Monumental temples in prehistoric Central Europe
According to research made public on June 11, 2005, a series of monumental temples were built in Central Europe between 4800 BC and 4600 BC. The remains of approximately 150 such temples have been found at various sites in present-day Germany, Slovakia, Austria, and the Czech Republic. The temples were apparently built by an early neolithic civilization which flourished at that time, one of the oldest civilizations known to have existed in Europe.
The monumental temples were constructed of earth and wood, with circular bases measuring up to 150 meters (492 feet) in diameter, and with walls and palisades up to 800 meters (2600 feet) high. They consisted of a central area enclosed by a series of palisades, embankments, and ditches. They are more than two thousand years older than the oldest of the Pyramids of Egypt or the monument of Stonehenge, and predate the next oldest similar buildings in Europe by three thousand years.
The central area of each temple is normally of approximately equal size: around one third of a hectare (35,000 square feet); these areas were apparently used for religious purposes. Researchers believe that the barriers surrounding them served as ritual rather than physical protection, perhaps to preserve the secrecy of the procedings within. Moreover, it is believed that each complex was used only for a limited period of time—one hundred years at most—and that the enclosing ditches were filled in at the end of that time.
The people that built these structures appear to have lived in communal long houses and subsisted by farming cattle, goats, pigs, and sheep. Their temples were built in a stretch of Central European land some 760 km (400 miles) across, over a period of one or two hundred years. They are believed to have migrated into this region during the 6th millennium BC from the plain of the Danube in what is now Hungary and Serbia. They made tools of wood, stone, and bone, and artwork of ceramic and pottery. After approximately 4600 BC, no more temples were built, presumably as a result of social changes that eliminated either the motive or the means for such constructions. Nothing is definitively known of the history of the builders after that point.
The most complex site was discovered beneath the city of Dresden in eastern Germany. Another large find was at the nearby village of Aythra, outside of Leipzig.
Harald Stäuble, a member of the heritage department of the German state of Saxony, has served as the director of the archeological investigations in that region. The researchers' conclusions were first reported in the June 11, 2005 of The Independent newspaper, although research on the topic has been ongoing for three years.
See also
External links
- "Europe's Oldest Civilization: Found", report in The Independent of London
- AFP report
- An additional article from The Independent, providing context