Ancient Roman ‘fridge’ unearthed with wine and animal bones still inside, photos show
While excavating an ancient Roman military camp in Bulgaria, archaeologists unearthed a rare — and relatable — find: a stocked refrigerator.
Archaeologists were excavating the ruins of Novae, a Roman-era military fortress, when they uncovered lead and ceramic water pipes, the University of Warsaw said in a Sept. 13 news release.
Next to the lead pipes, they found an ancient “fridge,” a food storage unit made with ceramic plates, lead archaeologist Piotr Dyczek said in the release. The fridge still had a meal inside, including wine drinking vessels, bowls and animal bones.
The exact age of the fridge and its contents have not yet been determined.
A similar fridge was found in Novae last October, McClatchy News reported. This cooling unit still had traces of cooked meat, animal bones and dish fragments inside.
“The discovery of such ‘refrigerators’ are rare, because they rarely survive reconstructions of buildings,” Dyczek said previously.
An aerial view shows some of the ruins at Novae.
Novae was built for Roman troops in the first century A.D. as a permanent base on the lower Danube River. The camp housed Italian military recruits until the middle of the fifth century.
Excavations at Novae also uncovered ruins of a wooden barracks building linked to the camp’s first permanently-stationed Roman troops, the camp’s earliest known well and a furnace from the fourth century, the release said.
A collection of wine pottery vessels found at Novae.
Archaeologists also unearthed a rare set of wine drinking vessels with a black coloring and a small, silver pendant in the shape of a detailed mouse. Photos show these artifacts.
A detailed mouse pendant was found at Novae.
Novae is in the northern Bulgarian city of Svishtov, about 155 miles northeast of Sofia and along the Bulgaria-Romania border.
Two Roman Britain swords unearthed – first time two have been found in the ground together
Two Roman Britain swords have been unearthed—the first time a pair has been found together, experts say. The 2,000-year-old ‘rare and important’ Roman cavalry swords, along with wooden scabbards and fitments, were discovered in the Cotswolds.
The Roman Cavalry Swords were found near Cirencester
They were discovered near Cirencester by Glenn Manning during a metal detectorist rally. Experts say they ”can’t think of finds of more than one sword being deposited in any similar circumstance from Roman Britain”.
The swords were appraised by Professor Simon James from Leicester University who says they are middle imperial Roman swords commonly referred to as a spatha.
Cllr Paul Hodgkinson, Cotswold District Council Cabinet Member for Leisure, Culture, and Health, and Emma Stuart, Corinium Museum Director with the Roman Cavalry Swords. Release date September 18, 2023. See SWNS story SWMRsword. Two Roman Britain swords have been unearthed – the first time a pair have been found together, experts say. The 2,000-year-old ‘rare and important’ Roman cavalry swords along with wooden scabbards and fitments were discovered in the Cotswolds. They were discovered near Cirencester by Glenn Manning during a metal detectorist rally. Experts say they ”cant think of finds of more than one sword being deposited in any similar circumstance from Roman Britain”. Cllr Paul Hodgkinson, said: People famously asked, What have the Romans ever done for us?. ”Well, they have just given us some amazing examples of weapons used almost 2000 years ago when Cirencester was the second biggest town in Britain.’ ”This is truly a remarkable archaeological find and I cant wait for visitors to see them on display in the years to come. The swords were appraised by Professor Simon James from Leicester University who says they are middle imperial Roman swords commonly referred to as a spatha. They were in use in the Roman world probably by the 160s, through the later second century, and far into the third century AD.
They were in use in the Roman world probably by the 160s, through the later second century, and far into the third century AD.
Their considerable length suggests that they are cavalry weapons – meaning they were intended for use on horseback.
Councillor Paul Hodgkinson, said: “People famously asked, ‘What have the Romans ever done for us?’.
‘Well, they have just given us some amazing examples of weapons used almost 2000 years ago when Cirencester was the second biggest town in Britain.’
”This is truly a remarkable archaeological find and I can’t wait for visitors to see them on display in the years to come.”
It was not illegal for civilians to own such weapons and to carry them for travelling because Roman provinces were plagued with banditry.
Proffessor James, said: “In terms of parallels, I can’t think of finds of more than one sword being deposited in any similar circumstance from Roman Britain.
”The closest that springs to mind was a pair of similar swords found in Canterbury—with their owners, face down in a pit within the city walls, clearly a clandestine burial, almost certainly a double murder.”
Soon after the discovery, Kurt Adams, Finds Liaison Officer, deposited the finds with the Corinium Museum to ensure their preservation.
Historic England is assisting the museum by arranging for the swords to go for further analysis under x-ray.
An archaeological appraisal at the dig site in the north of the Cotswolds may follow to help put the swords into context, as we don’t know why they ended up buried in the Cotswolds.
Remarkably Well-Preserved 2,500-Year-Old Canoe Discovered In Swiss Lake
Archaeologists have discovered a remarkably well-preserved dugout canoe from the Early Iron Age in Lake Neuchâtel in western Switzerland.
According to the Vaud canton’s archaeology department, the 13-meter-long canoe was resting at a depth of 3.5 meters on a sandbank on the north shore of the lake.
After months of careful preparation, scientists could lift the canoe and pull it out of the lake.
Experts assisted the cantonal archaeologists in underwater salvage techniques. This delicate operation required many months of preparation.
“This is an archaeological discovery of considerable importance for our understanding of the prehistory of the region.
Its radiocarbon analysis dates it to between 750 and 520 B.C., a time when there were no villages on the shores of the lakes.
The old canoe is still, despite its age, in good condition.
It is one of the very few boats from this period in Switzerland that has been preserved almost in its entirety,” said cantonal archaeologist Nicole Pousaz at the press conference.
The canoe has now been transported to a lab for special analysis. Archaeologists examine it to see what clues it holds to life during this time.
Photogrammetry and laser measurements will also be used to create a 3D model of what the canoe would have looked like, fully intact.
The canoe will be carefully transported to a specially equipped facility for in-depth study.
“She’s a very sickly old lady. Part of the sides of the canoe were torn out by storms, and the portion buried in the sediment was very cracked. It’s a very fragile object,” Jean-Daniel Renaud, who runs a company specializing in the technical aspects of underwater and terrestrial archaeology, told the press agency Keystone-SDA.
“It was made at the time from an oak trunk about 13 meters long and about a meter in diameter.
This type of canoe, which was particularly large, was mainly used for transporting goods and people or for fishing,” added Renaud.
According to the specialist, it is one of the largest and most complete canoes of its kind to have been discovered in Switzerland.
Huge Ancient Sarayini Underground City Is Twice As Large As Previously Thought
Scientists knew the ancient underground city they examined was huge, but now it’s obvious it’s twice as large as previously thought! What secrets does this mysterious ancient place hide? How many underground tunnels, galleries, chambers, and unknown rooms still await discovery?
The ancient Sarayini underground city covers at least 20,000 square meters. Image credit: Anadolu Agency (AA)
The ancient underground city in Sarayönü, a district of Konya in Turkey, dates back to the Roman period. When first examined by archaeologists, it was thought the subterranean city covered an area of 5000 m2, but a recent investigation reveals this enigmatic ancient place is at least 20,000 square meters, if not even more!
In co-operation with the Ministry of Culture and Tourism and Sarayönü Municipality, scientists are investigating the ancient underground city for the second year.
What has been discovered so far is fascinating. There are dozens of underground rooms connected to each other by tunnels of different lengths and widths. Many corridors, tunnels, and galleries are still waiting to be cleaned, so it is currently difficult to determine where they lead.
Is Sarayini Turkey’s Largest Underground City In Horizontal Architecture?
The history of the subterranean place, which includes domestic spaces, connected galleries, room-like living spaces, water wells, furnaces, workshops, chimneys, oil lamps for lighting, cellars, warehouses, ventilation, and spaces whose quality has yet to be investigated, dates back to the 8th century.
Hasan Uguz, archaeologist and head of excavations of Konya Museums Directorate, said that based on the findings, scientists determined that “the local Christian people used the underground city in the 8th century to protect themselves from the raids that lasted for 150 years” the Konya News reports.
Uguz explained that elderly people who had lived here all their lives used to play in the tunnels as children. Locals knew a very large underground city was here, but no one could even guess how vast it was. Scientists did not think the underground tunnels, corridors, and rooms could spread over such a large area.
Uguz said it is possible this is the largest underground city in Turkey ever discovered in horizontal architecture.
“We may have found one of the largest underground cities in Central Anatolia. The rumors of the people of the region and the collapses in different places show us that the underground city can spread over a very wide area and that it can be a very long tunnel system.
The openings and dents we caught give positive signals at this point. It is an important historical and tourist discovery, as no other underground city is known in the region,” Uguz told the Konya News.
Ancient Sarayini Underground City Was A Comfortable Place
“In our research, we noticed that 19th-century European travelers refer to this region as Sarayini. The people living here also say this. The real name of this place is Sarayini. It has been determined that the caves resemble a palace because of their very spacious, comfortable, interconnected, and high-quality-of-life architecture, and in this sense, it is called Sarayini,” Uguz told the Anadolu Agency.
The archaeologists explained that scientists discovered a very wide corridor resembling what could be best described as a main street. On the left and right sides of the corridor were galleries connected by tunnels and other corridors.
The ancient underground city gives the impression of being prepared for people to live as comfortably as possible, almost like residing in a palace.
In an interview with the Anadolu Agency, Uguz said the archaeological investigations continue. During excavations, the science team discovered altar-type tombstones, tomb stelae made in the Roman period, sophisticated artificial walls built, and a north-south oriented structure reminiscent of a wooden cross.
Uguz explained that the underground city’s human capacity and exact size will become clear as the work progresses.
Soil currents coming from some submerged places with water filled the spaces between 30 and 80 cm. After the spaces are cleaned and exposed, the capacity and size of human accommodation will become clear. There are domestic spaces and interconnected galleries that excite us.
The most important thing for us is the discovery of this place and the start of the work. This underground mystery, how people lived here, how these places were created at that time attracts attention,” Uguz said.
This Is One Of The Oldest Pieces Of Cloth In The World And It’s Made Of Bast Fibers!
Archaeological discoveries provide us with vital information about the daily life of our ancestors. What did ancient people eat and drink, and what kind of clothes did they wear? These are some of the many questions occupying the minds of those interested in ancient history.
Scientists have discovered incredible textiles that have survived for thousands of years and can now be analyzed with the help of modern technology.
Neolithic Site of Çatalhöyük.
At La Marmotta near Rome, Italy, underwater archaeologists found rare and well-preserved cloth fragments produced by people more than 8,000 years ago. Scientists are especially impressed with four extraordinary small textile fragments that researchers at the University of Copenhagen are currently analyzing. The Neolithic textiles were most likely made of plant fibers.
While excavating at Giza, Egypt, archaeologists discovered the only complete ancient Egyptian bead-net dress found to date in one of the tombs!
The 4,500-year-old dress was comprised of “several thousand faience beads divided among thirty small, rounds boxes of varied sizes, none larger than five inches in diameter.”
“This individual was wrapped, each limb individually, to simulate a living person, and covering her was the front half of a narrow V-necked sheath. Our final bead-net reconstruction produced, therefore, not a shroud-like mummy covering, but rather a dress that simulated a garment actually worn in life,” Millicent Jick at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston said.
Another incredible Egyptian discovery is the Tarkhan Dress, a V-neck linen shirt that has been confirmed as the world’s oldest woven garment, with radiocarbon testing dating the garment to the late fourth millennium B.C.
Glacial archaeologists have also successfully recovered amazing clothes and shoes that have been buried under the ice in Norway for a very long time. At the Lendbreen, a pass high in the Norwegian mountains, scientists found two complete pieces of clothing. One of them is a 1,700-year-old tunic.
The Lendbreen tunic is Norway’s oldest piece of clothing, and despite being hidden beneath the snow for so many years, it’s still very well-preserved.
One of the world’s oldest pieces of cloth was unearthed in Çatalhöyük, Turkey. This archaeological discovery of Stone Age textiles sheds new light on the history of clothes making.
Çatalhöyük, is the world’s largest known Stone Age settlement and one of the most famous archaeological sites. As many as 10,000 people lived in Çatalhöyük in Turkey some 8,000-9,000 years ago. This makes it the largest known settlement from what archaeologists call the Neolithic and Chalcolithic periods.
Ever since the first discovery of pieces of cloth unearthed at the site, experts have been discussing what kind of clothes people wore in Çatalhöyük. Some specialists believed that people made their clothes from wool. Others thought they made them out of linen instead. So who’s right? Neither, actually.
This piece of cloth is from the Stone Age. For 60 years, academics have debated whether it is made of wool or linen. So what is it really made of? The answer will surprise you. Credit: Antoinette Rast-Eicher, University of Bern
As explained by Bender Jørgensen, a specialist in archaeological textiles and Professor emerita from NTNU’s Department of Historical and Classical Studies, “In the past, researchers largely neglected the possibility that the fabric fibers could be anything other than wool or linen, but lately another material has received more attention.”
People in Çatalhöyük used assorted varieties of exactly this material.
“Bast fibers were used for thousands of years to make rope, thread, and in turn also yarn and cloth,” says Bender Jørgensen.
As it turns out, people in this area did not import linen from elsewhere, as many researchers have previously thought, but used the resources they had plentiful access to.
Bender Jørgensen notes that a lot of people often overlook bast fiber as an early material. “Linen tends to dominate the discussion about the types of fabric fibers people used,” she says.
People in Çatalhöyük used oak bark, but bast fibers can also be collected from other plants. Here we see Jute, a natural vegetable bast fiber that is obtained from the bark of the jute plant. Jute is known as the Golden Fiber because of its golden color.
Ancient civilizations were resourceful and highly creative. Producing textiles made of bast fibers had several advantages. Bast fiber is found between the bark and the wood in trees such as willow, oak, or linden. The people from Catalhöyük used oak bark and thus fashioned their clothes from the bark of trees that they found in their surroundings.
8,000-year-old Cave paintings found in Türkiye’s İnkaya Cave depict life and death
A number of cave paintings dating back some 8,000 years have been found in İnkaya cave in the Marmara province of Balıkesir during a field study conducted by Associate Prof. Dr. Derya Yalçıklı from Çanakkale (18th March) University, in 2015.
During the same studies, another cave located 5 kilometers away from the İnkaya cave was discovered. The discovery of both caves is known as the most important archaeological discovery made in Anatolia in recent years.
The cave paintings discovered in the Baltalıin and İnkaya Caves, which are situated in the Delice neighborhood of the Dursunbey district in the Balıkesir province of Turkey, offer information that sheds light on Neolithic Age life.
One of the remarkable findings showing that people in the Prehistoric Age were undeniably knowledgeable about the phenomenon of childbirth is the scene found among the cave paintings of İnkaya Cave.
The painting depicts a woman becoming pregnant, the pregnancy, and childbirth in an expression that has yet to be matched.
The western part of the panel, which is well-preserved and situated close to the entrance of the İnkaya cave, constitutes the main scene of the picture.
When Baltalıın and İnkaya caves were analyzed separately, it was revealed they were used for different functions, as the paintings in one of them depicted hunting figures, while the other depicted figures of beliefs. The paintings found in the two caves date back to the Late Neolithic period.
Associate Professor Derya Yalçıklı, who discovered and examined the cave paintings, told Arkeonews in an email, “Social and belief systems in Western Anatolia during the Neolithic and Chalcolithic periods constitute an important question of Anatolian archeology, and examining the wall paintings in Baltalıin and İnkaya caves may provide some important answers.”
The floor and northern wall of the İnkaya Cave were greatly damaged by past treasure hunters using dynamite, however, despite this damage, the cave continues to reflect important information about the Neolithic era.
Southwestern painting.
Inkaya Cave is located 2.5 km northwest of Delice neighborhood. The cave, with its karstic quality, consists of a gallery that is 4.5 m deep, 8 m wide, and 4.4 m high. It features two murals located on the northern and southeastern outer edges of the cave entrance.
The panel located on the left side (southwest) of the cave entrance measures 1.43×0.87 meters. There are also four people dancing in the main part of the painting on the left side of the entrance.
A different depiction of a human wearing fur on the right side of two women and two men is depicted, while on the left side of this painting, there is a depiction of a fetus growing in the womb.
Across from a human wearing fur, a human is depicted with a snake behind. It was believed that the snake represents death in this figure, which was interpreted as “the moment of death” by the experts.
The depiction of a human wearing fur and extending his hand forward is believed to be a shaman who is helping human spirits to go to the land of the dead at the moment of death. A portrayal of a dead human without a head offered to the vultures is also depicted.
Detail of southwestern painting.
Life and death are the themes of the cave paintings in İnkaya Cave. The panels representing Life are based on the formation of a fetus inside a pregnant woman’s abdomen, its development, and birth, as well as the celebration of a new individual joining the community, with an emphasis on the shaman’s role throughout this process.
In cave paintings, reliefs, and figurines from the Neolithic period in Anatolia, scenes of sexuality, pregnancy, and childbirth are presented to the viewer from various angles.
The successful use of the “X-ray” style -The rays pass through the painting and create a negative of the darker areas on film- in the creation of the İnkaya Cave painting in the Neolithic period fills a gap in the history of Anatolian painting and sculpture.
Europe’s oldest known village teetered on stilts over a Balkan lake 8,000 years ago
Archaeologists in the Balkans have discovered the likely remains of an 8,000-year-old village built out over an ancient lake — the earliest-known village of any kind in Europe.
Archaeologists aren’t sure why the houses of the village were built out over the water, but the palisade suggests they were sometimes attacked, and building them above water made them easier to defend.
The lake, located on the border between Albania and North Macedonia, holds hundreds of tree-trunk stilts that the archaeologists believe formed the foundations of the prehistoric village.
The researchers can’t yet estimate the settlement’s original size — but their discovery of a defensive palisade of tens of thousands of wooden spikes, now underwater, indicates the village was relatively large.
Albert Hafner, an archaeologist at the University of Bern in Switzerland who led the excavations, told Live Science that divers sampled wood from the submerged tree trunks and wooden spikes near the Albanian village of Lin on the western shore of Lake Ohrid a few weeks ago.
The stilts and spikes from the prehistoric village on the water were found near the village of Lin on the western and Albanian shore of Lake Ohrid.
The results of dating tests won’t be available for months. But Hafner said the submerged wood is probably the same age as wooden foundations unearthed on the shore, which his team determined date from between 5800 B.C. and 5900 B.C.
This would mean it’s the oldest settlement archaeologists have found anywhere in Europe, he said.
Hafner’s team also found evidence of similar “pile dwellings” built over the water at the underwater prehistoric site of Ploča Mičov Grad on the eastern shore of the lake — part of North Macedonia — but those remains date to a few hundred years later.
Archaeologists from the EXPLO project have investigated more than half a dozen ancient settlements in and around lakes in the Balkans.
It now seems both villages were built on opposite sides of the lake in phases over hundreds of years, and that the later building phases had obscured the earliest, he said.
“It seems to be quite typical that we have multiple phases of settlements, with sometimes long gaps in between,” he said. “It now looks like Lin dates mostly from the sixth millennium [B.C.] in several phases, starting in about 5900 and ending in 5000.”
First farmers
Archaeologists with the EXPLO project previously discovered a slightly younger stilt village on the eastern and North Madenonian shore of Lake Ohrid.
The ancient village underwater near the shore at Lin is thought to be up to 7,900 years old.
Hafner has led the EXPLO project for several years, examining lakes in the Balkans for traces of settlers from Anatolia — now Turkey — to Europe about 8,000 years ago. They are thought to be the first people to bring farming to Europe from around Mesopotamia.
The early farmers interbred with hunter-gatherers who had already occupied Europe since about 45,000 years ago during the Upper Palaeolithic period, and who probably arrived from Africa via the eastern shores of the Mediterranean.
And both ancestries interbred with nomadic proto-Indo-European peoples like the Yamnaya, who arrived in Europe from the Eurasian Steppe about 5,000 years ago. Most modern Europeans show a genetic mix of all three ancestries.
Hafner explained that the many large lakes in the Balkans region held clear traces of the early migration from Anatolia.
The archaeologists have found hundreds of stilts or piles for houses, surrounded by a defensive palisade of tens of thousands of sharpened wooden planks driven into the floor of the lake.
Several stilt villages were built at the same site for up to 1,000 years, often with long periods between occupations. The archaeologists say the later constructions often obscured the earlier ones.
Lake dwellers
Hafner’s team has so far investigated more than half a dozen sites across the Balkans.
Research into some of the lake settlements was conducted in the 1960s. But the latest excavations use refined techniques like very accurate radiocarbon dating and dendrochronology, which can determine when logs of wood were felled by looking at tree growth rings, Hafner said.
Divers have taken samples of wood from hundreds of the submerged piles or stilts. They will be analyzed with dendrochronology to determine exactly when the trees they were made from were felled.
Most of the former piles and stilts underwater near Lin are now covered by silt, but a few protrude from the lake floor. And archaeologists are unsure if the settlement was built in deep water or above mostly marshy ground.
Ancient people were likely drawn to the lakes because of water and plants there. But exactly why prehistoric people chose to build their houses on piles or stilts above a lake or wetland isn’t clear — though the practice is seen throughout Europe, from the Balkans to the Baltic.
Hafner thinks that under normal conditions, it would have been easy to get between houses with dugout canoes. But the large palisade of wooden spikes indicates the village was sometimes attacked, he said; and houses on the water were more easily defended (although perhaps not always successfully).
2,700-year-old ‘extremely well preserved’ skeleton found in fortress in Turkey may be an earthquake victim
Archaeologists in Turkey have unearthed the skeleton of an elite individual who may have met an untimely death during an earthquake in the region 2,700 years ago.
Aerial view of the skeleton found this year at Ayanis Castle.
Wearing jewelry and surrounded by weapons and artifacts, such as a double-sided inscription, and seals – small items used for “designating signature, private property, ownership and authority,” this individual no doubt lived an opulent life in the eighth century B.C. until they fell to their death within the fortress, with their personal belongings in tow, said Mehmet Işıklı, head of the Ayanis excavations and professor in the Atatürk University Department of Archaeology.
The fortress was built in Ayanis, an Urartian center in Turkey’s Van province where the skeleton was found.
The Iron Age kingdom of Urartu reigned from the ninth to sixth centuries B.C.and spanned from what is now Armenia to western Iran to eastern Turkey, where Ayanis is located.
Scholars have long speculated that an earthquake and subsequent fire caused the downfall of Ayanis. Since excavations began there in the late 1980s, there has been a “lack of such evidence to support the proposed earthquake scenarios for the end of the city,” Işıklı told Live Science via email. The finding of this skeleton lends critical evidence to the earthquake hypothesis, Işıklı said.
Anthropological analysis will be conducted on the skeleton to determine the individual’s age and sex, and to verify if any traces of the brain remain, although there is debate among researchers as to whether any soft tissue remains.
The recently restored Haldi Temple.
A double-sided inscribed cuneiform tablet, found with the skeleton, will be translated and published soon. Depending on the content of the inscription, it may be possible to determine this individual’s role and class in Urartian society, as well as to give valuable context to the social or political activities at Ayanis.
According to Işıklı, not only is the skeleton “extremely well preserved” but “the skull is in good condition, and according to the preliminary information we have received,” there may be chemically degraded traces of the brain remaining.
Aerial view of the temple area.
Erkan Konyar, an associate professor in the Department of Ancient History at Istanbul University who is not involved in the finding but has excavated other Urartian findings, warned that brain tissue does not typically survive in the climate of Van, which includes the massive Lake Van and is over a mile above sea level (5,380 feet, or 1,640 meters).
Rather, brain tissue is likely to survive only in swampy or glacial environments. Evidence that first appears to be brain tissue are actually “traces formed by hardened soil,” Konyar told Live Science in an email.
Işıklı said further anthropological testing is needed to confirm the remains of tissue, along with other characteristics of the skeleton.
After the “magnificent” city of Ayanis was built by King Rusa II in the mid-seventh century B.C., “the kingdom quickly entered the process of collapse and collapsed shortly after,” Işıklı said.
Therefore, clues to the kingdom’s collapse may lie within the walls of the Ayanis citadel. Ayanis is “the only excavation project that has the potential to solve the problems of this peak and collapse of the kingdom,” Işıklı said.
Previous excavations within the citadel have unearthed the Haldi Temple, which has undergone restoration since 2020, along with its stone carvings honoring Haldi, the premier god in Urartian religion.
A number of rooms in the temple have been excavated recently, and there are plans to create an open-air museum for tourists to visit the temple.
![Europe's oldest known village teetered on stilts over a Balkan lake 8,000 years ago Archaeologists in the Balkans have discovered the likely remains of an 8,000-year-old village built out over an ancient lake — the earliest-known village of any kind in Europe. The lake, located on the border between Albania and North Macedonia, holds hundreds of tree-trunk stilts that the archaeologists believe formed the foundations of the prehistoric village. The researchers can't yet estimate the settlement's original size — but their discovery of a defensive palisade of tens of thousands of wooden spikes, now underwater, indicates the village was relatively large. Albert Hafner, an archaeologist at the University of Bern in Switzerland who led the excavations, told Live Science that divers sampled wood from the submerged tree trunks and wooden spikes near the Albanian village of Lin on the western shore of Lake Ohrid a few weeks ago. The results of dating tests won't be available for months. But Hafner said the submerged wood is probably the same age as wooden foundations unearthed on the shore, which his team determined date from between 5800 B.C. and 5900 B.C. This would mean it's the oldest settlement archaeologists have found anywhere in Europe, he said. Hafner's team also found evidence of similar "pile dwellings" built over the water at the underwater prehistoric site of Ploča Mičov Grad on the eastern shore of the lake — part of North Macedonia — but those remains date to a few hundred years later. It now seems both villages were built on opposite sides of the lake in phases over hundreds of years, and that the later building phases had obscured the earliest, he said. "It seems to be quite typical that we have multiple phases of settlements, with sometimes long gaps in between," he said. "It now looks like Lin dates mostly from the sixth millennium [B.C.] in several phases, starting in about 5900 and ending in 5000." First farmers Hafner has led the EXPLO project for several years, examining lakes in the Balkans for traces of settlers from Anatolia — now Turkey — to Europe about 8,000 years ago. They are thought to be the first people to bring farming to Europe from around Mesopotamia. The early farmers interbred with hunter-gatherers who had already occupied Europe since about 45,000 years ago during the Upper Palaeolithic period, and who probably arrived from Africa via the eastern shores of the Mediterranean. And both ancestries interbred with nomadic proto-Indo-European peoples like the Yamnaya, who arrived in Europe from the Eurasian Steppe about 5,000 years ago. Most modern Europeans show a genetic mix of all three ancestries. Hafner explained that the many large lakes in the Balkans region held clear traces of the early migration from Anatolia. Lake dwellers Hafner's team has so far investigated more than half a dozen sites across the Balkans. Research into some of the lake settlements was conducted in the 1960s. But the latest excavations use refined techniques like very accurate radiocarbon dating and dendrochronology, which can determine when logs of wood were felled by looking at tree growth rings, Hafner said. Most of the former piles and stilts underwater near Lin are now covered by silt, but a few protrude from the lake floor. And archaeologists are unsure if the settlement was built in deep water or above mostly marshy ground. Ancient people were likely drawn to the lakes because of water and plants there. But exactly why prehistoric people chose to build their houses on piles or stilts above a lake or wetland isn't clear — though the practice is seen throughout Europe, from the Balkans to the Baltic. Hafner thinks that under normal conditions, it would have been easy to get between houses with dugout canoes. But the large palisade of wooden spikes indicates the village was sometimes attacked, he said; and houses on the water were more easily defended (although perhaps not always successfully).](https://archaeology-world.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Balkan-lake-1.1-1038x576.webp)
![Europe's oldest known village teetered on stilts over a Balkan lake 8,000 years ago Archaeologists in the Balkans have discovered the likely remains of an 8,000-year-old village built out over an ancient lake — the earliest-known village of any kind in Europe. The lake, located on the border between Albania and North Macedonia, holds hundreds of tree-trunk stilts that the archaeologists believe formed the foundations of the prehistoric village. The researchers can't yet estimate the settlement's original size — but their discovery of a defensive palisade of tens of thousands of wooden spikes, now underwater, indicates the village was relatively large. Albert Hafner, an archaeologist at the University of Bern in Switzerland who led the excavations, told Live Science that divers sampled wood from the submerged tree trunks and wooden spikes near the Albanian village of Lin on the western shore of Lake Ohrid a few weeks ago. The results of dating tests won't be available for months. But Hafner said the submerged wood is probably the same age as wooden foundations unearthed on the shore, which his team determined date from between 5800 B.C. and 5900 B.C. This would mean it's the oldest settlement archaeologists have found anywhere in Europe, he said. Hafner's team also found evidence of similar "pile dwellings" built over the water at the underwater prehistoric site of Ploča Mičov Grad on the eastern shore of the lake — part of North Macedonia — but those remains date to a few hundred years later. It now seems both villages were built on opposite sides of the lake in phases over hundreds of years, and that the later building phases had obscured the earliest, he said. "It seems to be quite typical that we have multiple phases of settlements, with sometimes long gaps in between," he said. "It now looks like Lin dates mostly from the sixth millennium [B.C.] in several phases, starting in about 5900 and ending in 5000." First farmers Hafner has led the EXPLO project for several years, examining lakes in the Balkans for traces of settlers from Anatolia — now Turkey — to Europe about 8,000 years ago. They are thought to be the first people to bring farming to Europe from around Mesopotamia. The early farmers interbred with hunter-gatherers who had already occupied Europe since about 45,000 years ago during the Upper Palaeolithic period, and who probably arrived from Africa via the eastern shores of the Mediterranean. And both ancestries interbred with nomadic proto-Indo-European peoples like the Yamnaya, who arrived in Europe from the Eurasian Steppe about 5,000 years ago. Most modern Europeans show a genetic mix of all three ancestries. Hafner explained that the many large lakes in the Balkans region held clear traces of the early migration from Anatolia. Lake dwellers Hafner's team has so far investigated more than half a dozen sites across the Balkans. Research into some of the lake settlements was conducted in the 1960s. But the latest excavations use refined techniques like very accurate radiocarbon dating and dendrochronology, which can determine when logs of wood were felled by looking at tree growth rings, Hafner said. Most of the former piles and stilts underwater near Lin are now covered by silt, but a few protrude from the lake floor. And archaeologists are unsure if the settlement was built in deep water or above mostly marshy ground. Ancient people were likely drawn to the lakes because of water and plants there. But exactly why prehistoric people chose to build their houses on piles or stilts above a lake or wetland isn't clear — though the practice is seen throughout Europe, from the Balkans to the Baltic. Hafner thinks that under normal conditions, it would have been easy to get between houses with dugout canoes. But the large palisade of wooden spikes indicates the village was sometimes attacked, he said; and houses on the water were more easily defended (although perhaps not always successfully).](https://archaeology-world.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Balkan-lake-1.1-1024x576.webp)
