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Archaeologists in the Balkans have find the likely remains of an 8,000 - year - old village build out over an ancient lake — the soonest - recognise village of any kind in Europe .
The lake , located on the border between Albania and North Macedonia , holds hundreds of Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree - body stilts that the archeologist trust formed the grounding of the prehistoric small town . The researchers ca n’t yet estimate the settlement ’s original size of it — but their discovery of a justificatory palisade of tens of thousands of wooden spikes , now underwater , argue the settlement was relatively orotund .
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.
Albert Hafner , an archaeologist at the University of Bern in Switzerland who go 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 westerly shoring of Lake Ohrid a few week ago .
The final result of date tests wo n’t be available for month . But Hafner articulate the submerged wood is probably the same age as wooden foundations unearthed on the shore , which his squad determined date from between 5800 B.C. and 5900 B.C.
This would mean it ’s the older liquidation archaeologists have found anywhere in Europe , he said .
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.
Hafner ’s team also happen evidence of exchangeable " pile dwellings " built over the water at the underwater prehistorical web site of Ploča Mičov Grad on the eastern shoring of the lake — part of North Macedonia — but those remain engagement to a few hundred class later .
It now seems both Village were make on paired sides of the lake in phases over hundreds of age , and that the ulterior construct phases had veil the earliest , he said .
" It seems to be quite typical that we have multiple stage of settlement , with sometimes long opening in between , " he said . " It now attend like Lin dates mostly from the sixth millenary [ B.C. ] in several phase , starting in about 5900 and ending in 5000 . "
Archaeologists from the EXPLO project have investigated more than half a dozen ancient settlements in and around lakes in the Balkans.
First farmers
Hafner has extend theEXPLO projectfor several year , essay lakes in the Balkans for tracing of settler from Anatolia — now Turkey — to Europe about 8,000 age ago . They are thought to be thefirst people to lend farming to Europefrom aroundMesopotamia .
The other granger interbred with hunter - gatherers who had already occupied Europe sinceabout 45,000 years agoduring the Upper Palaeolithic period , and who probably arrived from Africa via the eastern shores of the Mediterranean .
And both ancestries crossbreed with roving proto - Indo - European peoples like theYamnaya , who arrive in Europe from the Eurasian Steppe about 5,000 year ago . Most forward-looking Europeans show a genetic mix of all three ancestries .
Archaeologists with the EXPLO project previously discovered a slightly younger stilt village on the eastern and North Madenonian shore of Lake Ohrid.(Image credit: Nikolas Linke, EXPLO project, University of Bern)
Hafner explained that the many expectant lake in the Balkans part held clear traces of the other migration from Anatolia .
Lake dwellers
Hafner ’s team has so far investigated more than half a dozen sites across the Balkans .
explore into some of the lake settlement was conducted in the 1960s . But the recent excavations use refined technique like very accurate carbon 14 date and dendrochronology , which can determine when logs of forest were felled by looking at tree growth rings , Hafner state .
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The ancient village underwater near the shore at Lin is thought to be up to 7,900 years old.(Image credit: Nikolas Linke, EXPLO project, University of Bern)
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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 muddy dry land .
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.(Image credit: Nikolas Linke, EXPLO project, University of Bern)
Ancient people were belike pull to the lake because of water and plants there . But precisely why prehistoric citizenry chose to build their houses on piling or stilts above a lake or wetland is n’t clear — though the exercise is seenthroughout Europe , from the Balkans to the Baltic .
Hafner thinks that under normal conditions it would have been well-off to get between houses with dugout canoes . But the big palisade of wooden spike indicates the small town was sometimes aggress , he tell ; and house on the water system were more easy defended ( although perhapsnot always successfully . )
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.(Image credit: Nikolas Linke, EXPLO project, University of Bern)
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.
