthed over the years in the wider area of the city. Zdeněk Schenk says this is probably due to its location: “The Upper Square sits on a hill overlooking the Bečva River,” he explains. “In those times, settlements clustered along the river’s branches, making winter travel on the frozen water a necessity.”

Schenk emphasizes that Přerov isn’t alone in these discoveries. “Similar ‘ice skates’ made from cattle or horse bones have been found across Europe, particularly in Central and northwestern regions like Scandinavia.

Interestingly, many of these finds date to the 10th century and often appear in Viking settlements.”

The thousand-year-old skate discovered by archaeologists in Přerov will soon be shown to the public. The bone skate will go on display at the Comenius Museum in Přerov Castle.

Nail linked to Jesus’ crucifixion found in monastery’s secret chamber

A NAIL believed to have been used in the crucifixion of Jesus Christ has been uncovered in the underground chamber of a monastery. Archaeologists working in the Czech Republic’s Milevsko monastery claim to have discovered the incredible discovery.

The six-inch-long nail was found in a box in the monastery’s cellar, inscribed with the letters IR, which stands for “Jesus is King.”

Experts claim the hidden room was used to hide rare artifacts from raids by Hussite troops in the early 15th century.

Radio Prague reports that researchers cannot confirm whether the nail came from the ‘True Cross’, but say the discovery is “even greater than the reliquary of St Maurus”. 

The Maurus Reliquary is a large gold box containing fragments of the bodies of Saint Maurus, Saint John the Baptist, and Saint Timothy.

Archaeologists have previously uncovered dozens of nails claimed to be linked to the crucifixion, leading experts to remain skeptical about the new find.

Jiří Šindelář, who took part in the discovery, told ČTK news agency: “Because the Hussites destroyed the archive, there was no information that such a thing was here.”

Experts will verify the findings next year, he added.

It comes after a study revealed that nails controversially linked to the crucifixion have fragments of ancient bone and wood embedded in them. 

The nails were allegedly found in Jerusalem, in a first-century burial cave believed to be the resting place of Caiaphas – the Jewish priest who sent Jesus to his death in the Bible.

At some point after the cave was excavated in 1990, however, the nails went missing.

Years later, filmmaker Simcha Jacobovici claimed to have found the nails, even saying that they were used to crucify Jesus himself in the 2011 documentary, Nails Of The Cross.

At the time, scholars slammed the suggestion, denying that the nails Jacobovici had found were the same ones from Caiaphas’ tomb.

But the study concluded that the nails are indeed the same ones—and that they were probably used to crucify someone too.

The ancient Golden Belt Discovered in the Czech Republic

A small farmer in the Opava region in the northeast of Czechia made a unique discovery while working in a field, unearthing a golden belt dating back to the Bronze Age. The ornamented piece, which is exceptionally well-preserved, should go on display at the Bruntál museum at the end of next year.

The golden belt had been lying underground for thousands of years before being unearthed by a farmer while he was harvesting beetroots.

The founder, who wishes to remain in anonymity, discovered the ancient piece of apparel at the end of September and immediately contacted archaeologists from the Silesian Museum in Opava.

Jiří Juchelka, head of the museum’s archaeology department, says that as soon as he saw a photo of the item, he knew it was something exceptional.

The first hypothesis was that the thin golden sheet of metal, which is around 50 centimetres long, was a tiara. However, after examining the object in greater detail, experts now believe it was actually part of a belt:

“It is decorated with raised concentric circles and topped with rose-shaped clasps at the ends. We realized that it was too long to fit on someone’s head.  So we actually think it is not a tiara, but something much rarer – a part of a belt.

“Belts at the time were made of leather and this was strapped to its front part. It was crumpled when the finder found it, probably as a result of agricultural activity, so it is a miracle it has been so well preserved. It may be missing a few tiny parts, but otherwise, it is in perfect condition.”

The thin metal sheet is made mostly of gold, along with some silver and traces of copper and iron. A preliminary analysis places its origin around the 14th century BC, says Tereza Alex Kilnarová, conservator at the Museum of Bruntál.

“It is estimated to be from the middle to the late Bronze Age, but it is only a preliminary determination based on the decoration.

“Similar decorative ornaments appear in more than one prehistoric culture and therefore more detailed research and analysis of the metal is needed.

“It probably belonged to someone in a high position in society, because items of such value were rarely produced at the time. That’s why we are talking about someone more esteemed.”

While the monetary value of the belt is yet to be determined, it is already clear that the object has an incalculable cultural and historical value, says Ms Kilnarová:

“Such objects are rarely found even during excavations, so it is a really unique discovery, not only in our region but all over Czechia. I think it is safe to say that it will be one of the most valuable objects that will have on display in our museum.”

The rare item, which will become part of the Museum of Bruntál collections, will now be thoroughly examined and conserved, before going on display for the public.

See the striking facial reconstruction of a Paleolithic woman who lived 31,000 years ago

In 1881, archaeologists unearthed the skull of a human buried inside a cave in Mladeč, a village in what is now the Czech Republic. At the time, researchers dated the skull to about 31,000 years ago and classified the individual as male.

But they were wrong about the Stone Age person’s sex, a new study finds.

Now, more than 140 years later, researchers have corrected that error, revealing that the so-called Mladeč 1 skull belonged to a 17-year-old female who lived during the Aurignacian, part of the Upper Paleolithic period (roughly 43,000 to 26,000 years ago).

The team published its findings as part of a new online book called “The Forensic Facial Approach to the Skull Mladeč 1(opens in new tab)” that details how the scientists reclassified the sex of “one of the oldest Homo sapiens found in Europe.”

“When the skull was analyzed individually, the features pointed to a male,” Cicero Moraes, a Brazilian graphics expert and one of the book’s co-authors, told Live Science in an email. “But when later studies compared the skull with others found at the site, the evidence pointed to a female.”

Using information collected from the 19th-century archaeological dig, as well as forensic facial reconstructions performed by researchers in the 1930s that were limited due to a lack of technology, Moraes and co-authors Jiří Šindelář, a surveyor with a local surveying company GEO-CZ, and Karel Drbal, deputy director of the Cave Administration of the Czech Republic, used CT (computer tomography) scans to create a digitized approximation of the skull. Because the mandible (lower jaw) was missing, Moraes looked to existing data of modern-day human jaws to help fill in the blanks of what this individual might have looked like.

“We had to reconstruct the skull and for that, we used statistical data of average and projections extracted from about 200 CT scans of modern humans and from archaeological excavations belonging to different population groups, including Europeans, Africans and Asians,” Moraes said. “[This] allowed us to project missing regions of the human face.”

Once they had a complete digital image of the skull, Moraes used “a series of soft-tissue thickness markers that were spread across it,” he said. “These markers, roughly speaking, tell the boundaries of the skin in some regions of the face.

Although these markers come from statistical data extracted from living individuals, they do not cover the entire face and do not inform the size of the nose, mouth and eyes, for example.”

To help complement the data, researchers “imported CT scans of live subjects and deformed the bones and soft tissue from the CT scan to match the face being approximated,” he said. “In the case of the Mladeč 1 fossil, we deformed two CT scans, one of a man and one of a woman, and the two converged to a very similar result.”

For the book, Moraes created two digital approximations of what the individual might have looked like. But he erred on the side of caution when it came to the person’s facial expression. 

“We chose to generate the neutral face by tradition, as we are used to presenting works to specialists,” he said. “The trend will now be to present two approaches to the works, one more scientific and simple in greyscale, with eyes closed and without hair, and the other more subjective…where we generate a coloured face with fur and hair.”

While it’s not very common for archaeologists to reclassify the sex of human remains, it does happen. Moraes pointed to one such example, a skeleton discovered in Brazil known as the “Zuzu(opens in new tab)” fossil.

“That case was different; initially it was thought to be a woman, but later studies revealed [it] was actually a male,” he said.

In another case, a Viking buried with weapons in Sweden was originally thought to be male but was later revealed to be female, Live Science previously reported.

In addition to the skull, other items found at the Stone Age burial site during the original dig included stone artifacts, bone tips and several teeth. However, little else is known about the young woman who was buried there.

Archaeologists in Prague uncover the ancient 7000-year-old neolithic structure

Archaeologists in Prague are currently uncovering a monumental building from the Stone Age. The so-called roundel, built around 7,000 years ago, is located in the district of Vinoř on the outskirts of the city.

Experts are hoping that the research will reveal more information about these mysterious ancient structures.

Roundels are large circular structures from the Neolithic period, that were constructed between 4600–4900 BC. That makes them the oldest monumental buildings in Europe, far older than the Egyptian pyramids or England’s Stonehenge.

One such roundel is currently being examined in Prague’s district of Vinoř. So far, research has shown that the structure is exceptionally well-preserved. Archaeologists were surprised to discover intact remains of the palisade troughs into which the central wooden structure was originally embedded.

Despite these findings, it is still unclear what purpose these structures have served, says Miroslav Kraus, who is in charge of the research:

“One such theory is that it could have been used as an economic centre, a centre of trade. It could also have been a centre of some religious cult, where rites of passage or rituals connected to the time of year were performed.

“Roundels were built during the Stone Age when people had not yet discovered iron. The only tools they could use were made of stone and animal bones.”

To date, around 200 roundels have been found all over central Europe, with 35 of them located on the territory of the Czech Republic. The roundel in Vinoř, which measures 55 metres in diameter, has an unusual floor plan with three separate entrances.

What makes its research unique is that archaeologists have uncovered the structure almost in its entirety, says Mr. Kraus:

“We have the opportunity to uncover nearly the whole structure, or rather what remained of it.  At the same time, I should note that part of the structure was revealed back in the 1980s, during the laying of gas and water pipelines.”

Thanks to the extent of the research, archaeologists will be able to take samples for dating and analyses from various parts of the original structure, says Mr. Kraus.

The so-called roundel, built around 7,000 years ago, is located in the district of Vinoř on the outskirts of Prague|Photo: Archaeological Institute of the Academy of Sciences

“It would be great to discover something that would indicate the actual function of the building. However, it is very unlikely, since none of the previously researched roundels had revealed such information.

“It would also be great to find something that would suggest its real age. So far, radiocarbon dating of samples collected from roundels has put their age somewhere between 4900 years to 4600 BC. That is a pretty wide time span.”

The research of the Vinoř roundel is due to carry on until the end of September. Archaeologists have previously discovered a Neolithic settlement northeast of the roundel that had been used for 300 to 400 years.

600-Year-Old Kitchen Discovered in the Czech Republic

Archaeologists made an unusual discovery while excavating the ruins of a medieval house in the town of Nový Jičín in the Moravian-Silesian region – a well-preserved kitchen that likely dates back to the early 15th century.

The medieval kitchen, containing a brick oven, hearth, ceramic dishes and even a wooden cooking spoon, was uncovered by archaeologists during the ongoing excavation of a wooden house from the Middle Ages in the town of Nový Jičín.

Pavel Stabrava from the local Novojičín Museum, says that the find was made as archaeologists were excavating the underground segments of a house that stands near the northern side of the historic centre’s town walls.

“This was a log house built on a stone foundation. Given the surrounding evidence, including the items that we found inside, we have been able to date it roughly to the period of the early 15th century.”

Based on its location, Mr Stabrava believes that the house would most likely have belonged to a burgher family, a social class equivalent to the medieval bourgeoisie.

“Since the house was located near the town walls, this would have been a less wealthy burgher family. The richest burghers would have lived in so-called ‘beer court’ houses around the town square.”

Most likely founded in the 1300s by the Lords of Kravaře, Nový (New) Jičín seems to have gradually evolved from an earlier settlement around the castle of Starý (Old) Jičín which protected the nearby Amber Road that ran from Poland.

František Kolář from the National Heritage Institute, which took part in the dig, says that the town would probably have been largely made up of wooden houses, but admits that not much is known about the medieval settlement.

“This is because there haven’t been many archaeological excavations in the historical centre of the city. This is one of the first that has been made and we hope that we will be able to continue with excavations as the historic houses in the city get renovated.”

The medieval kitchenware inside the house was found in perfect condition, with the unbroken ceramic pots still containing their original lids. It seems that the items had just been washed and left to dry on the stone hearth.

Based on the evident burn marks found within the excavated house and on the surrounding historical sources, Mr Kolář believes that the items were found in this state because the inhabitants may have been forced to abandon the house in a rush.

“The working hypothesis is that the house was destroyed during the conquest of the city by the Hussites in 1427, when Hussite forces campaigned in Moravia and Silesia. Several independent historical sources mention the siege and conquest of the town, including the massacre of some of its citizens.”

The artefacts are now in the process of conservation, after which they will be stored in the depositories of the Novojičín Museum.

Pavel Stabrava hopes that further planned excavations around the exterior of the house will reveal more about the medieval town and its inhabitants.