Family and Social Life, Women and Children in Prehistoric Europe | Early European History And Religion

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LARGE 7,000-YEAR-OLD FAMILY TREE ASSEMBLED IN FRANCE USING DNA

In a study published July 26, 2023 in the journal Nature, a team of scientists used roughly 7,000 year-old DNA to reconstruct two massive family trees of people that lived in the Paris Basin region in northern France and combine that with information gleaned by the way burials are organized. Their findings suggest that some females left their home community to join another. It also provides evidence of stable health conditions and a supportive social network within one prehistoric community in Europe.[Source: Laura Baisas, Popular Science, July 27, 2023]

Laura Baisas wrote in in Popular Science: In this new study, the team used ancient genome-wide data excavated from Gurgy, Les Noisats, a large Neolithic funerary sites between 2004 and 2007. The remains of 94 individuals buried in Gurgy are dated to approximately 4,850 to 4,500 B.C.. The team combined this ancient genome data with strontium isotope analysis, mitochondrial DNA to show maternal lineages, and Y-chromosome data for patrilineal lineages, age-at-death, and genetic sex to build two family trees.

The first tree connects 64 individuals over seven generations, and is the largest pedigree reconstructed from ancient DNA to date. The second family tree connects 12 individuals over five generations.“Since the beginning of the excavation, we found evidence of a complete control of the funerary space and only very few overlapping burials, which felt like the site was managed by a group of closely related individuals, or at least by people who knew who was buried where,” study co-author and University of Bordeaux archaeo-anthropologist Stéphane Rottier said in a statement.

The team also found a positive correlation between spatial and genetic distances of the remains, which indicates that the deceased were likely to be buried close to a relative. When examining the pedigrees further, they also saw a strong pattern along paternal lines. Each generation, it seems, is almost exclusively linked to the generation before through the biological father. The entire Gurgy group can be connected through the paternal line.

5700-Year-Old Mixed Families with Step Kids

Families with step children existed 5,700 years ago scientists from Harvard University said after they studied DNA from one of the world’s oldest family trees from a burial site in the Cotswolds in England. An international team of archaeologists and geneticists analysed DNA extracted from the bones and teeth of 35 men, women and children found buried together in a tomb near Cheltenham. They discovered that 27 of the people entombed in the Hazleton North long cairn, who lived between 3700 and 3600 B.C., belonged to five continuous generations from a single extended family. “They also found three of the males had been buried alongside their biological mothers but not their fathers, indicating they were “stepsons” adopted into the family. [Source: Max Stephens, The Telegraph, December 23, 2021]

Max Stephens wrote in The Telegraph: “The team — which included archaeologists from Newcastle University and geneticists from the University of the Basque Country, University of Vienna and Harvard University — said it is the first study in the world to reveal in detail how prehistoric families were structured. Archaeologists had first excavated the site in a four-year-long project between 1979 to 1982 after surveys showed it was being damaged by ploughing from farmers. The site belongs to a series of long barrows, known as the Cotswold-Severn group, built during the Early Neolithic era, 200 of which have been recorded so far. However, it was not until rapid advances in DNA technology made over the past three years that scientists were able to match the ancient remains with buried relatives.

“The findings, published in the journal Nature, found that most of those buried in the tomb were descended from four women who all had children with the same man. Men were generally buried with their father and brothers, suggesting that descent was patrilineal with later generations buried at the tomb connected to the first generation entirely through male relatives Although two of the daughters of the lineage who died in childhood were buried in the tomb, the absence of adult daughters suggests that their remains were placed either in the tombs of male partners or elsewhere, they said.

“Dr Chris Fowler, a senior lecturer in Later Prehistoric Archaeology at Newcastle University and the lead archaeological author of the study said it “gives us an unprecedented insight into kinship in a Neolithic community”. “When we are trying to interpret what was going on in past communities, we have to keep an open mind and look at what the evidence suggests to us about what those connections were.”

The team also found no evidence that another eight individuals were biological relatives of those in the family tree, which might further suggest that biological relatedness was not the only criteria to be buried together. Iñigo Olalde from the University of the Basque Country and Ikerbasque and lead geneticist for the study, said: “The excellent DNA preservation at the tomb and the use of the latest technologies in ancient DNA recovery and analysis allowed us to uncover the oldest family tree ever reconstructed and analyse it to understand something profound about the social structure of these ancient groups.”

5,000-Year-Old Murder Victims All from The Same Family

Daniel Weiss wrote in Archaeology magazine: Fifteen people who were killed in a brutal massacre almost 5,000 years ago and buried together in southern Poland were part of an extended family, genetic analysis has revealed. “The people’s bodies are carefully arranged according to family relationships — mothers are next to their children, and brothers are close to each other,” says Hannes Schroeder, an ancient DNA specialist at the University of Copenhagen. “This shows that they were buried by people who knew them well, most likely by relatives.” Given that adult males are largely missing from the grave, Schroeder adds, they may have been the ones who performed the burial. [Source: Daniel Weiss, Archaeology magazine, September-October 2019]

“The genetic analysis also showed that all the males in the burial were from a single male lineage, whereas the women and girls were from six different female lineages. This suggests that the family, which belonged to a Neolithic farming culture called the Globular Amphora Culture, was patrilineal, with women leaving their own families to join their male partners. The massacre may have occurred as the result of tensions caused by an influx of pastoralists from the steppes to the east. “We have no way of saying who did the killing,” says Schroeder, “but when you have increased competition for resources it tends to lead to conflict.”

Women Came from Outside the 7000-Year-Old Community in France

Laura Baisas wrote in Popular Science: On the other side of the family trees, evidence from mitochondrial lineages and the strontium stable isotopes show a non-local origin of most of the women. This suggests Gurgy had a practice called patrilocality, where sons stayed where they were born and then had children with women from outside of the community. By contrast, most of the lineage of adult daughters are missing, suggesting there might have been a reciprocal exchange system with other communities. The newer female individuals were only very distantly related to each other, which shows that they likely came from a network of communities nearby instead of just one group. There could have been a relatively large exchange network of many groups in the region. [Source: Laura Baisas, Popular Science, July 27, 2023]

“We observe a large number of full siblings who have reached reproductive age. Combined with the expected equal number of females and significant number of deceased infants, this indicates large family sizes, a high fertility rate and generally stable conditions of health and nutrition, which is quite striking for such ancient times,” study co-author and Ghent University paleogeneticist Maïté Rivollat said in a statement.

Additionally, the team could point to one male individual from which everyone in the largest family tree was descended. This “founding father” of the cemetery has a unique burial, with skeletal remains buried as a secondary deposit inside the grave pit of a woman. This indicates that his bones must have been brought from where he originally died to be reburied at Gurgy.

“He must have represented a person of great significance for the founders of the Gurgy site to be brought there after a primary burial somewhere else,” co-author and University of Bordeaux paleogeneticist Marie-France Deguilloux said in a statement.

While the main pedigree spans seven generations, the demographic profile suggests that a Gurgy itself was probably only used for three to four generations, or approximately one century. Nevertheless, these lengthy pedigrees represent a step forward in our understanding of the social organization of past societies.

“Only with the major advances in our field in very recent years and the full integration of context data it was possible to carry out such an extraordinary study,” study co-author and Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology molecular anthropologist Wolfgang Haak said in a statement. “It is a dream come true for every anthropologist and archaeologist and opens up a new avenue for the study of the ancient human past.”

Egtved Girl — A Bride from a 3370-Year-Old Marriage Alliance?

Isotopic analysis of the remains of Egtved Girl — a young woman uncovered in a Danish burial — over a century ago provides new details of Bronze Age life. Daniel Weiss wrote in Archaeology magazine: “In 1921, the well-preserved remains of a young woman who died around 1370 B.C. were discovered in an elite burial near the town of Egtved, Denmark. For almost a century, she was thought to have been a local, and became known as the “Egtved Girl,” but new research has amended her story and what it may say about Bronze Age marriage alliances. [Source: Daniel Weiss, Archaeology magazine, January-February 2016]

A waterlogged, acidic environment had preserved the young woman’s clothing, hair, tooth enamel, fingernails, and parts of her brain and skin. Also preserved were the cremated remains of a young child. A team led by Karin Frei of the National Museum of Denmark analyzed strontium isotopes in the young woman’s tooth enamel and found she did not grow up on the Jutland Peninsula, where Egtved is located. Instead, she was most likely raised in the Black Forest region of southern Germany, around 500 miles away. The researchers believe she was sent from her home to marry a chieftain in Jutland. Further analysis of the young woman’s fingernails and hair shows that, in the final years of her life, she appears to have moved from the Black Forest to Jutland, back to the Black Forest, then back to Jutland again shortly before her death.

“The remains of the child found with the young woman may help explain these travels. “Dynastic marriages were often followed by an exchange of ‘foster brothers’ to secure the alliance,” says Kristian Kristiansen of the University of Gothenburg. In such a scenario, after marrying the chieftain in Jutland, the young woman would have been sent back to the Black Forest along with a boy from Jutland, who would have been raised by her people. She would then have returned to Jutland with a young male relative, who would be raised there. The child’s cremated remains led Kristiansen to propose that the death occurred en route and the remains were buried later with the young woman when she, too, died after her return to Jutland.

Prehistoric Women Had Stronger Arms “Than Those of Today's Elite Rowers'

A study published in the journal Science Advances in November 2017 said that ancient bones suggests that women living in central Europe from about 5,300 B.C. to A.D. 100 had stronger arms than modern elite female rowing teams due the daily routine of farming life “We think a lot of what we are seeing is the bone’s response to women grinding grain, which is pretty much seated but using your arms really repetitively many hours a day,” said Dr Alison Macintosh, co-author of the research from the University of Cambridge. The study also said that the strength of women’s arm bones dropped over time — probably as a result of labor-saving technology and by medieval times, the strength of women’s arm bones was about equal to that of the average woman today. [Source: Nicola Davis, The Guardian, November 29, 2017]

Nicola Davis wrote in The Guardian: “The research builds on previous work by the team on male leg bones, which revealed a decline in strength since the late iron age. “Early farming men had these really strong leg bones — when you compared them to living men they were close to what you see in living runners, suggesting they were really active,” said Macintosh. “Then [there is] this really progressive decline though time in bone strength, down to what you see in living sedentary undergraduate students at Cambridge.”

“With similar trends not seen for women, Macintosh and colleagues decided to explore whether skeletal remains could offer other clues about the roles of women in early farming communities. To do so they explored the remains of 94 women spanning about 6,000 years, from the time of the early neolithic farmers (dating back to around 5,300 B.C.) through to the 9th century, from countries including Germany, Austria, and northern Serbia. In addition, the team looked at scans from bones of 83 living women who fell into four groups: runners, rowers, footballers and those who were not particularly sporty. |=|

“The researchers explored the strength of two bones: the tibia, or shin-bone, and the humerus — the long bone in the upper arm. Comparing between bones of women across the ages rather than between the sexes was crucial, said Macintosh, explaining why the team did not look at male arm bones. “Men put more bone on, and in a stronger way, in response to physical activity than women do, even if those activities are really similar,” she said. The study also notes that comparisons with modern women can also present problems — for example, that hormonal contraceptives can affect certain bone properties.

The results reveal that while the arm bones of women from the neolithic to the late iron age showed variations in strength, they were stronger than those of rowers, football players, and non-athletic women for their left arm, and the latter two groups for their right. Indeed, the neolithic women had arm bones about 30 percent stronger than non-athletic living women. “We really saw them standing out through that first 5,500 years of farming, just really consistently stronger arm bones than the majority of the living women, including the rowers,” said Macintosh. “Medieval women had much weaker arm bones than those previous prehistoric women; they looked a lot more like modern, recreationally active women.” |=|

“While grinding grain using stone tools was likely to be a key factor in boosting women’s bone strength, the researchers add that other strenuous occupations including pottery making, planting and harvesting crops, and tending livestock could also have contributed. The findings, said Macintosh, throw a spotlight on the hard graft of women and their role in farming communities. “Women have been doing rigorous labour over thousands of years [and] that’s really been underestimated so far because we haven’t been comparing them to living women,” she said. “It’s highlighting those hours of work that women have been doing that have been hidden in the archaeological record until now.” |=|

Ice Age Children Toys

Researchers, led by Dr Michelle Langley, an associate professor of archaeology at Griffith University in Queensland, published in an article in 2017 about “archaeologically invisible” Ice Age children and their toys. Archaeologists long thought it was impossible to find toys from so long ago and looking for children for evidence from this period is a relatively new archaeological endevour. Langley said by looking at what toys children in present-day hunter-gatherer communities played with they could identify likely playthings used by children who lived tens of thousands of years ago.“These playthings commonly include dolls or figurines, small spears or bows-and-arrows, small versions of the tools commonly used by their parents, and mud figures,” she said. “It was also found that often the parents or other family members will spend many hours making beautiful and often expensive toys for their children.” [Source: Griffith University, November 29, 2017]

In her paper in the Oxford Journal of Archaeology, Dr Langley writes that previously researchers had been able to find evidence for children learning how to make stone tools, and perhaps learning how to be artists. Her paper, studying the people who created the great cave art of France and Spain is, however, looking for more. “We know that playing with toys is a cultural universal, so we can expect that toys included by children in their games thousands of years ago should have made their way into the archaeological record, as everything used by people does,” Dr Langley said. “Knowing that they must be present, however, does not make them any easier to find.Archaeologists should be finding small dolls/animal figurines, small tools, and weapons in their sites – these may have been toys lost by children in the past.

“For the Palaeolithic period such dolls/figures have been found and are widely celebrated for their beauty and appeal to our modern Western aesthetics. Because of these factors, researchers have previously thought they were special art or ritual items for the use by adults – rather than a child’s toy. They were too beautiful, and took too much skill and effort to create to be simply given to children to play with.” Dr Langley said the new research suggested that at least some of these figurines may have instead been children’s toys. “Reinterpreting some of these figurines and other small items effectively makes the many children who grew up in the Ice Age visible again,” she said.

Copper Age 'Sacred' Owl Carvings Probably Children's Toys

Ancient slate owl carvings from the Iberian Peninsula that were initially regarded as sacred were likely toys that children carved themselves, scientists said in a study published December 1, 2022 in the journal Scientific Reports. Jennifer Nalewicki wrote in Live Science: Thousands of years ago, children from the Iberian Peninsula carved pieces of slate into the shape of owls, creating palm-sized toys to play with, a new study suggests. Originally, archaeologists thought the cartoonlike figures were sacred objects representing deities, used only in rituals. But a new study reveals that they also could have served as children's toys or amulets. [Source: Jennifer Nalewicki, Live Science, December 2, 2022]

To investigate, researchers from the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) examined 100 of the approximately 4,000 engraved slate owl plaques that have been collected over the years at tomb and pit sites scattered throughout the peninsula. All of the carvings dated to the Copper Age (3500 B.C. to 2750 B.C.) and were rated for how many owlish features they had, including two circles for the owl's large frontal eyes, etchings of a beak, wings, plummage and other noticeable characteristics of the birds of prey. Each piece also contained two small perforations at the top, which researchers think could have been used to weave in actual bird feathers. "My first impression when looking at the engravings was that they were simple to make," Juan J. Negro, the study's lead author and a biologist in the Department of Evolutionary Ecology at the CSIC, told Live Science. "[The carvers] didn't invest a lot of time or skills into making them, and they could be finished in a few hours."

Another commonality among the carvings was that they were made using slate, a soft material composed predominantly of quartz, illite and chlorite. Slate's malleability meant it could easily be carved using pointed tools made of flint, quartz or copper. "Anyone can engrave into it," Negro said, including children who were just beginning their lessons in Carving 101.

So what inspired these Copper Age kids to focus on owls instead of other animals? Negro said he doesn't have an explanation for that, but "owls were a common sighting — even today in urban areas." At that time, the two most abundant owl species in that part of the world would have included the little owl (Athene noctua) and the long-eared owl (Asio otus), according to the study. "Most likely these youngsters lived in settlements and would see owls regularly, since they're known to get rid of rats and mice," Negro said. "Owls are different from other birds due to their large heads and frontally placed eyes, which people find striking. Because of this, if you were to ask children to draw an owl, they wouldn't need a model, since everyone has an image of an owl in their brains. They're iconic animals just like horses, dogs and elephants."

To test this theory, Negro and his team asked a group of modern-day children to draw images of owls, and the resulting artwork looked eerily similar to the ancient carvings. "We see creating [the owls] as being part of a learning process for youngsters," Negro said. Langley, agreed. "Cross-cultural analysis of recent peoples across the globe all find that children — everywhere — will create their own toys," Langley told Live Science. "These toys are likely to be created out of common or otherwise easy-to-get raw materials, and their form will follow what is in their surroundings. Dolls and figurines are universal and the form that [they] take will likely be of common or important animals to the community — so owls would fit that picture."

Prehistoric Baby Bottles Discovered in Children's Graves in Germany

In a study published in Nature in September 2019, a team of scientists analyzed ceramic bottles found in the graves of children buried in two cemeteries in what is now Germany. The burials in one cemetery date to between 800 and 450 B.C.; in the other they date from 1200 and 800 B.C.. The children were aged between 0 and 6 years old at the time of their death. The bottles contained traces of animal milk. Many were purposefully shaped to represent mythical animals.[Source: Hannah Osborne, Newsweek, September 25, 2019]

Hannah Osborne wrote in Newsweek: “The bottles studied were first discovered between 20 and 30 years ago, when these sites were first excavated. However, they recently became available for study — and the team wanted to find out whether they were for infant use, and what they dispensed. "To be sure that they were baby bottles we searched very hard to find vessels which were present in children's graves. In archaeology, context is all, and their presence in child graves confirms they were baby bottles," lead author Julie Dunne, from the U.K.'s University of Bristol, told Newsweek. Analysis of the residues on the bottles showed that they contained traces of milk. Two were from ruminant animals, such as cattle or sheep, while the other milk was non-ruminant — possibly a pig or human. This provides evidence these Neolithic people were supplementing their children's diets with milk from animals.

The ceramic bottles, which are 5 to 10 centimeters (2 to 4 inches) wide, were found in Dietfurt and Augsburg-Haunstetten, Germany. According to Archaeology magazine: “Feeding babies is a universal human practice, so it may be surprising that archaeologists know very little about what infants and young children in prehistoric societies consumed apart from their mothers’ milk Dunne was able, for the first time, to show conclusively that they were in fact used to wean babies with the milk of ruminants such as goats or cows. [Source: Jarrett A. Lobell, Archaeology magazine, January-February 2020]

What Baby Bottles Say About Prehistoric Life

“Ancient children have been overlooked,” says Dunne. “We do not have any direct evidence of how and what babies were fed.” Because prehistoric children’s graves are uncommon, there are relatively few remains to test to determine what they ate. In order to supplement the meager skeletal evidence, [Source: Jarrett A. Lobell, Archaeology magazine, January-February 2020]

According to Archaeology magazine: “Dunne’s research has important implications beyond the detection of the animal milk residue and identification of the function of these vessels, of which there any many other similar prehistoric examples. The transition from a hunter-gatherer to a pastoral lifestyle resulted in improved nutrition from animal milk and freed up time to nurture more children, resulting in a massive population explosion. “You can make a direct connection from these bottles to the growth of cities and the way we live today,” says Dunne. For her, the study also went beyond science. “This project gave me a real sense of love,” she says. “I felt such a connection to the people who used these bottles to feed their children.”

Hannah Osborne wrote in Newsweek: “One of the vessels studied — like several other examples of bottles from this period — was shaped like a mythical animal. Commenting on the different shapes and styles produced, Dunne said: "They all seem very different. The zoomorphic ones, I assume are meant to represent mythical animals are not as common as the plainer ones. I would also say I think this shows us the love and care these prehistoric people had for their babies. "They are almost toys as well as baby bottles and surely would have make the infants laugh! I think this shows us the love and care these prehistoric people had for their babies and gives us a very real connection to people in the past." [Source: Hannah Osborne, Newsweek, September 25, 2019]

“After the shift to a more agricultural-based lifestyle, there was something of a Neolithic baby boom. Several factors likely contributed to this increase in population, but the discovery of milk being used as a supplement for children may have played a role. "The widespread use of animal milk to feed babies or as a supplementary weaning food led to improved nutrition and contributed to an increased birth rate, with shorter inter-birth intervals, which resulted in significant growth in human population and ultimately led to the growth of cities and the rise of urbanization that we see today," Dunne explained.

As to why the bottles had been left in the children's graves, she said: "I tend to think that they belonged to that infant. Perhaps they wanted their children to have them with them. We don't know their religious beliefs or worldview but perhaps they believed in an afterlife."

Chalk Drum Found at the Grave of Three 5,000-Year-Old “Cuddling” Children

In 2022, six years after its discovery, a 5000-year-old chalk drum — found at a children's burial site and described as the "most important piece of prehistoric art" found in Britain in a century — was put on display at the British Museum. The burial date back to about the same time that construction of Stonehenge started, [Source: Joshua Zitser, Business Insider, February 13, 2022; Owen Jarus, Live Science, February 22, 2022]

According to Business Insider: “The drum was found on a country estate near the village of Burton Agnes in East Yorkshire, in 2015 when a routine excavation had to be carried out so the owners could erect a structure, The Washington Post reported. During the excavation, a team of archaeologists with the independent company Allen Archaeology found the burial site. Within the burial site were the remains of three children, 3 to 5, 6 to 9, and 10 to 12 years of age when they died., whose bones had been intertwined for millennia. "They were cuddling," Mark Allen, the founder of Allen Archaeology, told the Washington Post and Live Science . The two youngest children were found "facing towards each other and possibly holding hands." The eldest child was between and had their arms around the two youngest "as if protecting them,"

“The drum was placed above the head of the eldest child, along with a chalk ball and a polished bone pin, per science news aggregator Phys.org. Archeologists do not believe the drum was used as a musical instrument despite the name. It was more likely a piece of sculptural art, a talisman, or, perhaps, a toy for the children. The grave is a rare find, according to the Washington Post, because ancient people in neolithic Britain would usually leave bodies for cremation or to be eaten by crows.

And the drum is so significant because it is "one of the most elaborately decorated objects of this period found anywhere in Britain and Ireland," the British Museum said. The carvings on the drum, which show spirals and triangles, feature a "butterfly" motif, British Museum curator Neil Wilkin told The Washington Post. "The motifs themselves are abstract but may convey symbolism or religious principles that have yet to be deciphered," the British Museum statement said. They are artistically similar to other objects found at neolithic sites in Scotland and Ireland, Wilkin said, suggesting that prehistoric communities were in communication with each other despite significant geographical distances. "This drum is particularly intriguing, because it basically encompasses a sort of artistic language that we see throughout the British Isles at this time, and we're talking 5,000 years ago," project curator Jennifer Wexler told CNN.

The sculpture was also found within an archaeological context, meaning that the artifacts and human remains found with the sculpture were recorded in detail. "We know of a number of highly decorated objects — such as stone and antler maceheads, carved stone balls — of Middle Neolithic date [around 3400-3000 B.C.] from Britain and Ireland, but it is rare to find them in a good archaeological context," Joshua Pollard, an archaeology professor at the University of Southampton, said. Because of this, the relationship between the sculpture and the buried children can be examined in detail, said Pollard, noting that one possibility is that the sculpture could have been a protective force, acting as a "guardian" of sorts.

The discovery comes more than 100 years since the unearthing of the Folkton Drums. Three similar chalk drums were found in the village of Folkton — around 15 miles from Burton Agnes — in 1889. Wilkin told The Washington Post, "We've been waiting for over 100 years for another one of these amazing objects to come up, and for it to come up with children — again — is astonishing."

Did Stone Age Hunter-Gatherers Exchange 'BFF' Friendship Ornaments

According to a study published online on March 12, 2022 in the Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory, mysterious ring fragments crafted around 6,000 years ago by hunter-gatherers likely were prehistoric friendship pendants. Across northeast Europe these so-called slate rings were broken into pieces that were shared with others and worn as symbols of social relations, the researchers said. [Source: Callum McKelvie, Live Science April 29, 2022]

Callum McKelvie wrote in Live Science: Previously, archaeologists who discovered these slate-ring fragments assumed that the rings had broken into pieces naturally after being buried. To find evidence that the items had been broken intentionally, the researchers matched pieces of slate-ring ornaments, analyzed their geochemical composition and searched for traces of use, such as one having been worked on more finely than the other — perhaps demonstrating a personal preference.

The rings were likely broken and shared between people to symbolize a lasting connection, the researchers said. One fragment was found in a Stone Age settlement, while its matching fragment was found in a nearby burial site, which could be an example of "one way of maintaining connection between the living and the dead," lead author Marja Ahola, postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Cultures Archaeology at the University of Helsinki, said in a statement.

A large number of these fragments were found in "extensive and central locations" in Northeast Europe, possibly suggesting a large exchange network, the statement said. Some of these friendship ornaments originated from Lake Onega in Russia and were transported to Finland, according to an X-ray fluorescence analysis (XRF), which was used to determine the elemental composition of nearly 60 slate ring ornaments or fragments.

During the fourth millennium B.C., "an intensive artefact circulation system existed among the hunter-gatherer peoples of north-eastern Europe," the researchers wrote in the study. "We suggest that the ringed ornaments were — for the most part — never meant to be intact, but were instead fragmented on purpose. It seems likely that these items were used as tokens of some form of social relationship that could have been related e.g. to the circulation system itself." Ahola's research sheds further light on the complex cultural systems of Nordic Stone Age groups, who were predominantly hunter-gatherers and fishers, according to a study published in 1989 in the Journal of World Prehistory.

3000-Year-Old Board Game Found in Spain

Perhaps Neolithic and Bronze Age families spent time playing games. During an excavation in northwestern Spain, archaeologists unearthed a “very unusual” collection of ceramic objects that they determined were the pieces of an Iron Age board game, making it one of the oldest recreational artifacts ever found in Europe, according to a study published on January 31, 2024 in the journal Lucentum. [Source: Brendan Rascius, Miami Herald, March 7, 2024]

The Miami Herald reported: The ceramic pieces were found near the walls of an ancient settlement in Galicia — an autonomous community on the Atlantic coast — during an excavation in 2021. Why exactly it was destroyed is not clear, though it may have been done so intentionally before it was deposited along the settlement’s walls, researchers said. Among the pieces found were fragments of a flat board, which had a series of holes carved into it, as well as 25 ceramic tokens, researchers said. Using radiocarbon dating, researchers determined they were created sometime around the Iron Age, which stretched from about 1200 to 1000 B.C. However, determining further details proved to be a “headache” due to the fractured nature of the artifact and the lack of comparable findings.

Initially, researchers thought the complete object may have functioned as a mold or cast for metal production. However, this option was ruled out as there was no other evidence of metallurgy. Eventually, they settled on labeling it as a board game — though further research is needed to prove this hypothesis.The apparent board game bears some similarities to other prehistoric games from other cultures, including senet, an Egyptian game, as well as Mancala, which originated in Jordan.

Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons

Text Sources: Live Science, Popular Science, National Geographic, Smithsonian magazine, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Archaeology magazine, The New Yorker, The Guardian, Associated Press, AFP, Newsweek, The Telegraph and various books and other publications.

Last updated May 2024