Prehistoric times in North West Europe

Earliest human evidence

While ongoing research and archaeology continues to change the story of early men, there are (in 2011) some broad hypotheses that do seem to hold.

During the Miocene, the continents getting close to their current position, this allowed for the formation of ice on the north and south poles.  This started a gradual climate change which became more apparent around the Late Miocene, some 10 million years ago and as a result there was a significant change in habitat. Grasslands underwent a major expansion; forests fell victim to a generally cooler and drier climate overall.  Larges sections of what had been tropical forests in Africa had changed into more open savannah.

At this time lived, as what is currently seen as the possible common ancestor of gorillas, chimpanzees, and humans, the Nakalipithecus. This animal still lived mainly in trees but started to adapt to its new environment. By around 8 million years ago the species started to split and regarding the human lineage the arrival of the Australopiths is important. Lucy is most probably one of its most famous descendants. They started to walk on two feet and lived most of the time on the ground, however it is envisaged that they still slept in the tress. There were a few separate lineages here. They were mainly fruit and plant eating animals with perhaps also some meat on their menu. These animals were between 1.2 and 1.4 meters tall. Their brain capacity was rather small, 450cc, however, despite this they also might have used some primitive tools to open nuts, dig into ants holes, etc., similar to tools that are used by modern apes.

Around 2.5 million years ago the Australopithecus Garhi is currently seen as the missing link between these animals and the species that from here on evolve the Hominoids, our direct ancestors. By 1.2 million years ago all of the Australopiths subspecies had died out.

Around 2.3 million years ago Homo Habilus emerged and they dominated the humanoid landscape till approx 1.4 million years ago. Their arrival also roughly coincides with the start of the last ice age. Their brain capacity (600c) was twice as large of that of the Australopith and most likely because of that they were also using more sophisticated tools, known as the Oldowon culture, mainly for scraping, indicating that meat had become more prominent. While these tools might look rather unimpressive, they were highly functional and extremely well suited for the purposes they were made for.  The arrival of men and the start of the Stone Age are roughly taking place at the same time. It was truly a technological revoltion of gigantic proportion,  and was separating our ancestors from their non-human cousins.

The early ‘people’ most likely they were scavengers rather than hunters.

From here, we evolved to the Homo Erectus, with most probably the Homo Gautengensis ( 2 million – 600.000 years ago) being the missing link between the two species. Fossil material shows that Home Erectus was essential modern and would not have stand out in current crowds. They might have been a bit stockier, the head and face however, would have given them away. While less protruded that than of Homo Habilus, their forehead sloped backwards and they still had prominent brow-ridges.  Their brain capacity however, was still only 70% of modern humans. The marker for Home Erectus is the Acheulean tool technique that they deployed.

Most likely active hunting started to become more prevalent some one million to one and a half million years ago. As we know from the remaining hunter gatherers, well into modern times, it is highly likely that meat only accounted for 25% or less of their diet.  I had some first hand experience with this myself when I in 1988 spend some time with the Pitjantjantara people in Central Australia. Gathering fruits, edible plans and small animals like lizards and honey ants provided for the largest part of their food supplies.

From Homo Habilus onwards, archeological evidence shows signs of a mixed economy (hunting and gathering) and this would have required a developments in social behaviour, such an economy would require the sharing of food; something that doesn’t exist amongst non-human primates. Also food was collected to be eaten later (rather as in the animal world were most food gets eaten immediately by the one who got it). This must have had a profound impact on the life style of these early ‘people’.  This far more complex social structure required more intellect and collaboration and evolutionary developments, as so remarkably observed by Darwin, must have assisted in growing brain capacity as we see this in Homo Erectus (from 900 cc at the start of their arrival to 1100 cc at the end of their period)  and as a consequence they were increasingly more able to exploit more resources -through for example more specialised hunting –  in more environments than ever before.

The reduction in body hair is also linked to this period. The most likely explanation seems to be that their new lifestyle made them sweat more and that saw a replacement of hair by sweat glands. The lack of hair required protection against the UV rays and that resulted the light skin under the hair to become darker, only when moving northward did those people become lighter again.

Archeological evidence again matches with what we observe in modern times, the ideal size of a hunter gathering group is around 30 people – some 6 families  (this was also my experience with the group of Pitjantjantara people that I joined). This was a very efficient economy as within a 4-6 hour working day enough food calories (between 2000 and 3000) could be gathered to feed the tribe. There were no technical or social reasons to spend any additional hours to their daily labour budget. This left plenty of time for other social activities.  It is amazing that over the millenia the size of these groups remained more or less the same. This also required some form of birth control. It would not be possible for a women in the tribe to carry two babies around during their travels. Typically babies were breastfed for 3 to 4 years and this provided a natural contraception. By the time the first child could walk and participate in food gathering the next baby was underway. This only started to change when hunter- gathering economies started to change into prot0-agriculture and full agriculture societies.

Social relations were of critical importance to the functioning of the hunter gather society. Marriage would need to be arranged with people from outside the tribal household and relationships needed to be developed and maintained with that family. They needed to maintain contacts with other tribes in order to avoid conflicts, perhaps discuss hunting arrangements and make arrangements in times of food shortage, bad weather and so on. In other words these social relationships were a fundamental part of the survival of the tribe. These activities were all linked together in a range of ceremonies and as such was a currency used between the various groups and that currency needed to be kept in balance. All of this required significant time and effort.

Hunting and consequent sharing will also have been taken place along similar lines. Again I  had some first hand experience with this myself with the Pitjantjantara people when I participated in hunting activities with them, When we came back to the camp with two kangaroos there was lots of excitement amongst the women and children, but the men kept rather cool. Without saying anything the men started the ground fire to cook the animals. Once all of that was done they started to interact and talk to rest of the tribe. Once the animals were cooked the women took over and the hunters first received the best part of the animal – the start of the tail – only after that were the others served.

There was no typical hierarchy, no tribal leaders the elders of the tribe made joined decisions but everyone seem to be able to participate in this process.

In general the hunt was a less economic efficient activity as the food gathering. Both had very strong social functions of bonding, with the hunts that I participated tall stories and heroic events were boosted about and sacred sites were visited.

If we look back to some of their achievements, be it cave paintings, myths and stories, villages, camp sites and so on  than many modern people will still feel a strong link with these people. My brief  experience with the Pitjantjatjara people clearly shows that very little material culture is needed to develop a strong culture simply based on a moral code.

Against very strict tribal tradition I was also allowed to particulate in a food gathering activity with the women, here lots of chatting, laughing and lengthy stops for example to catch a lizard deep under the sand with their digging stick; collecting ants in their wooden coolamon containers or looking for very specific fruits that were seen as a a delicatessen. Non of this was a quick trip to the supermarket there was far more involved. They had the luxury of doing it this way as (even in the semi-dessert) there was plenty of food available for the tribe. Reading up on anthropological information from the early hunter gathers who lived well over a million years ago (thousands of kilometers away) its strikes who much of that culture – across the world – must have been the same and… remained largely the same over all those eons. I felt privileged that I was abale to make physical contact with that past. Interestingly while I as a man was allowed to join the women, western females were persistently refused to participate in the hunt with the men.

Home Erectus also became the first homo species to move out of Africa, this happened between 1 and 1.5 million years ago. They also arrived in north-western Europe, most likely during the inter-glacial intervals that occurred every 40,000 to 10, 000 years. For the first time our species moved out of their tropical environment and had to adapt to totally different foods, climates and changing seasons. However, until the next migration some 100,000 years ago most of our ancestors remained in Africa where approx 90% 0f Home Erectus lived.

This migration is linked to the so called Saharan Pump. Climate changes throughout the ages saw the Sahara, the Arabian Dessert and the Negev, sometimes turned into a more habitable region (savannah like), this thank to more rainfall in Africa. This saw not just plants and animals moving into new regions, this time also humanoids. When Africa became drier again the ‘pump’ stopped.

Human evidence in the Low Countries goes back to the Middle Palaeolithic, as far as 250,000BCE (near Maastricht) and 200,000BCE (Rhenen). This was during one of those relative warmer periods with average temperature similar or above those of present.

Probably as a result of their migrations, Homo Erectus evolved in several sub species such as the Neanderthals, Java (Solo) and Peking men and possibly also Home Floresiensis. Perhaps with the exception of the latter, the earliest people within this species were more robust than modern men with a height of approx 1.8 meters, their brain capacity had increased to 850cc in the early species and  to 1100cc towards the end of their period, getting closer to the size of the brains of Modern Men (1360 cc). Interestingly some research indicates that the human brain actually started to decrease over the last 20 thousand years or so.

There is also, throughout the region, ample evidence of the Neanderthal men (Low Countries: 57,000BCE). Their ancestors start to evolve around 600,000 to 350,000 years ago and by 130,000 – 70,000 years ago they had fully developed. They were most likely also the first people who practiced ritual burials. They were well adapted to the colder climate in Europe. They are increasingly seen as part of the Homo Sapiens family and it is estimated that interbreeding has taken place with 1-4% of our DNA perhaps been provided by these cousins, we share between 99.5% and 99,9% of our DNA with them. The common ancestor of Homo Sapiens Sapiens and Home Sapiens Neanderthalensis is perhaps Homo rhodesiensis (Rhodesian man). In the end they couldn’t compete with Homo Sapiens Sapiens and around 24,000 years ago they dies out. They are linked to the Mousterian culture as mentioned below.

What was significant different between the brains of the early humans and that of for example the apes is that the mapping of the brain is rather different, some parts are bigger, other smaller this is closely linked with the functions of the brain, while size does matter the mapping seems to be at least  of equal importance.

Despite this there was little change in the developments of their tools, with rather small changes (Acheulean, see below) and a more diverse usage. However, what possibly did change during this period was their social behaviour. While previous Humanoids were still mainly operating as individuals. It has been suggested by ¹  that these people were the first hunter gathers and as such depended on social structures, with men involved in hunting and women in food gathering. They were mobile but most likely operated from base camps.

Around 200,000 years ago Homo Sapiens evolved from here and around 50,000 years ago Modern Man (Homo Sapiens Sapiens) arrived and eventually became the only surviving Homo species.

Another ‘out of Africa’ movement occurred around 125,000 years ago with finds in Israel such as Skhul  (Mt Carmel) and Qafzef (Galilee).  These people had both modern features as well as those of the Neanderthal men and are currently seen as a  separate branch. They seem to have died out here out around 80,000 years ago.

The next migration occurred some 70,000 years ago, with the European Cro-Magnon starting to populate this continent from some 45,000 years ago onward.

While Homo Erectus did use fire, more widespread use of it only started to emerge some 125,000 years ago. This of course made cooking and the provision of heating possible.

Amazingly the Oldowon stone tools as they were used 2.5 million years ago changed relatively little for most of the following period and were even used amongst some of the hunter-gatherers that lived in modern times. Tools might have remained the same but the life of the hunter gathers depended more on their knowledge of their environment and on their skill and that made it possible to maintain a sustainable and mostly comfortable lifestyle for millenia.

As mentioned above  change occurred around 1.5 million years ago which is known as the Acheulean Culture of Homo Erectus, with larger tools arriving such as hand-axes and cleavers. This allowed for increased productivity (the job could be done faster). From here on a further refined and more economic  technique known as Levallois developed. A slight variant known as Mousterian culture was most probably used by the Neanderthals as well as with the early Modern Men from around 100,000 to 40,000 years ago. We now also see for the first time a markable increase in the number of tools. The early Modern Men increased the number of stone tools from around 60 to over 100. Also from here on regional cultures started to occur.

Perhaps these relative small changes during the period before 40,000 years ago are an indication of a lack of skills,  imagination and innovation in comparison to that of Homo Sapiens. Art also started to occur around 45,000 years ago, known as the Aurignacian Culture and the consequent Gravettian culture (28,000 – 22,000 years ago), well known for their ‘Venus figures’. The art of the hunter gatherers peaked at the end of the last Ice Age with for example the cave art of the Magdalenian people (see below). Their art was markedly different from those from previous times, it was far more vibrant with dynamic images of animals, it ended abruptly around 10,000 years ago.

 

Homo Sapiens in Europe

According to Professor Bryan Sykes the DNA expert at the University of Oxford,  one of the thirteen African Homo Sapiens clans – some 70-50,000 ago – started to move out of Africa (probably from Kenya or Ethiopia). He called the common mother of that clan Lara and it is astonishing to realise that she is truly the ‘Eve’ of all modern humans. From a pre-historic perceptive it can thus be claimed that all people who currently inhabit the earth all share a common heritage with each other.

Those who moved to Europe will have done so via the Middle East, they were most likely not more than a few thousand people.

All modern Europeans can be traced back to seven (real) mothers Sykes has also given them names:

• Velda – she lived 17,000 years ago in the Pyrenees (Cantabria), 5% of Europeans are her direct descendents a small band made it all the way to the north and can now be found amongst the Saami of Finland.
• Tara – she lived 17,000 years ago in the hills of Tuscany, Italy she accounts for 9% of current Europeans, mainly in the Mediterranean but also in the west of Britain and Ireland.
• Katrina – she lived 15,000 years ago, south of the Alps towards the bight in the Adriatic in what is now Italy and Croatia. 6% of Europeans can be linked back to her, mainly in the Mediterranean. The famous ‘Ice Man is one of her descendants.
• Ursula -– she lived 45,000 years ago somewhere in the middle of modern Greece – see below.
• Xenia – she lived 25,000 years ago withother mammoth hunters in the Pontic-Caspian region – 6% of European are her descendants. As we will see later a branch moved west into the Balkans and Western Europe.
• Jasmine – she lived 10,000 years ago in Mesopotamia and was the first to live in the relative luxury of a settlement, where the first agricultural experiments started to bear fruits. The importance of this new ‘invention’ saw these peoples but perhaps their ideas rapidly spreading over Europe, just under a 5th of Europeans are direct descendants of Jasmine, however, their agriculture endeavours have touched close to 100% of all Europeans. One distinct branch can be traced to Spain and Portugal, another one to Cornwall, Wales and the west of Scotland and another branch still lives very close along the agriculture migration route in central Europe.
• Helena – she lived 20,000 ago in the Rhône Valley in France, a staggering 47% of Europeans can trace their DNA ancestry back to her.

Ursula

Based on DNA research from Oxford University I am a descendant from Ursula. The first tribe that spread through Europe, 11% of all Europeans are direct maternal descendants of Ursula (Latin for she-bear). As the ‘mother’ of this branch of the Cro-Magnon family she lived about 45,000 years ago in what is now northern Greece. She was among the first arrivals of a new, modern human to set foot in Europe. She was slender and graceful, in marked contrast to the thickset Neanderthals with whom she and her clan shared the land for another 20,000 years. Her kind brought with them a new and more sophisticated type of stone tool with which to hunt and butcher the abundant game, animals that soon appeared on the walls of limestone caves as the first expression of human art. They spread right across Europe, west across France and north as far as the British isles; they are especially well represented in Scandinavia and England. There were and still are lots of Budde’s living around the Baltic Sea, I have come across my earliest name sakes in Stralsund and on the island of Rügen around 1,100AD.

There would of course have been more ‘European mothers’, but it are these seven mothers that have provided an unbroken lineage into modern times.

Conscious humans

It are the mental faculties of the homo sapiens that created a common set of behaviour that we are finding back in cultures all over the world.  Human conscious is not simple a set of rational behaviours but also allows for imagination. As a result of this mythological systems  developed which started to grow into religious systems. Many scientific discoveries are born when humans  imagine situations and solutions. The earliest tangible expressions of this comes to us in their visual arts (from 45,000 years ago onwards)  and most likely did have symbolic significance. Early beliefs, pagan religions and myths from around the world all have common elements. The started of as small family groups formed tribes which – through combinations of self-interest and coercion – grew into the medieval kingdoms. While force was a key issue in this process, civilisation was an equally powerful attribute to the human success.

For information on the conscious mind, that will be discussed below, I have used information from Piero Scaruffi’s book The Nature of Consciousness, he quotes several leading researchers and authors on this subject such as the American psychologist Julian Jayens and the British archaeologist Steven Mithen.

Consciousness is more of a process than a physical attribute. Animals also have some level of consciousness but it applies only to the here and now. Consciousness in its full meaning indicates a true understanding of ‘self’ and the ability to place it outside reality, both in the past and the future. Also consciousness – as a neurologic process – is capable of growth, as can be seen in the early years of babies and toddlers.

Environmental changes  would have resulted in the development of tribal ‘information systems’, rules and tribal law. Tribes were divided in clans and totems each with their own rituals, rules, privileges and responsibilities. Within such a complex society there was not a hard line between the mythical world and the outside/natural world. Furthermore, a person could belong to a number of mutual exclusive associations based on positions and functions e.g.:  brothers, sisters, work, religion, leadership.  Together the tribes had ‘all’ the knowledge, this was no longer in the hands of a single person. Knowledge required education which was partly embedded in the clan and totem system, but this might also be one of the reasons behind rock art; the first knowledge based system and an ideal tool for education.

Marriage and kinship

While in the very early stages of the arrival of homo sapiens, very close knit family groups were totally depended on each other for their survival and their very existents. In these early societies it is likely that ‘marriages’ were base on endogamy (within their clan). Once these groups became more established it became more opportune to move towards exogamy (outside the clan). The latter was biological more productive but also allowed to maintain good relations with the wider group of people. Kinship was at least partially seperate from biological connections. I noticed with the above mentioned Pitjantjatjara people in Central Australia that the children had several mothers and fathers. The same name was used for all ‘mothers’, they were the actual mother plus all her sisters. Fathers were the brothers of the mother. While other kinship relations exist(ed) elsewhere, for example the brothers of the father were the fathers. All of these societies had far less dived connections than current societies. Also in most societies there was a far more important role for the brothers of the mother. The words ‘uncle’ comes from the Latin name  ’avunculus’ which is the name for ‘mother’s brother’. ‘Aunt’ comes from the Latin name ‘amita’ what means ‘father’s sister’.

From the Mesolithic to the Middle Ages and even beyond most of the small farming communities (often not more than one or two farms) consisted of the patriarch of the family plus his sons and their sons and all of their wives. Together they would cooperate with farming all other local community activities.  However, in cases of conflict and serious problems the kinship group known in anthropology as ‘the sib’ can include all the relatives of the patriarch on both side of the family up to the sixth degree.  In this context ‘weregild/wergeld’ or ‘blood money’ arranged the retributions in case of conflicts, eventually this started to form the basis of the justice system.

Consciousness requires language, and it has therefore been argued that language was the final element in the process of the development of human consciousness, this happened around 70,000BCE. Language is a tool it comes to children from the outside, once language - as in different bits and pieces during the learning process – comes together it start forming the child’s mind from the inside through remembering, perception and cognition ²  It was preceded by the ability to deal with other humans, to deal with the environment, and to utilise tools. Together with language these skills ‘fused together’ in the modern mind. This led to the development of art (45,000BCE), the needle (25,000BCE), agriculture (10,000BCE), organised religion (4,000BCE) and more sophisticated tool-making.

A more decorative art form started  by the hunter gathers in the Upper Paleolithic around 45,000 to 35,000 years ago, a clear indication that these people became more self aware ³.  These symbolic expressions clearly shows feelings, beliefs and a social system around all of this.

It has been argued [4. Glut, Alex Wright, 2007] that this explosion of art around the end of the last  Ice Age  coincides with environmental changes, this triggered people to retreat to more habitual places, this in turn led to higher concentration of people, they had to live together and assist each other in order to survive, this in turn might have triggered the emergence of those symbolic expression.

What we now describe as art will most probably not have been seen as such by the originators, nor can we properly understand this art. It had huge mythical and cultural importance and could only be understood based on full insights in all elements of their society, furthermore specific ‘art’ could only be understood by those for who it was produced (only men, only women, certain clans, and so on). Rather than what now is seen as art, these early expressions would most likely be highly traditional and conservative and it is highly unlikely that they would claim it as ‘original’. That certainly seems not to have been the purpose of it.

The first rock paintings in the Low Countries are dating back to the end of the last Ice Age, around 10,000BCE and were found in St Odilienberg in Limburg, perhaps one of the closet livable areas on the edge of the ice covered plains to the north. This also basically heralds the end of Paleolithic cave art.

Early artifacts such as jewelery also indicate that these people might have used symbols to communicate certain information. They might have indicated their, tribe, totem,  gender, their status with their tribe, their coming of age, marital status, etc.

After the last Ice Age there is good evidence that there was a lot of interaction between these tribes and their sub branches that had started to evolve when the climate started to become more hospitable and more conducive for the growth of the population.

It is hard to draw any conclusions from the archaeological evidence about the tribal structures of these people. However, based on the quality of some of the cave art, stone artifacts and pottery there seems to have been a level of specialisation. The hunting and the coordination of the tribes covering large areas, would also have required some form of authority or leadership. However, there is for example very little evidence from burials to indicate that there was an upper class in these tribal societies.

These interactions and the resulting expressions in symbols, rock paintings, jewelery, mythology, stories and music became all building blocks of what we now call culture. Each society slowly but surely started to create its own culture and this culture in turn shaped these people ⁴.

Consciousness increasingly became a more important element of the unconscious mind that constituted the earlier phases of the evolutionary process. As less time became needed by the brain to sort out how to struggle through life (food, sex, shelter) more was available for the development of consciousness.

It has been argued that truly conscious humans only emerged after writing was invented – some 3,000BCE, perhaps as late as 1,000BCE. Certainly the development of the ability to create written records produced a level of consciousness in humans that was different from that of their forebears.

It is interesting to note that a lack of consciousness does not mean a lack of intelligence – some impressive cultures were built well before this time.

However, during earlier stages, instead of having a fully-developed understanding of ‘self’, people relied on ‘voices’ to guide their decisions. Shamans and priests received messages in visions, while they were in a trance state. For them it was not possible to differentiate between real and imagined events. This process became more and more sophisticated and increased the power of the priest class in several of the city states in the Near and Middle East.

Astrology became another important  element in all of this. The sun influences the seasons but perhaps more interesting where the stars. Because of place and position the position of Sirius at dawn in Egypt heralds the arrival of the Nile floods, cults started to develop around such stars and priests played a key role in linking such a position in time with a causal effect.

Homer’s Iliad is perhaps one of the first written records where there is an indication of humans acting independently of the voices that still feature very prominently in this writing from approximately 900BCE. Also the latter part of the Bible includes more and more conscious decisions. And similar shifts occur in the Chinese and Indian literature of that time.

In more recent western history these developments are very noticeable. Significant progress was made during the Greek and Roman civilisations where more emphasis was placed on reason rather revelation (Aristotle) and a rather free flow of knowledge was possibleand all authority was open to question. However, this was based on philosophy and not founded on scientific research.  This easily allowed Platonic philosophy to bounce back towards the supernatural. This was also embraced by the Catholic Church who proclaimed that all the knowledge needed by humanity was within their dogmas and teaching the acquisition of new knowledge was suppressed.  Some such as Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) tried to reinstate logic,  however reason only started to re-emerge during the Age of Enlightenment. The Inquisition that was established to forcefully implement faith still exists as the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, be it with significant less violent procedures.

It is interesting to note that even in modern times we still see remnants of that proto-conscious process in religious and government structures, where ‘authoritative’ guidance is needed for important decisions.

But the more sophisticated societies became the more knowledge was acquired, and, after writing was invented, better records could be used to guide the decision-making process. Visions-based processes were becoming less relevant. People with conscious minds also have the ability to advance their societies much more quickly. Ever since science has progressed it has led to religious adjustments, the opposite has never happened.

See also: Early beliefs, paganism and religion

Archaeological and historical cultural periods north western Europe

Time periods		Dates		Cultures
Paleolithic	Old	2,500,000 – 300;000
	Middle	300,000 – 30,000		Finds near Maastricht and RhenenNeanderthal men  (Ice Age 110,000 -11,000)
	Late	30,000 – 9,500		Hamburg 13,000- 10,000Federmesser 10,000-9,000  Magdalenian 18,000-10,000 Ahrensburg 11,200-9,200 (Younger Dryas 11,000-10,000)
Mesolithic	Early	9500 – 7100		Maglemosian 9500–6000
	Middle	7100-6450		Kongemose culture 6000-5200
	Late	6450-5500		Tardenoisian 6000-4000
Neolithic	Early	5500-4500		Swifterbant 5400-4300Linear Bandkeramiek 5200-4700
	Middle	4500-3500		Rössen culture 4600-4300Michelsberg culture 4400-3500  Funnelbeaker 4000-2700
	Late	3500-2000		Vlaardingen culture 3500-2500  Stein Group 3450- 2500 Corded Ware 3200-2300 Bell Beaker 2800 – 1900
Bronze Age	Early	2000-1800		Únětice culture Central Europe 2,300-1,600
	Middle	1800-1100		Nordic Bronze Age 1700-500Tumulus and urnfields 1800-1100  Hilversum Culture 1800 – 1100
	Late	1100-700
Iron Age	Early	700-600		Hallstat 800-600
	Middle	600-350		Jastorf 600-100 (Germanic)
	Late	Late	350-100	La Tene 450 – 100 (Celts)
		Roman	100-250AC
Middle Ages	Early	300- 950		Merovingian and Carolingian
	High	950- 1270		Holy Roman Empire
	Late	1270-1500		Proto nations

The dates of these periods are highly selective, the earlier the period, the more debatable the dates are. This table is based on the region we covered – north-western Europe and in particular the Low Countries and the neighbouring Rhineland in Germany and northern France. They reflect as much as possible the start and ending of these periods based on archaeological findings, indicating the sort of tools used. Sometimes these older dates are based on single findings. New findings quite often results in a review of these dates.

Formation of  the Low Countries

Orogenic forces, caused by tectonic activities, deforms the earth crust. The major event in relation to north western Europe has been the Alpine Orogeny which happened during the Mesozoic era (260– 65 million years ago). During the Triassic period (250-200 mya) the Tethys Ocean was formed of which the Mediterranean is a remnant. During the following Jurassic period the plates revered their direction and this led to the formation of the Alps, Pyrenees and the Anatolian plateau.

During the Triassic and Jurassic periods – around 150 mya –  the North Sea Basin was formed. This started to receive the sediment from the Ardennes, Eifel and Taurus which had already been formed during the earlier Variscan Orogeny that happened during the Late Palaeozoic (350-250mya). The mayor river at this time however was the Eridanos, which started in what is now Lapland its course went through what is now the Baltic Sea and after some 2700 kms,  it ended in a gigantic delta in what is now the North Sea area in northwestern Europe.

During the Oligocene (34-32 mya) the ongoing Alpine Orogeny created  north south rifts the Upper Rhine Graben and the Lower Rhine Graben (or Embayment). It was during this period that also the River Rhine started to flow.

The latter is of importance to our region and consists of the following geological areas:

• Krefeld Block which borders the subsiding area to the northeast,

• Venlo and Peel Blocks (including the Maashorst) which have an intermediate subsidence,

• Roer Graben and the Erft Block which correspond to central valleys and sites of strong subsidence; and

• Campine and the South Limburg Blocks of intermediate subsidence and the Brabant Block, bordering the subsiding area to the southwest.

Peel Boundary Fault

During the Later Permian, Early Triassic (approx 250 million years ago), seismic activity formed the early Alps and as a side effect of this natural spectacle, some 1000 kms to the north of this new mountain range, the Ruhr Valley Graben (RVG) was formed, which is still an active fault system – sinking at the rate of six millimeters a century. This fault system travels north-west along what is now the Peel region, as part of the RVG the Peel Boundary Fault (PBF) was formed. The higher laying grounds are known as the Peelhorst. During the ice ages the central fault became the course of the River Rhine which drained into the North Sea. Around 450,000 years ago the River Maas started to take over this drainage function and created its own riverbed towards the North Sea. Until that time the Maas had been a tributary to the Rhine. Based on active geological activity, over the following 300,000 years , the course of  the Maas changed further eastwards creating its own current river bed. Oss is on the far northern boarder of the PBF;  with the ‘new’  lower laying river plains of the Maas to the north and the higher sandy grounds to the south. As we will see below, this fault created its own ecological dynamics which was eagerly exploited by the people who would later – in the Bronze Age – settle the area. The lower grounds are known here as ‘slenken’ , the higher grounds ‘horsten’ and the faults ‘breuken’.  During those geological changes also the so called Maashorst was created. This was, 125.000 ago, the river bed of the Maas, now its a higher laying area, which in pre-historic time was also used by the people who lived here and more in particular used this higher ground to bury their dead.

During the Miocene (23-5mya) the River Rhine didn’t reach further than the Eifel, overtime the stream started to capture more and more tributes. Most of the northern streams was captured by the Meuse River.
For a while the River Meuse discharged, in its six time larger rival the Rhine, roughly where now the city of Aken is situated.

Now it was climate change that started to have an effect on the rivers caused by the Ice Ages which started some 2,5 mya and ended 11,600 years ago. In the early Pleistocene (2.5-0.7mya) the Rhine had further grown and flowed into the North Sea (in northern part of the Low Countries). This coincided with the’ death’ of the Eridanos river and the Rhine now became the largest river using the delta.

Around a million years most of the Netherlands had become sea, this included: most of what are now the provinces of Zeeland, Noord and Zuid Holland as well as parts of Friesland and Overijssel. It was not until after the last ice age that the Netherlands changed from sea to land.

During the glacier periods the Low Countries plus large parts of the North Sea Basin fell dry and the Seine and Thames river became part of the Rhine drainage system. During the intergalactic periods much of the land flooded again, this also was the result after the last Ice Age, when modern man more prominent started to appear on the scene.

During the Ice Age, around 450,000 years ago, the river trajectories towards the North Sea became blocked  and the Rhine was bent westwards and emptied into a lake that was formed in what is now the English Channel (northern part of France). During the glacial intervals the Rhine followed a more northern course and ended roughly what is the current Rhine Delta. The climate events following the end of the last Ice Age resulted in a very dynamic delta, which became a massive floodplain and during this period the course of the river changed at least 80 times. The Waal and IJsel rivers merged into the delta river system. The area that before the event of the Ice Age was sea, turned into peat morass which only very gradually became habitable, some parts however, not until modern times.

The climate changes also resulted in large scale erosion and the River Meuse started to transport large amounts of debris from the Jura and the Ardennes. When this reached the Low Lands and the power of the river disappeared this rubble was dumped and as a consequence the main channels became blocked and numerous side channels were formed.

Further tectonic activity along the Peel Fault saw the Campina and Peel Blocks further lifted upwards and the Meuse was pushed further eastwards were it eventually reached it current course. Both the rivers Rhine and Meuse now started to form their own channels through the delta into the North Sea.

Man made changes since have seen the Rhine now discharging into the North Sea via the Meuse.

Post Ice Age environment

The current cycle of ice ages started around 2.5 million years ago, when the continental drift had pushed North America and Europe far enough north to create climatic change. Land mass started to occupy an area that up to that time had been covered by water. This created a drier atmosphere, snow on land did not melt and started to built up, this created a global cooling effect that led to the start of this period of ice ages.

The last ice age so far (Weichsel glacial 116,000 – 11,700 BCE) had its maximum roughly 20,000 years ago; approximately the area above the river Rhine in what is now the Netherlands was covered by ice. North-western Europe was a border region between ice and tundra. After the ice ages the Holocene period started the geological epoch we still live in.

Britain was connected to Europe during this period and in 2009 human remains were dredged up from this area indicating that modern humans had dwelled here 40,000 ago. During the Middle Stone Age, the land in what is now the Low Countries became slowly more habitable. Enormous amounts of melt water started to fill up what is now the North Sea. Over a period of 3,500 years, water levels increased on average by 2 meters a century. By 7,000BCE sea levels had reached more or less the current coastline and the British Isles were permanently separated from continental Europe.

After the ice sheet retreated slowly forests started to take over, this of course resulted in fewer animals to hunt. The forestation started first in southern Europe around 12,500BCE and as a result we see our Palaeolithic forebears moving north. Hunting animals changed too, in a more forested environment the prey is now red deer, wild boar and wild oxen. Huge pine forests started to appear in north western Europe. The climate was still very dry and there is evidence that massive forest fires blazed through large part of the continent around 12.000BCE. ⁵

As there are fewer animals in a more forested environment, human population started to decline. The tribal groups were smaller and lived further apart than in previous millennia. Social structures became simpler and fewer technological and artistic innovations appear during this period.

The climate however remained rather cold; the ice didn’t start disappearing from Scandinavia until 6,000BCE. The many lakes in Finland are still a reminder of that retreating ice. Other leftovers from the Ice Age are the morasses of northern Europe.  With sea water levels rising it became increasingly more difficult for rivers and creeks to drain into the sea.  There were water stagnated large morasses started to form. A large one of them is the Bourtanger Moor; an impregnable 3,000 square kilometre morass that was formed around 5,000BCE, this wilderness extended in the north from modern-day Friesland to well into Germany. During summertime there were some drier stretches which were used to herd cattle. However, there were no boundaries and this often led to violent conflicts between farmers. It was not until 1867 that even the official international border between Prussia and the Netherlands was drawn.

On the edge of this vast wilderness expanse, around 1600AC, the Budde family in Wietmarschen started to carve out their living by reclaiming peat land for agriculture purposes, there did so as serfs of the local monastery.

 

Also in the ‘dry’ land peat morasses were formed in the period following the Ice Age. In Brabant there are still remnants of the Peel morass it is a high laying peat area, which formed because of the poor drainage situation that occurred after the Ruhr Valley Graben (RVG) was formed.  Both the coastal areas and the rivers became dynamic regions, sometimes there was land sometimes there wasn’t.

Between 10,000 and 6,000BCE, after the ice retreated, the forests arrived and they took over the tundras. This change in environment had enormous consequences for the early hunter gathers who had been visiting this region for millennia. In the early part of this environmental change they could still follow the massive herds tracking from south to north, where they grazed on the tundras and at very predictable times the people could make their kills.

Just before the end of the last ice age and during the short summers, sand-drifts were blown from the poor soils on top of the permafrost. They formed often kilometer long sand dunes up to 100 meters high on the edges in north western Europe, where they are a unique feature in the landscape. After this period a  podzol cover formed from the vegetation that settled on top of this. This became attractive soil for the early farmers who settled here and who didn’t have the tools to work in the much heavier soils of the floodplains.

Interestingly for the current environmental debate is, that a massive climate changes took place during the so called Younger Dryas, a cold spell which took place between 11,000 and 10,000BCE. During this period the Gulf Stream stopped flowing and this caused – most likely within a short period of 50-100 years – a cooling of 6 degrees in northwest Europe, this certainly would have affected the hunters and gathering visiting the region. However, a thousand years later – as quickly as it started –  the Gulf Stream kicked in again which saw a rather rapid warming of the climate and heralded further human activity in this region.

As we will see below, when Europe was reforested the early peoples had to start from scratch again, carving out their new livelihoods from these dense forests. However, for those living at the time these changes would hardly had an effect on the developments of each of the generations that were part of what at the time would have been a very slow, hardly noticeable change. Nevertheless, hunting on tundras is rather different than hunting in the forests.

These forests were very thick indeed. Even the Roman chronicles still talk about the impregnable forest (Silva Carbonaria – coal forest) which covered most of the area, we now call Brabant -from the Scheldt to the Arduenna forest (between Trier and the Rhine). In their chronicles it is stated that north of the Arduenna an extensive area of morasses existed (the above mentioned Peel).

For most of the time humans have existed their lives has been totally dominated by nature and its features were the geographic boundaries of their life. Most modern boundaries be it of countries, regions or cities are, in its origin, based on natural circumstances and natural features. It is only in the last 100 years or so that this link with the land is getting lost. However, we are already forced to revisit this situation as we will have to take the environment into account in all we do, we are re-learning that we can’t take nature for granted.

Paleolithic

The Cro-Magnon or European Early Modern Humans (EEMH) settled in Europe. In the northern regions they were known at the reindeer and mammoth hunters, they roamed the area – depending of the weather – during the period between 40,000 and 10,000 years ago.

The first evidence of the Cro-Magnon people in the Low Countries (North Limburg) is around 25,000 years ago,  just before the climate started to turn colder again; this culture is known as Gravettian (28,000 – 22,000 years ago). These very early arrivals here most likely hunted smaller forest animals and lived in small groups, perhaps as small as a single family.

As the climate deteriorated people began its long migration south; eventually reaching Spain and founding what became a refuge for all humans during the coldest millennia of the last Ice Age.

This led to a slightly more densely concentration of people, especially when sheltering is taken into account. Good caves where of course premium real estate as that provided protection against the cold.

At the same time the forest and its animals retreated and the tundras attracted larger animals. This changing environment required a more communal effort and these circumstances might have been the reasons for people to form larger tribes, allowing them to share caves and to hunt in teams. These changes as well as all of the natural activities in general would have required our earliest forebears to have accurate information of the world around them and to be able to disseminate that(which plant can be eaten, which animals are poisonous, which plants have healing powers, etc).

For the next 15,000 years people rarely traveled further north than the Ardennes and the Rhine Valley.

As the climate warmed, the scattered clan led the march back to the north to reclaim the once frozen lands. They reached the British Isles and left an indelible record in the limestone caves of Cheddar Gorge. In 1998, DNA was recovered from the famous skeleton known as Cheddar Man and analysis showed that it belonged to the clan of Ursula. In a dramatic demonstration of genetic continuity, they found that a teacher at the local school, only a few hundred yards from the cave entrance, was clearly a member of the same clan.

After a very cold period between 16,000 and 13,000BCE, known as the Old Dryas,  a period of relative warmth arrived: the Allerød, in the following 500 years people started to reappear in our regions. They were following the reindeer herds over the tundras – which covered most of Europe . They were opportunistic hunters and often concentrated on single species mainly reindeer and sometimes wild-horse. There were several cultures of these hunter gatherers that have left their traces back in northwestern Europe, they emerged around the same time and could well have been related to each other. They are known as: Hamburg, Federmesser, Magdalenian and Ahrensburg. There are some suggestions that perhaps already at these early times some form of herding started to occur ⁶.

Traces of the Upper Palaeolithic Hamburg culture have been found north of the rivers, in Friesland and Drenthe (12,000BCE), these people were true reindeer hunters, most probably arriving in our region from the east. They were hunting with the spear and the spear-thrower. These hunters travelled around in tents made of reindeer skins and these didn’t look much different from those used by the Inuits and Eskimos.

Artifacts dating back to this period where found by Sweikhuizen in South Limburg and are linked to the Magdelenian culture (17,000 -7,000 BC).

Both the Hamburg people and the Magdelenian people started to move southwards when the climate started to cool again around 12.100BCE. It is here that the Magdelenian people created the famous cave paintings.These are concentrated in three regions. Two in south-west France in the Dordogne (Lascaux) and one on the slopes of the Pyrenees and one in the Cantabrian mountains of northern Spain (Altamira). Their art includes a range of techniques: drawing, engraving, stencillings, painting, modelling in relief and in the round, and sculpturing in relief and in the round – almost every process we know today ⁷

The Feddermesser people used tools that indicate that they were hunting aurochs and wild horses, indicating a warmer climate. In Brabant alone over 130 archeological sites have been linked to these people ⁸ Some of these campsites indicate a possible annual return to these sites, most likely in relation to the migration patterns of the animals they were hunting. Their campsites were nearly always situated on the southern side of the sand hills or on the northern and western shores of forest lakes (fens).

A thousand year later their ancestors, people known as the Ahrensburgculture (See video clip: National Museum Leiden), also reindeer hunters, started to hunt with bow and arrow as well. Archaeological evidence of these people indicate that they also hunted below the rivers, including in Brabant (Geldrop) dating back to around the same time. They concentrated on the higher sand grounds, rather than the river flats that separated this part of the Low Countries from the northern parts.

During the Paleolithic and Mesolithic there is very little difference between human activities in the northern and southern halves of the Low Counties. This indicates that the whole area was one, rather flat,  toendra/forest, only much later are the rivers going to play a dividing role in this with different sub-cultures developing on either side of this divide. By then we see that raw material used for their tools and weapons  often had different places of origin.

The Ahrensburg people (11.000 – 10,500) were the last of the reindeer hunters, their tools indicate that they were highly specialised in this type of hunting. Other archeological evidence suggest that they often hunted in very large groups, indicating very large herds. From this time onwards cold weather and food scarcity did no longer force people to move out of north western Europe from now on people started to settle permanently in this region. It is tempting to see these people as the ancestors of the north western European people.

There is one  (disputed) artifact from the Ahrensburg people in the Low Countries, known as the Venus of Mierlo in Brabant; an engraving of a dancing girl

Mesolithic – 11000 – 6000 BCE

Developments coming from the south and the east

Throughout Europe and Asia, for most of the Palaeolithic, the way of stone-age life remained largely unchanged. More sophisticated specialised tools started to occur in the Low Countries around 8,800BCE . There are three periods: early, middle and late and the boundaries are 8,800, 7,100 and 6,450.

Archeologists  conclude that the Mesolithic people here were indeed the decedents of the Ahrenburg people. Flint stone spearheads from around 7000BCE  found in the region around Ootmarsum are remarkable similar to those of those earlier reindeer hunters. However, by that time, the number of tools and smaller working devices had significant increased in comparison to the Paleolithic.

However, remarkable changes that started to occur in the Mesolithic, changing forever the way people lived. This was largely driven by the environmental changes mentioned above. But as the environment was different throughout the region we see significant time differences in these developments. While all societies went through a similar process from hunter gathers to farmers and through different cultures, stone age techniques, pottery, copper and bronze, there was often a time difference of several thousands years between developments in the Middle East/Mediterranean, the Eastern Steppes and northwest Europe.

Recent research revealed that rather than hunting predominantly large game, which happened during the Palaeolithic, the emphasis moved more to marine and freshwater food complimented with food from smaller fleeter-footed animals such as red deer, pigs, elk and auroch. Some scientists argue that it was fish food that had a significant influence on the developments of our brains, which helped in developing the cultural and technical innovations which started to occur during the Middle Stone Age.

This change also effected the cave art as we had seen that emerging in the Late Paleolithic, it totally disappeared as it was tied to the now extinct large game populations.

Burial practices also started to change, large burial grounds are appearing, especially from 6,500BCE onwards. This indicates more complex societies; most of these people lived in coastal areas or adjacent to lakes and rivers. It started to make sense to put more time and effort in these places. This led to innovations in technology in these stages still Stone Age technologies, but nevertheless very significant indeed. Surpluses could be created, which could be traded. These more productive places allowed for the gathering of (individual) wealth. There are indications that within these societies there was competition for prestige and power.

Hunter gatherers societies had remained small throughout their history (groups of around 30 people). This remained the case well into modern times and that also provides clues to how previous generations would have behaved under such circumstances. In relation to my own experience with the Pitjantjantara people, the mobility of hunter-gatherers  required them to limit the size of the group and in particular the number of children per mother. If a women would have more than one small child it would be difficult for the group to move around. Carrying one child around, while gathering food,  was possible, more would be rather difficult.  Children were suckled till they were 3 or 4 years of age, this was a natural way to prevent conception.  Once around 4 years of age children could move around on their own with the group and could even become involved in food gathering.

Agriculture was in many aspects  a turning point in human history, from this time onwards the key driver for change became population growth. With a settled life, women could conceive children more closely together and that was exactly what started to happen.

These new and rather large settlements started to include storage place and weirs and from here on we also start to see defence structures around these settlements. These more permanent settlements were also the ideal place for the development of agriculture, which started to arrive at the end of the Mesolithic.

Such societies could of course feed far more people than the previous hunter-gatherers and this became the start of the population explosion which is still continuing during modern times.

At the same time there were also disadvantages of this change, more time was spend on work, there was less meat in the diet and less security of food supply in the case of crop failures (at least once every 4 years). Also the social structure changed dramatically from a sharing community that at the end of the day ate most of the food that they had gathered to one were food was grown and accumulated over time. Sharing became a problem as I experienced during my stay with Aboriginal hunter gathers.  When people moved out of this culture into the ‘modern world’ where they perhaps had a farm or a shop, family members would visit them and their culture would demand sharing, obviously a unsustainable situation for a farmer or a shop owner.

In agriculture communities farms were more spread out and the social control and support that existed in a small hunter gathers camp started to disappear. Traveling tribes also established a complex structure of alliances with neighbouring tribes, exchange of goods and gifts. Perhaps that increased level of complexity created the path towards agriculture based societies

The various pastoral and agriculture communities that started to evolve however, varied greatly. I some areas hunting remained a key part of their lives for many millennia in particular in the more temperate regions all the way from China to western Europe. In Central Europe domestic animals dominated their societies. While on the loess grounds domestic animals played a very minor role. Neolithic Chinese only kept pigs.

While talking about the Neolithic Revolution it is important to realise that under different conditions of climate and soils different civilisations developed. This was further influenced by elements such as self sufficiency and subsistence, this created a patchwork of  isolated economic structures and this in turn stimulated the developments of different cultures. This is very visual in the the various beaker cultures.

All these variations in developments and cultures also makes it difficult to put a start and an end the the Neolithic period. Perhaps the starting date of around 6000BCE is a good point, however, in some parts of the world this period lasted to even into the 20th century. There are also indications that a rather sudden cooling period known as the 8.2 kiloyear event (or 6,200BCE) had something to do with this. This event lasted for 300 years and created drought in North Africa and the Middle East. This will have resulted in changes in habitat, which will have caused migration and change to food production patterns, which might have been the cause for the development of the irrigation systems in Mesopotamia, which in turn lead to the production of surplus crops and thus wealth and this was the driving force behind the emerging city states.

While Modern Men easily adapted to the hunter gathering lifestyle they were easily adaptable to the agricultural lifestyle, from sharing to saving however, also meant a different way of dividing labour. Women now stayed at home and in general looked after the fields, men worked with the herds and therefor traveled more and met more people. Local political structures now only stared to involve men. While agriculture produce was mainlky ised for consuption, livestock could be sold and started to generate cash, which provided an economic advantage for the men.

A community based on ‘saving’  automatically leads to defense, you can run away from an animal you are hunting but not from a field you are tending. This humanity also started adopt to this new lifestyle that increasingly started to involve war. Totally new social and political structures were designed around this new society with control functions hierarchies and organised religion. It a matter of adaptation, something humanity will again have to do in the face of the new challenges of this time and age.

 

Hunter gatherers in northwest Europe

There are several archaeological finds from the hunter-gatherers camps dating back as far as 8,000BCE, remnants of a pine wood canoe were uncovered in Pesse, Friesland, also dating back to the Mesolithic. (See video clip: National Museum Leiden)  Similar finds were made in the Bourtanger Moor; dating back to 5000BCE and in the area around Ootmarsum. There are also plenty of archeological finds of flint stone artifacts on the higher grounds in the southern parts of the Low Countries. Some of these camp sites have been visited many times, some perhaps for more than a century. Aboriginal middens in Australia sometimes represent a history of over many  millenia.

Fishing hooks from the middle Mesolithic were dredged up from the river Maas near the village of Lith not far from Oss. The first wooden statue found in the Low Countries dates from probably 5,300BCE and is known as the Little Man of Willemstad (a town in west Brabant). (See video clip: National Museum Leiden)

However, how and where the lived during the Mesolithic is still largely unknown, the many archeological finds don’t us anything about the life of these people. Slowly we start to see differences between groups living north and south of the great rivers. Different relations and trading networks started to create differences between these two groups of hunter gatherers.

By 5,000BCE these hunter gathers had largely disappeared from the landscape and in some parts of the Low Countries (Drenthe, Limburg and South Holland) the first glimpses of the Neolithic people started to emerge, strangely so far no evidence from early agriculture have been found in Brabant, perhaps indicating a discontinuation of human occupation in this region during this intermediate period.

The warmest period sofar since the end of the last ice age occurred around 7,000BCE, when temperatures were 1-2 degrees higher than present. This period is known as the ‘Atlantic’ (8.000-5,000BCE). While this occurrence is evident in archeological excavations it again doesn’t tell us what effect this had – if any – on the local population and their developments.

Proto-agriculture developments in the east

An interesting development happened in the eastern Mediterranean (Levant) during the Younger Dryas a warmer period that resulted in a rather lavish natural environment in this region that was conducive for permanent settlement of hunter gather; this happened  before the arrival of agriculture. This is known as the Natufian culture; they evolved from the Upper  Paleolithic Kebaran hunter gathers who had been living here since 18,000BCE.

As early as 12,500BCE  small settlements of around 200 people started to evolve here. There are non-conclusive indications that cultural influences might have arrived from northern Africa (Sudan). The first houses were most probably based on earlier semi-permanant structures and are round or curvilinear, with domed roofs. The Natufians are also credited for the domestication of the dog. Some of these pre-agriculture communities evolved as a natural consequence of permanent settlement into early trading/market posts  examples here are possibly  Jericho in Canaan and Catalhöuyük in Turkey.

It was most probably on the northern boundary of the Natufian people, in southern Anatolia, were the first people started to experiment with agriculture, somewhere around 9,000 and 8,000 BCE, possibly as early as 12,000BCE. The Kebaran people are known to have gathered wild cereals during previous millennia. The warming climate resulted in wild wheat and wild barley encroaching upon the sparse steppe. This would allowed the hunter gathers to include a larger amount of cereals in their food pattern and this perhaps created the idea of a different life?

Steven Mithen (see above) has a very interesting theory about how early agriculture might have started. He suggests that domestication was a result of of frequent ritual and construction activities in relation to this, which for example took place at Göbeki Tepe (southeastern Turkey). In order to facilitate these large activities, originally the wild wheat that grew here plentiful, was harvested. Over time some grain might have been spilled and consequently germinated.

The sacrifice of animals – as seen in many burial sites – might have resulted in corralling  these animals in order to have a ready supply of them for that purpose. Overtime the religious power of these (wild) animals might have weakened and that rational uses of these increasingly more domesticated wild animals took over.

It is interesting to consider that it was possibly religious experiences that led to these revolutions. The massive stone works at Göbeki Tepe certainly indicates a link between the two developments. Similar construction are being discovered elsewhere in the region which might shed more light on the people and their culture and religion. They certainly marvel the much later  stone cultures in western Europe such as Stonehenge.

Archeological evidence in Jericho shows that the transition from hunter gatherers to urban settlement took place within 1,000 years. Archeaobotonist estimates that this would have been the period over which the mutation from the low yield crop to a domesticated higher yielding crop would have been evolved. In this way a rather gradual and natural transition from hunter gathering towards agricultural could have happened.

With more permanent villages and cities it also became necessary to keep the animals closer to where these people lived and this led to the domestication of animals. This led to a new economic development that of agriculture/city societies, whereby farmers also started to produce for people in cities.

Sheep were the first to get domesticated (10,000BCE), followed by goats (8,000BCE), pigs (7,000BCE), cattle (6,000BCE) and horses (4,000BCE). Out of the thousands of wild animals only 14 have been domesticated.

 

These developments rank amongst the most important discoveries of mankind. Men were now free from their total dependence on wild food resources and they therefore became less affected by the availability of these resources. Have control over food production also resulted in surpluses and this in-turn had  an enormous  effect on economic, social and political developments.

Children also played an important role in this as they could be involved from a relative young age towards in sheep herding, weeding, scaring of birds, etc. They were also critical in looking after their parents when they could no longer work on the farm.  An important role they  still perform of some of the remaining traditional pastoral and agricultural communities.

By 5,000 BCE agriculture had reached Greece and had spread into Balkans along the river the Danube. By 4,000BCE it had reached the Rhineland. It also spread along the Mediterranean and reached Spain and France around the same time.

By 3,500BCE a new threshold was reached in human history with a well established peasantry dominating the human life style in the Near East and rapidly spreading into Europe, India and China.

Arrival of the Indo Europeans

While the early human migration pattern had a south north movement (out of Africa), the migration pattern now started to move east-west. This would continue for several millennia. The steppes formed a highway between east and west for the Huns, Avars, Lomabards, Bulgars, Turks and Mongols, it brought agriculture and postralism, urban revolution, religious concepts and so on.

The first arrivals, the Indo Europeans can be traced back to the Eurasian Pontic-Caspian  Steppe Cultures. Early hunter-fishing communities started to settle along the rivers in this area after the ice started to retreat. The steppes were the ideal environment for prot0-pastoral practices.

Pastoral communities are more mobile than agriculture based communities. They need to maintain contacts over larger areas to sustain their breeding networks. And such communities are a pre-requisite for the migration patterns that started to develop and which continued with the Huns and Mongols until the Middle Ages. Many different people from many different tribes settled the area and the result of that mosaic pattern is still very much visible in Europe. It has delivered its vitality but also results in devastating wars the most recent being those in the Balkan, Caucuses; WWI and II can also be traced back to tribal conflicts.  But also smaller conflicts such as the Basques in Spain and the language problems in Belgium can be linked back to the tension and the dynamics involved in the migration of different tribes.

There are several theories on why this migration happened:

• A drying of the climate caused people in the Near East to leave this area.
• Agriculture resulted in population explosions and that this caused the spread.
• The rising waters after the Ice Age caused the Mediterranean to burst into what is now the Black Sea, this caused a displacement of people in the area, which resulted in the migration (Great Flood stories such as the Gilgamesh and Noah’s Ark could be related to this natural disaster).

Mobile pastoralists outpaced the agriculturists in capital accumulation (animals) and thus were able to dominate over other communities they encountered during their nomadic travels. Add to that the use of the horse and the wagon and we are encountering a formidable new force born at the Russian Steppes. In general these people proved to be more innovative and as such were at a social advantage above the native agriculturist communities. These pastoralists eventually spread from Mesopotamia to the Mediterranean and beyond.

By 6,000BCE  steppe nomads had developed themselves into a thriving early warrior-pastoral culture. The eastern branch migrated east of the Black Sea and became the forefathers of the Indian and Iranian people. They also were the people that eventually created the eastern empires such as the Persian Empires.

Moving further west, another branch of the Indo Europeans started to cross the Urals. From here they spread into Balkans some 1,500 to 2,000 years later. They significantly disrupted the agriculture culture settlements that had developed here.

There is strong evidence that together with new farming and pastoral technologies and expertise, also pottery was spread throughout Europe by the these people.

In the east, where the agriculture societies were disrupted by the Indo Europeans, we also start to see the development of more and more fortified settlements, indicating wealth creation and wealth protection.

Very few fortifications developed around that time in other parts of Europe. One of the few early agriculture communities that might have had some fortification is in Hesbaye (southern Belgium). There is evidence that this was enclosed by a ditch of defence possibly against the hostile native hunter-foragers to their north.

The first cattle herding people reached England between 3,000 and 2.500BCE  around the same time the Swiss lakes and Southern Scandinavia was settled by farmers and herders.

The specific physical characteristics of the Indo-Europeans still persists in the north west Europeans of today.

Neolithic

Agriculture Revolution moving west

From 5,000 BCE we slowly start seeing more people and ideas entering northwestern Europe.

Where ever the population increased and more people started to live together in close proximity of each other new innovations occur. During this interesting time of change – known as the New Stone Age - these key developments include:

• Agriculture started to migrate in waves from Anatolia/Mesopotamia
• Pastoralist developed in parallel
• Pottery arrived via Japan and Siberia
• Indo-European language was spread by warrior-pastoralist from the Pontic-Caspian region.
• Improved tool techniques from flint flakes to polished stone (far more efficient axes).
• Invention of wheel, sailing ships, bricks, writing.

At the start of the agriculture revolution – approx 10,000 years ago, the world population was estimated to be somewhere between 5 and 10 million people. Within 8000 years this had increased to 300 million. Before the Industrial Revolution started the population had grown to 500 million.

Some of these innovations developed in parallel but  independently from each other  in different places on earth.

From agriculture to pastoral communities

At the start of the Neolithic there were distinct agriculture communities in the Middle East, southeast Europe and in the Balkans. These communities had profited from the early agriculture knowledge that had spread from Anatolia (where the weather was more favourable) to  Mesopotamia where it further developed. This rather arid region required irrigation and the complexity of the organisation of this forced the people here to establish complex structures and as such this ‘Fertile Crescent’ became as a “Garden of Eden’, the start of the urban revolution (see below) which is still continuing today.

This culture is known as Sumerian and evolved around a dozen or so city states within the Fertile Crescent. Each city was centred on a temple and had their own city god. The Bible mentions that Abraham came from Ur and that he brought his city god with him while travelling towards the ‘Promised Land’. The city organisation in Sumer was most likely theocratic.

Old Testament an account of transition

The most interesting account – and perhaps the only account we have – of the transition from a nomadic lifestyle to a pastoral lifestyle is provided in the Old Testament. This book based on oral traditions describes the struggles of a rather small tribe in an environment of very powerful empires trying to find a land where they can settle and become farmers. In an area wedged between the sea and the dessert, arable land comes at a premium and many others were interested in that same piece of land. Despite persecution, massacres and exiles this small tribe survived against all odds most likely because of their strong cohesion, sense of community, tradition and devotion to one God, very importantly their God. They have outlasted many far more wealthy and powerful tribes. At the same time these same treats were used to occupy the land of Canaan – around 1500BCE – as was promised by their God to Abraham, who is seen as the founding father of the Hebrews (and the Muslims and the Christians). This promise was an endorsement to aggressively fight with other tribes in the area in order to claim this land theirs.

Ever expanding agriculture lands and an increasing number of animals started the beginning of wealth creation, which in turn needed to be defended. Society therefore became more possessive and in protecting these new assets society became more aggressive. Famine, floods, draughts and other natural disasters became a fact of life in these more and more crowded settlements and cities and people effected by this started to put pressure on neighbouring communities.

As pastoral communities became wealthier and more powerful they started to dominate some of the agriculture communities and it could well be that they created a tributary system or even some sort of a serf system, forcing these agriculturists into subsistence . In such situations – which would spread in the Middle Ages thought large parts of the world, the serf/peasant dilemma  became how to maintain the required caloric minimum needed to live and the requirements (rent) imposed by the lords. In general this lead to below subsistence living and widespread poverty.

Also conflicts between Asia and Europe need to be viewed within the dynamics of these east-west contacts and conflicts. Following the eastern migrations in the Neolithic, also the Greco Persian wars in the 5th century BCE, the conquest of Alexander the Great two centuries later, the invasions of the Huns and other Asian Steppe hordes heralding the end of the Roman Empire, the Muslim Conquest, the Crusades, the conflicts with the Mongolian and Ottoman Empires and even the current Middle East conflicts often have a strong ‘east vs. west’ element in it.

No revolution in rural areas

Even more significant than the agriculture revolution however, is the secondary revolution that followed it, urbanisation. However, only a relative small part of the population participated in the urban revolution. The majority of farmers stayed on their farms in the rural areas, and the seize of these self-contained and self-supporting  farming communities also didn’t change all that much (similar to the hunter gathers group between 20 and 40 people); this situation basically remained unchanged until the 20th century. Agriculture as such was for most of these people not such a ‘revolution’.

These communities stayed isolated and most people married within these communities and people lived with people who were more or less the same, the lived the same lives, had the same beliefs and largely continued to do the same things as the generations before them had done. There were no ‘specialist’,’ all farmers were generalists in the work that they did. People within these communities were known by name and recognised for their personal qualities and character, there were hardly ever any ‘strangers’ in these communities.  Technology, innovations and as such economic progress was at all times subordinate to this moral code.

Their drive to work was not based on economics – in the modern sense of the word -but more on duty, tradition, obligation, kinship, religious considerations,  in other words the drive was more moral based.

Critical to the survival of these small and vulnerable communities was the need for strong reinforcement to keep the unity together, this all within the context of human squabbles and tension. Notorious difficulties between father and sons, daughters and mothers-in-law, unmarried members of the unit and so on. It was important that appropriate behaviour patterns were taught to the young.  A range of social techniques led to the members being made dependent on the group. This was rather different from the hunter gathers were individual pursuit in the hunt was stimulated, self sufficient was a critical element here. In these groups there was more room for individual freedom in their relationships with others.

Among the peasant communities aggression and sexuality was suppressed, the impulse was controlled for a better coordination of the group

For the most part of 40,000 years, in both the hunter-gathers and the agriculture communities these ethical conceptions  linked to social control was largely what held these communities together, communities around the world be it hunter-gatherers, fishermen, cattle herders and early agriculturist  all depended  on the same system.

Another vulnerable element of the agriculture communities and a potential are of conflict was inheritance issues. In north western Europe  single-heir inheritance was the favored system. Perhaps as a result of hierarchical pressures upon the peasantry. We see some of these pressures under the serf system as described for Wietmarschen. This had far reaching social consequences, those who don’t inherit had a distinct economy disadvantage. This often led to unmarried brothers who stayed on the farm as farmhands and joined the daughters who could not find a landowning  partner.

In order to keep these vulnerable communities together rites, ceremonies and traditions  played a key role.  In its origins they are action based and provide a moral code about the do’s and don’t's, it celebrates the interdependence between its members and between its members and the natural environment surounding them and the rules that governce all of this, along predictable events and a common framework. Death and funeral played a key role in these ceremonies as we will see below. The pagan rites and ceremonies were both ulitarian and moralistic but not ethical or questioning. Only much later, in the more urbanised agriculture communities this became institutionalised in formal religions.

The lagacy of these traditional  societies is that they have provided civilisations with a moral basis. While in these traditional societies the moral code was rather unbendable, within civilisations we see a break down of old morals but most of the time new morals do form the basis to further advance these civilisations. Once the moral code totally collapses also the civilisation collapses. It were these landless people that started to move to the emerging cities and later to the merging industries.

⁹ and ¹⁰

Urban revolution

Nevertheless, agriculture allowed for permanent settlements. This meant the start of the end of an era of homo sapiens living in hunter gathering societies. Agriculture also allowed for surplus wealth and those who controlled this became the early elite.

Permanent settlements were initially started by a particular tribe – some cities such perhaps indeed derive their names from these original tribes. However, fixed settlements required a fundamental change from  the age old communal tribal leadership structure. Kings, perhaps evolving from the function of temple priests, became the new ruling elite. Religion plays a key role, those at the heart of religion, shamans, seers and priest were both part of and the driving force behind the early city elite, religion also kept the ruling elite in power. It is most likely that because of such a ruling elite that cities came into existence.

Initially these early rulers and priests appear to have been supported by the early farmers on a voluntary basis. However, when these settlements started to grow control shifted from the farmers to those who were holding political power. Soon the farmers also  grew more dependent on the town specialist for tools and luxury articles and increasingly their independence and importance – in a political sense – started to diminish.

The first city states started to appear in fertile areas such as Mesopotamia and Anatolia; these included Babylon, Ur, Uruk, Kish and Sippar. The first city in Egypt – and indeed north Africa – Fayum followed in 4,000BCE. Another millennium later and agriculture had also reached Baluchistan between the Indus River and Afghanistan, here some spectacular cities developed such as Harappa and Mohenjo-daro. The area under agriculture here was twice the size of that in Egypt and Mesopotamia. Culturally there are many indications that there was communication between these regions, there are shared stories, myths and images.

It is also highly likely that the rulers used its subjects to build the palaces and public buildings (storage facilities, etc). This was for the first time that people became dependent, until that time they had always looked after themselves. This was the beginning of the ‘tax’ system; apart from labour the rulers would of course also require surplus food and other goods. The gathering of wealth and the protection of it also meant the beginning of humans ans warfare. There is no evidence of any large scale inflicted death and warfare from before that time.

The impact of urbanisation becomes clear when compared with the effect that the agricultural revolution had on the farmers living in the rural area. They accounted for 95% of the population, most in communities and villages that would not house many more people that the early groups of hunter gathers. While they might have changed their bow and arrow for a plough and grinding stones their lifestyle didn’t change all that dramatic.  They still led a subsistence lifestyle, there was little specialization and no hierarchies, they were highly led by social morals rather than commercial ambition. Pagan rites and traditions ruled their year.

It can even been argued that they were worse of than their hunter gatherer forebears. They lacked their mobility and flexibility and were far more susceptible to disease and famine. Their average age was often lower as was their height.

This ‘neolithic’ aspect of life was still very visible in many parts of Europe during the first half of the 20th century.

Cultural progress took place in the highly urbanised cities and the enormous global migration from rural areas to the cities that started after WWII has further accelerated technical and cultural advances of the urbanisation revolution. Which as in neolithic Mesopotamia and Egypt led to similar problems as the world is facing in the 21st century. At regular intervals over the last 10,000 years cultures have come and gone, some wiped out by natural disasters, others by war or invasion/suppression.

Video clip Pre-history Israel

 

The Writing Revolution

As mentioned above, it has been argued that truly conscious humans only emerged after writing was invented.

The very early origins of writing lay in the symbols that started to occur some 60,000 years ago. The earliest archaeological evidence of counting dates back to 25,000-30,000 years ago when bones with marks on it were used as some sort of tabulating device. Accounting is also the direct ancestor of writing; triggered by the rapid increase of agriculture. This brought with it the storage of products. Storage required administration and it was most probably this ‘accounting’ that became the reason for the next development of writing (after cave art). Maths was there before writing. From here also the first ‘currency’ emerged in the 9th century BCE.

The first Sumerian texts on clay tablets are all in relation to such storage records. The specific cuneiform format evolved because it was ideal for clay tablets that favoured straight lines and wedges rather than rounded corners. At this stage writing was a craft and practised by craftsmen only. These people were employed by trades people or were hired in by them. This form of writing in the formatted dominated the world for a 2,500  years or even more.

Literacy  evolved initially in a phonetic way rather than in a pictorial format. It than rapidly spread throughout an ever increasing more complex society. In the cities – by around 2000BCE – within a thousand years after its invention, many people could write – at least in a rudimentary way.

The above mentioned ‘accounting’ system was of course also greatly enhanced with the ability of written records…and the writing meant the start of the bureaucracy. Through writing the rulers could extend their power into larger areas by sending out their dispatches and this of course required officials throughout their territory.

The first recorded mathematics comes from Egypt and dates back to the 16th century BCE, however that text is said to be based on older knowledge it describes 87 formulas and their solutions and also puts a value on pi; 3.16049 which is very close that what we use now 3.14159

Institutionalised religion was another important development and temples became the first ‘public’ buildings. They were also used for a range of other activities such as banking, storage of information, courts, etc. The new type of (literacy) writer - the scribe - often resided at the temple and from here news ones were educated. Some started to specialise in certain areas such as astronomy, religion, medicine – often simply writing down the local (tribal) knowledge as mentioned above –  and from here, in the temples, also  schools started to emerge.

The first European written records date back to the 15 century BCE. Here the Minoans used a script known as Linear A (not yet translated) and reflect similar storage records. This was followed by Linear B and also spread to Mycenae, a script based on ideas and concepts.  After the Greek Dark Ages (1200-800BCE) the Greek adopted a new script  which they developed from phonetic Phoenician script. This became the basis of the 24-symbol aplhabet that from here it spread to the Etruscans, Romans, Celts and finally the Germanic people in Scandinavia.

The first farmers in the west

Further west agriculture had not spread yet and when the Indo Europeans moved into these regions there was not much to disrupt; from here it became more a mixing in with the native hunter-gatherers. Rather than this is seen as invasions it is more likely that waves of people and/or innovations swept through Europe – passing the messages on  -  slowly replacing and adding to the previous hunter gathering culture. This was the beginning of a process of hybridasation, which started between 4,500 and 4,000 BCE. Influenced by the Indo Europeans, these hybrid societies depended more on stockbreeding than on agriculture.

During their push west, the Indo-Europeans brought with them the so-called Linear Pottery Culture, which rather quickly spread throughout the hunter gathering communities in northwest Europe.

Following the Indo-European migration/invasion, significant changes started to take place throughout Europe. It is estimated that between 20 and 25% of the Europeans are descendent from migrating new settlers. While the majority of the population remained of the native stock, they overtime adopted the language, religion and culture of the Indo Europeans. It has also been argued that the mixing of these peoples have been very beneficiary for the health of the European population.

Initially there was very little difference between the farming communities which were spread all over Europe. However, slowly but steadily, the success of these pastoral communities led to a significant increase of settled land with an increasingly more sophisticated farming communities. This also led to an opportunity for more differentiation, a slow trend that eventually would lead to the different European cultures. We can see the start of this in the various beaker culture variants that started to emerge.

The evolution of the farming cultures

The spread of agriculture practices is closely linked to the spread of pottery. It arrived in our region most probably from Japan (10,000 BCE) via Siberia to arrive in what is now the Ukraine around 7,000BCE. However, pottery seems to have been developed independent from each other around the same time in different areas. Similar, according to historians,  to how writing developed a few thousand years later. There is also a theory that the ritual use of skulls could have provided the idea for pottery. ¹¹

Another theory is that pottery in the beginning was made by and for women. As these were made for practical use there was a rather conservative approach to innovations. ¹²

The development of pottery has been a great indicator of cultural developments. It also allows us to start to see regional variation in a hunter gatherers society that, as we saw above, for millennia was rather homogeneous in its art, tools and lifestyle.

These developments were greatly facilitated by the natural feature of this Eurasian region, a vast expanse of steppe; extending from China into Europe. This provided an excellent corridor facilitating a rather easy movement of people, goods and ideas. This started to change at the end of the Neolithic.

Linear Bandkeramiek (LBK) 5,200 – 4,700BCE

The herding and farming practices started to spread throughout the Indo, Iranian and European regions, initially mainly along the Danube. It has been estimated that agriculture spread at the rate of around a kilometre a year (or less). It took more than 3,000 years (100 generations) to spread via South East Europe to North West Europe. Innovations must have been hardly noticeable to the people living here at the time.

Possibly following the river systems the first farmers arrived perhaps from the Danube region. It might not have been more than a few hundred Indo Europeans who settled on the fertile löss grounds in what is now Limburg

Löss is the fertile top soil that at the end of the Ice Age was scraped away by the arctic winds from the tundras and deposited here and elsewhere in the region.

These new settlers are closely linked to the Linear Pottery culture, their culture is known as “Linear Bandkeramiek” (LBK). Their settlement in modern day Elsoo is the first known agriculture village in the Netherlands. During the 400 to 500 years that these people lived here, they might have built some 250 large farms; each of these farms would have lasted for around 25 years. They ranged in size from about 6 to 45 meters in length, usually 6 to 7 meters wide, both people and stock lived in these farmhouses. It has been estimated that they took 1420 man hours to built (14 weeks of 25 hours for 4 men).

Other early settlements include: Sittard, Stein and Geleen all on the löss grounds in the valley of the Maas river, there are even suggestions of a central community house and perhaps even some shrines. An extensive burial ground with 125 separate burials has also been excavated. At the height of their economy there might have lived around 1000 people living in these settlements.

Early crops that these people grew included: emmer and einkornwheat, peas and lentils, hemp, flax, poppies were also grown. However, their diet was also complemented with game such deer, elk and boar.

These early settlers occupied this area for close to half a millennium, but than they disappeared as quickly as they arrived.

This culture didn’t spread further north. Most likely did the original hunter gathers population make contact with these early  farmers and a few pottery shards and other artifacts that can be classified as coming from these farmers did end up north, however they are more likely the result of trading and exchange.

Rössen culture 4,600 – 4,300 BCE

This culture is seen as the transition between the wide spread LBK culture and the more complex cultures of the Michelsberg and Funnel Beaker Cultures. It covers a large area of modern Germany (except the north), France and southern Low Countries.

An ax from this farmers culture was found in Megen, near Oss. However, at that time agriculture had hardly reached this area and most likely this object was similar to ones mentioned above in the exchange with the LBK people.

Michelsberg culture 4,400- 3,500 BCE

A new group arrived in this region, known as the Rhine-Seine Farming Groups (Michelsberg), also these people practised agriculture and husbandry. Their tulip shaped beakers are of an exceptional Neolithic quality.

Old forms of small horticultural farming started to give way to earlier slash and burn techniques. Larger social and cultural units started to appear and settlements started to move out of the valleys to more commanding positions overlooking them.

In Limburg (near Heerlen) several hilltop sites with earthworks dating back from this period have been excavated.

With society changing from hunter gathering to farming, there was a need for better technologies to clear the forest for farmland. A major breakthrough occurred around 4000BCE, and spread throughout Europe, the polishing of flint stone. New, very labour incentive polished axes were many times more efficient than the old rough flint stone axes.

The increase demand for flint axes for forest clearing led to the opening up mines in areas of suitable Cretaceous or Jurassic deposits. One of Europe’s oldest mines are also dating back to this period, the flint stone mine of Rijckholt (near Eijsden in Limburg). The area was mined for four to five centuries and over that period around a thousand mine shafts were built; each mine was worked for two or three years. At any time between 5 to 10 mineworkers, belonging to the Michelsberg Group, would be active at the site. Flint stone from this mine was exported to settlements up to two hundred kilometres or more from the mine site; Rijckholt flint has been found in Groot Linden near Grave (Brabant), and Münster, Frankfurt and Mainz in Germany. The mine can still be visited.

While artifacts from the Michelsberg culture are recovered in Brabant, there is little indication that farming had become widespread in this area. It looks like that after the hunter gathers had left the area not much was happening here. At the same time north of the rivers the Swifterband culture had started to flourish. Brabant was some sort of a no-mans land in between.

River divide

From now on we enter a period where distinct cultures were divided by the river system that divides the Low Countries in north and south. The north was closer linked to the developments in what is now Germany, while the south had stronger links with cultures in France . This is evident in the many artifacts that are found; as there are not that many raw materials available these had to come from other places and this allows archeologists to trace those trading links.

In the north we see a higher prominance of the following cultures:

• Swifterband
• Funnelbeakers
• Vlaardingen

In the south:

• Steiner Group
• Corded ware
• Hilversum culture

Swifterbant Culture 5400 – 4300BCE

Further to the north, there is some evidence that the earlier hunter gathers from the Hanover and Ahrensburg groups (10000-9000BCE), via other Mesolithic hunter gathers are providing a continuing pattern of habitation in the habitable parts of the Low Countries.

After the massive changes that occurred after the last Ice Age the north-western part of what is now the Netherlands slowly started to become more hospitable. However, it is not until 4000BCE before the coast line is stable enough to see the developments of permanent settlements – in the relative few drier areas – in the north of the Netherlands.  By 5000 it were still hunter gathers (fishing) communities who were still dominated most of the Low Countries.

Favorite areas for the early farming settlements were the above mentioned sand dunes which were formed during the end of the last ice age and the push moraine hills that were formed in previous ice age period.e. These include the hill crests in Drenthe, Twente, Veluwe, Nijmegen, Oss and Utrecht. It is here that we will find early evidence of farming and also the burial grounds of the early farmers.

Indications of the existence of pottery are present from before the arrival of the Linear Pottery culture. Artifacts of a  personal material culture reflects a local social that was undergoing a cultural evolution from the community based Mesolithic culture.

These people have become known as Swifterbant, named after the place in the Noordoostpolder, where significants finds were made. It is possibly a Celtic word meaning to the left. Later on in the Middle Ages we will come across the name Teisterbant, meaning to the right, applying to a region around the Betuwe.

During the Swifterbant period, the Netherlands had significantly more land than it currently has. During the environmental disasters in the Middle Ages large parts of the land in the north and the middle of the Netherlands was taken back by the sea and many of the Swifterbant sites ended up under water, after land reclamation in the 20^thcentury several of these sites were recovered in a good state as the water had preserved many of the artefacts rather well.

The material culture of the Swifterbant is very similar to the Ertebølle culture that developed around the same time further to the north, mainly in what is now Denmark.

Between 4800 and 4300BCE we start to see the first pastoral activities in the northern parts of the Low Countries (Drenthe, South Holland). There are indications that agriculture and husbandry started here more or less independently from similar developments elsewhere. This could be an indication that the wave of Neolithic innovations here was caused by word of mouth which did spread faster than the spread of the people themselves who were the driving force behind the pastoral and agriculture revolution. The early Swifterbant developments remain a combination of farming settlements and fishing camps, utilised by semi nomadic communities.

This is where the Swifterbant started to differ from Ertebølle; pastoral activities didn’t start in Denmark until a thousand years later.

From 4300 onwards agriculture activity are taking place in our region. Settlements were concentrated near creeks, river dunes and bogs along post-glacial banks of rivers like the Overijsselse Vecht.

Bandkeramiek Pottery becomes more widespread in the Swifterbant area from 4,500 onwards.

Others settlements have been found on the former island of Urk, at Bergschenhoek (not far from Rotterdam), Betuwe and in Hardinxveld- Giessendam.

Funnelbeaker culture 4,000-2,700BCE

One of the largest of the regional beaker cultures in the Scandinavian – Northern Germanic region was the Funnelbeaker (Trechterbeker) culture. Another early agriculture based culture. Experts are still debating how much of this culture was native and how much was due to migration of the Indo Europeans. There are indications that at least part of the Swifterbant became influenced by the new trend.

The Funnelbeaker culture is also believed to be the origin of the gene allowing adults of Northern European descent to digest lactose (cow milk), which caused a revolution in survival and population growth.

The Funnelbeakerpeople were part of the new megalith culture that swept over large parts of Europe at that time. This has been interpreted as significant changes in the believes and spiritual values of the population involving ancestor worship and astrology. It is estimated that these people erected over 20,000 monuments, such as the stone circle at Carnac in Brittany from the 4th century BCE (3,000 standing stones), the famous 3th century BCE Stonehenge in England and the earliest known sun observatory that of Goseck, Germany dating back the 5th century BCE . While these people share their megalithic culture, there are distinct differences between them. It has been suggested that these significant differences were the result of the mixing of the new people and in particular their new believes with the native population.

 

In our region they are the builders of the famous dolmen (hunebedden – the word “huyne” means giant in old German  see also video clip). These large and small stones were deposited here by the ice. They were used to build the massive burial chambers of which over 50 of them can still be found in the Dutch province of Drenthe. They were erected between 3500 and 2700BCE. The remnants of the most southerly hunebed were found near Ootmarsum. In the same area and dating from the same period a large number of tumuli have been found, an indication that people from different cultures did live together peacefully here. One of the tumuli had a stone circle as its foundation.

These were also amongst the first known people in this part of the world that were using the wheel.

 

Vlaardingen Culture  3,500 – 2,500BCE

A related but separate culture known as the VlaardingenCulture (3,500 – 2,500BCE) evolved in the coastal area. It is believed that this culture displayed both aspects of the new agriculture developments as well as of the previous hunter gathering Swifterbant culture. However, by now these people were well and truly settled farmers. A stone ax of these people was also discovered near Tilburg in Brabant. A pot typical of their culture, with little holes around the top (to put rope though?) was also found in Herpen, near Oss.

The Vlaardingen people had by now reached a similar lifestyle as the early Beaker people on the löss grounds, some 2,000 year earlier.

The Vlaardingen people also lived along the rivers where their Swifterbant ancestors lived, but also spread more throughout the dunes along the North Sea.

Stein Group 3450-2500BCE

There is strong evidence that this culture group either originated in central Europe (Poland) or was heavily influenced by the people here. The latest theory is that for yet unknown reasons the local people who lived in the Low Countries and neighbouring areas to the east and the south, here suddenly and in large numbers adopted this new culture, starting to use stone axes and pottery and changed their burial traditions (single graves). ¹³

This is a localised sub culture group based an a tomb found near the Limburg town of Stein. However, they appeared first further north, with several finds in Drenthe and Overijssel. Towards the end of their period they start to appear  in Brabant along the river Maas. These farmers burried complete pots or just shards in isolation. One such grave was unearthed in Berghem, near Oss.   In Linden a bit further along the river Maas a large pit with several complete pots has been unearthed.

From here this culture mover further south. Other evidence of this group of people has been found in Moergestel and Eindhoven. It is only during this period that agriculture had started to become more common in Brabant. A single grave burial from these people was unearthed in Bergeijk. The settlements still look more like a hunters camp rather than farms. It is perhaps not strange that the earliest farming evidence is along the river Maas where obviously communication and trading between the various people took place.

Other sub-cultures include the Rope Beaker or Swedish-Norwegian Battle Axe (3,100 – 2,500 BCE). The Dutch variant is also known as the Standvoetbeker also known as enkelgraf culture (single grave). However, it has also been argued that they all belong to one and the same culture group.

Corded Ware Pottery 3,200-2,300BCE

The Indo-European culture, as well as its language, started in all earnest to spread through northwestern Europe during the Corded Ware period, especially with the Bell Beaker variant in our region. This most probably was further stimulated as Eurasian plough farming became more widespread and agriculture finally became more fully implemented. The technique used was short-term fallowing, a form of (grain) crop rotation where part of the land, in this case,  is left uncultivated for a short  period of time. This was linked with livestock raising, oxes and later horses were used as draught animals and other livestock provided meat, milk, wool and manure.

Its pottery is the most obvious common evidence of these mobile pastoral people.  This common culture predates – but is also the starting point – for the various IndoEuropean cultures/language groups which started to evolve in more independent groups/cultures. This culture had over 20 regional variants, also reflecting the independent developments that started to emerge. These drinking beakers, mostly around one litre in size, started to accompany the axe as male burial gifts; both the number of axes and beakers started to increase in numbers. The previous polished stone axes, associated with forest clearing, started to be replace by more prestigious battleaxes.

The emphasis on drinking had reached these regions from Anatolia and southeast Europe. Most probably they were filled with a weak alcohol brew made from honey and wild fruits, all scarce resources and thus further emphasising prestige and importance.

Sexual dimorphism that starts to occur during this period and which is for example visible in the different ways men and women are buried, most probably also reflects the ideology and beliefs of these people. More will be discussed below in relation to the religious expression of these people.

The latter Neolithic and Copper Ages are one of the most significant and interesting periods in the history of Europe.

Copper Age 4,500 – 2,500 BCE

It was during the Eneolithical(Copper Age) – this period coincided with the Corded Ware pottery cultures – when we are starting to see structural changes to the way the people lived together; the diversification of Europe had now well and truly started.

With the scratch plough agriculture based societies could produced more food and therefore could sustain more people, this led to population explosions. This needs to be seen in a relative way, as Europe remained largely unpopulated and settlements remained small and scattered thought a rather insulated environment of dense forests.

As mentioned above, the combination of more people and permanent settlements had already led to need for protection and the first fortified settlements had already started to appear in Eastern Europe around 6000BCE.

People soon figured out that copper was a powerful tool it became, as a matter of fact, the first weapon of mass destruction. The sites were copper was found were rare and these mines became rapidly under the control of the emerging warrior elite. More wealth could now be created by concurring than by agriculture. Power became more and more important and as a result of this – now also in north-western Europe – stratified societies started to emerge.

In the beginning those who could produce copper products were seen as magicians and held a very powerful position within their communities. We see this back later in the Greek mythology.

Copper became a prestige product that was often buried with warriors and leaders; indicating their importance in their communities, further indicating a more competitive society, which would lead to less cohesion. More diversification, different roles and new social opportunities all were a result of these changes.

In north-western Europe, elaborate cooperative religious manifestations such as the ones that can be found in the megalithic culture were rather suddenly replaced by a more individualistic culture, based on personal and portable wealth. The focus shifted from places to people and their personal possessions.

This also led to the growth of trade. Small-scale opportunistic movements of people stimulated the exchange and transfer of new technologies. A key route for our region was along the Danube all the way from southeast Europe and than over time further along the Rhine and Seine rivers.

It was mobility that allowed the people to break away from their rather small and isolated communities and they started to establish wider networks of social interaction. In order to progress, goods and livestock were exchanged and a more complex relationship required leadership, negotiations, new concepts of hospitality and other organisational values and sometimes people were forced to face the threat of aggression.

Control of men, animals and nature became the new ways to progress society. Those who were able to manage these processes were able to attain power.

Copper was needed – and later tin to make bronze tools – in the case of western Europe most of these products had to be obtained from distant places and bartered with other produce such as amber, salt, gold, silver and so on.  In all it took nearly 2,000 years for copper and bronze to become a more commonly used commodity.

While long-distance trade only had a limited effect on this outlaying part of Europe, this ‘Age’ had an unstoppable effect on the exchange of ideas, innovations and thoughts between peoples and would from now on become a permanent feature of the newly emerging Europeans. A very rare and beautiful copper ax was found in Escharen (near Grave, Brabant) because of its unusual format (a very small hole for the handle) it is believed it was use for ceremonial purposes. However, there never has been a ‘Copper Age’ period in the north western part of Europe. However, copper artifacts was used by the Bell Beaker people who lived in these regions (see below).

International communication and trade patterns, which are now so well established, were first – in any serious way – experimented in this Copper Age.

Neolithic Revolution in the Low Countries

Three thousand years after it started in the Eastern Mediterranean, with the arrival of Corded Ware people, the Neolithic and Copper Revolution finally came to a grand finale in the Low Countries.

While in other parts of Europe the changes over the previous 3000 years occurred more gradual in the Low Countries when all of these innovations finally came together this resulted in a sharp break between the old archaic and static structures.

As is the case in modern times, also than, such abrupt changes open up ways for innovations, new structures and cultural developments. As this development happened rather late in this remote region, we might want to talk about a rather rapid ‘revolution’ and as is often the case revolutions lead to tension and disruption.

This period can be seen as a final end of the megalithic stone mortuary shrines as they started to be replaced by smaller burial places, reflecting a more mobile society. It was in these regions of northwest Europe where the old native structure lasted the longest, but finally also the people here were brought into modern times.

The changes might have invigorated the local people, or at least some people within their society, and led to a series of rapid changes, most probably overthrowing old archaic structures, this propelled these ‘modernists’ to the forefront of a range of new innovations.

This upheaval might even have led to the development of some small local dynasties of competing (young) chiefs, some graves known as chieftain graves could be an indication of that. However, it is important to put this in the context of still rather primitive farming communities.

Living along the coast and rivers, these people had become seasoned seafarers. They also might have been stimulated to look beyond their marginal agriculture lands, limited by the environments situation of this dynamic region between land and water. Add to this population increases and you have the right mix for a Dutch revolution.

These people established a complex networks of alliances to secure the material symbols of success. Raiding must also have had his origin in this period a development that would continue well into the early Middle Ages. However, at this early stage this did not yet lead to enforced territorial boundaries or asserted territorial control.

The Bell Beaker Culture 2,800 – 1,900 BC

The Corded Ware culture arrived in the Rhine Delta around 3100 BCE most probably from the east and this culture was adopted by the native Hunebedbuilders, Stein Group, Enkelgraf Culture and Vlaardingen Culture people. They brought with them knowledge and materials of the Neolithic Revolution. It took a few centuries for these cultures to mix and to form the local Bell Beaker (Klokbeker) culture, they also continued the tradition of single grave burials.

 

These Bell Beakers are very important cultural markers and they are representing the people living in the Rhine Delta and along the rivers including the Rhineland.

Occupying an area of maritime cross roads, they traded with Britain and Scotland and along the Atlantic coast, their bell beakers and other elements of their culture, ended up all the way in Portugal, southern Spain and Sicily. Via the inland river systems they reached well into Germany and France.  This might well be the earliest evidence of the seafaring and trading nature of these people; a characteristic still closely linked with the Low Countries These characteristics have been maintained by these people ever since.

Many people they came in contact with rather rapidly took over their new individual material way of life and the Bell Beaker people had a long lasted effect on several of the other, especially the more marginally, bronze age people along the fringes of what in many cases was still very much a communal oriented megalithic Europe. It also caused in these place a very distinct break with the past.

Bell Beaker people didn’t reach Scandinavia and this region kept living in a retarded Stone Age.

The importance of the Bell Beaker culture is further highlighted as it is seen as a local flavour of the Proto Celtic Indo Europeans.

These travel and trading activities also brought these people in contact with other Bronze Age cultures, in particular the Únětice culture (Central Europe ca. 2,300-1,600BCE) and Nordic Bronze Age, a culture of Scandinavia and northernmost Germany-Poland,  1,700-500 BC.

These contacts also assisted in the opening up trading routes with the metallurgic people in Central Europe. Bell Beaker people were instrumental in the spread the use of bronze products and most probably also horses and chariots throughout their trading areas. They rapidly became a main competitor to the older-established steppe based groups.

Drinking beakers

The  bell beakers, which are the most characteristic elements of the culture the people representing this culture left behind, were – based on pollen research – definitely also used for weak alcohol drinks like mead with herbs and wild fruits, perhaps assisting them in preparation for their dangerous travels. While it is more likely that this was used for hospitality rather than large-scale community ceremonies, there has been a persistent image of alcohol loving people during Germanic and medieval Dutch times, it is only since rather recent has this image has started to recede.

At the burial ground in Oss, there were at least two graves with bell beaker findings, dating back to between 2,200 and 2,000BCE. The first one, beautifully decorated, of the ‘Veluwe’  type was found in the urn field close to the Hallstatt chieftain grave (see below) this one was at that time (1935) the first of such find in Brabant. The beaker was buried next to a cremation, this is a rather unusual find from the late Neolithic. A second Bell Beaker, or better describes as a plate was found around the same time in a tumulus a few kilometers west in Schaijk, they also discovered the silhouette of a skull in the sandy grounds of the tumulus.

Other evidence of these people in this region include a beaker in a single grave as well as an (empty) 2nd grave near Cuijk and another grave a few kilometers further near the village of Haps. In nearby Beers-Gassel another bell beaker was recovered together with some golden jewelery.

At Mander near Ootmarsum the grave of the (feet-less)  famous ‘ De  Man van Mander’ )the Man of Mander) also indicates a Bell Beaker burial in this area. He was buried in a stone coffin under a tumulus. Also this area is rich with tumuli (approx. 20) and as at the tumuli in Oss, also here one of them was used to put gallows on top. Further more a large unrfield (300 graves)  and  the remnants of two older hunebeds and this site goes even further back with a flint stones find that dates back to the Neanderthal man (80,000BCE). Also similar to Oss is the positioning of the settlement this time on the slopes of  sandy hill of the 15 km long  push moraines between Ootmarsum Uelsen (Germany), its highest point was 89 meters, there are plenty of springs and streams in the area. In this area the urnfields at Rossum are another example of early settlement covering a period from approx 3000BCE till 800BCE.

Of the approx 1,000 tumuli in the Low Countries, nearly two thirds are found in the middle of the country a region known as the Veluwe.

Bronze Age 2,300 – 800BCE

Broader European context

We now start to see some sharp differences in pre-historic European developments.

While in northwestern Europe the agricultural and technological advances remained rather slow paced, during the Bronze Age, close to the advanced society in Egypt and the Middle East, it was in Crete where finally more sophisticated and complex palace-state cultures started to make an inroad into Europe. Minoan Crete and later Mycenaean Greece were leading this development in Europe.

The Mycenaean’s also belonged to the Bronze Age warrior societies, be it with a more sophisticated material culture than most of the other Bronze Age people. These cultures started to interact with each other on the fringes of their are of influence, the Celts along the river Danube and the Etruscans in Italy. It was in particular via the Danube that the northwestern area of Europe – roughly at that same time – started to see its own revolution.

Another interesting Mediterranean culture also had far reaching consequences on the development of the European history, however its impact on northern Europe was limited. Interstingly they were the first thalassocracy (maritime based empire), it would take another 2,000 years before other similar thalassocracies evolved that of the Portuguese and the Dutch.

Greek Civilisation

One of the most well known battles of the Bronze Age was the Troyan War, this most likely took place in the 12th century BCE  (according to Erathostanus from 1194-1184). Legend has it that it was all about the beautiful Queen Helena who was kidnapped from Greece (Sparta) and taken to Troy (modern Turkey). The independent Greek cities formed a coalition and fought the far more sophisticated Troyans, but in the end succeeded.

At times the combined Greek cities within the concept of a national identity,  showed unity. They twice beat the far more powerful Persian armies. However, more  often they also fought each other (e.g. the Peloponnesian wars)  and in the end it was their disunity – each city was a totally self governing unity – that led to the fall of Greece.  In 336BCE  King Philip II of  Macedonia took control over heartland Greece. His son Alexander the Great  established  the largest empire of ancient times.  After Alexander’s death, during the so called Hellenistic period, Greek culture was spread thought the remnant of Alexander’s empire as far away as India and Kazakhstan. It has even be suggested that Greek knowledge and philosophy made into Sanskrit literature.

In the meantime the famous Greek colonies around the Mediterranean were conquered by the Romans and Greece itself was incorporated in the Roman Empire in 146BCE, Greek culture remained popular amongst the Roman elite.  While Greece as a country never developed into an empire, during its millennium of existence the  Greek created a culture that was in many aspects unrivaled until very recently.

Phoenicean Maritime Empire

This successful culture developed in the north of the ancient Canaan in what is nowadays Palestine, Israel, Lebanon and Syria.  It is unclear if Canaan and Phoenicia are one and the same.  (see also video clip Israel Prehistory). They settled in the are around 1550BC, however their empire was a thalassocracy (maritime based). They dominated maritime trade in and around the Mediterranean for more than a thousand years. As mentioned above they were also the first people to use the alphabet.

They were also amongst the first to create city states in their own territory this included Tyre and Sidon -perhaps the latter was the capital city of the empire , Akkã (Akko, Acre) just to the south was either part of Phoenicia or affiliated with it, it also had an important port and as such would fit in well in the maritime empire.  (see video clip port of Acre).

The Phoenicians established trading posts in Sicily around 900BC and founded in North Africa Carthage in 814BC. After the Persians – in 538 BC  - conquered their territory along the Levant, the Phoenicians moved to Carthage. The Greek started to establish their trading posts around the Mediterranean  from around 750BC.  For more than a century the two Mediterranean super powers lived peacefully next to each other. However from around 600BC they started to clash in Sicily this initially simply led to a division of the island, the Phoeniceans  in the east (Palermo) and the Greek in the west (Syracuse – see clip).

However, during these periods of aggression, the cities in Sicily often used the Greek and Phoeniceans to assist them on a as needed basis, this led to a waring situation for nearly 350 years, known as the Sicilian Wars are more correctly the Greek-Punic Wars. Initially between the Greek and the Phoenicians in Carthage and later between the Romans and the Carthagineans. The first clash occurred in 580BC on the island of Motya (Mozia) of the coast of Trapani (see video clip).

The Greek city of Segesta was assisted by the Carthagineans in 540 to defeat a Greek expedition.  The first serious was started in 480Bc. Greek power had increased with two competing Greek powers in Sicily, the Ionians (Palermo)and the Doric (stronghold Syracuse), the Carthgineans dominated the west. The Phoenicean fleet stranded (bad weather?) and lost the war.

The second Punic War started in 415BC when Segesta asked for the assistance of Athens and when their expedition failed they asked for the  the Phoeniceans to help them, this led to the total destruction of the city (see video clip). In another raid the Carthaginians destroyed the Greek city of  Akragas (Agrigento) in 406BC (see video clip). A peace treaty was signed which enforced the supremacy of the Phoeniceans on the island.

During the Third Punic War the city Selinunte, remained loyal to the Phoeniceans and was destroyed by the Greek in 307BC (see video clip). In the meantime the Carthagineans had built a new stronghold in Marsala in the Province of Tarpani. However, the overall power of the Carthegineans was severely reduced.

Pyrrhic Victory

Between 280-275BC King Pyrrhus of Epirus (Greece state facing Italy)interfered in a range of complex local conflicts in the region, including the ones linked to the Punic Wars. He amazingly defeated the Romans in Italy and the Carthagineans in Sicily, however the costs of these victories was so high that he had to withdraw to his homeland and as such lost all of his won territories. This event has gone into history as the saying ‘a Pyrrhic Victory’.

A new series of wars – known as the Roman – Punic Wars started in 264 also in Sicily –  as  a local conflict. However, the Romans used this event to become involved with the purpose to undermine the Carthagineans. The Romans wanted to expand their regional hegemony into Sicily. They also used new naval technology to attack – what until that time was – a nearly undefeated Punic navy. At the end of the war in 214BC Sicily was under the control of Rome.

Interestingly the Phoeniceans conquered a large part of Hispania and from here – during the second Punic War (218-210BC) – one of the most celebrated military leaders of all times – Hannibal - crossed the Alps into what is now southern France and entered Italy. Some of the military defeats were amongst the heaviest Rome encountered during the 800 years of its existence (at Cannae in Italy some 70,000 Romans were killed – 90% of its total force) . However, a lack of supply support from Carthage forced Hannibal to stop short of actually conquering Italy through this back-door. This was for the first time that the Mediterranean powers started to reach into Europe above the Alps – at this stage however – just passing through. They did receive the support here from the local Celtic tribes, many of them even joined Hannibal in his expedition into Italy.

Initially Rome was devastated and demoralised, the country was in disarray and even resorted back to human sacrifices to appease the gods. However, the Carthagineans were unable to built on this success and resorted to a range of internal conflicts; severely weakening its political  position. Rome felt strong enough to renege on its peace treated and started to attack the Carthagineans in North Africa which ended with the conquering of Carthage in 146BC which led to the demise of the Phoenicean maritime empire.

Some 500 year later German tribes started to arrive  in this are with the Vandals conquering Carthage.

Mediterranean influences on northern Europe

Apart from a few brush strokes none of these Mediterranean developments reached northern Europe. However, shortly after the end of the Punic Ware, Romans interest would start moving northwards.  It was only at that time that the Mediterranean culture started to reach northwest Europe but even than it didn’t have a transforming effect on the north-western region of the continent.  Only in Medieval times did we start to see the arrival of state building activities; the arrival of palaces and cities and in general the arrival of more complex societal structures. It is no wonder that these southern cultures soon started to characterise their northern neighbours as Barbarians.

However, what did influence our region – at the time the Minoan culture arrived in Crete – were Bronze Age developments, which originated – again – on the eastern Steppes (4500BCE). This together with their skills in horse rearing and their new vehicle the chariot had a great influence on the developments in the rest of Europe.

A key region for the development of metallurgy was Central Germany and Czech especially the Únětice region in this latter country. Initially the spread of bronze was stimulated by the mobility of the steppe people, with their horses they reached both east into Asia and west into central Europe where bronze was produced. One of the most famous artifacts of these people is the beautiful so called bronze sky disk found in the German town of Nebra. It is portable observatory dating back to 1600BCE.

As mentioned, there is a strong esoteric link with metallurgy; smiths were seen as very important people, we see similar roles of smiths in the many religious stories both in Nordic and the Mediterranean versions.

The Bronze Age in the Low Countries

There was not that a sharp divide between the Bell Beaker period (Copper Age) and Bronze Age in the Low Countries, more of a gradual inclusion of bronze objects within the existing cultures. The first finds date back to 2,100 BCE (Wageningen) and 1,900 BCE (Barger-Oosterveld). The Hilversum Culture (1,800 – 1,100 BCE) is also linked to this period, this is a rather misnomer while indeed a rare find of this pottery was found near Hilversum, the centre of this culture however, is further south in  Brabant and Belgium.

Similar to copper, bronze largely remained a prestigious good to be used for gift exchange and most regularly found in burial sites and at religious sites where it was used to obtain goodwill from their gods. Bronze however, was far more easier to work with for jewelery, arrow heads and daggers. The number of weapons produced indicates that man-to-man fights had become a far more serious activity by now.

Again Escharen delivers some great finds from the middle period – along the river Raam – two swords, a big arrow point and a bracelet. In Oss a very rare (the only one in the Low Countries) and large mold was discovered, it could be used for the production of three totally different products a so called heel axe (farming), an arrowhead (hunting) and a so called radnaald (round needle used for fibula for ladies from the higher classes). Other sites include: Cuijk, Escharen and Gassel the same place names as we came across in the previous period. A rare find further south is near Nijnsel.

As in the proceeding Stein group period also during the Bronze Age it is this north eastern corner of Brabant – in and around Oss – that saw an explosion in human activity. However, these people started to use more robust building materials for their farms and they have left better traces behind for the archeologists to study. These people started to travel further west and south; vegetation samples also indicate that large parts of the original forests disappeared indicating more cultivation. The farms were both occupied by people and their cattle. A practice that in many parts of Europe continued to well into the 20th century. The change in culture also indicates that cattle started to play a more prominent role in their societies; perhaps cattle and its produce became part of the new trading acticiviets that had started to emerge. It doesn’t look like that arrival of bronze had any significant impact on societal or economic changes. In some areas bronze however, did play a role in their (burial) ceremonies and in their contacts between people outside their own settlement.

From now on settlements also  started to become permanent. After farm houses started to deteriorate new ones were build between 25 and 200 meters further on, as we will see below in the chapter on the settlement of Oss. Other farm settlements in Brabant include: Loon op Zand, Geldrop, Boxmeer and perhaps also Rosmalen and Breda. Most of these settlements were very small, only one or two farm houses were in use at any given time, indicating an ongoing tradition of family clans.

Cultural progress certainly occurred amongst the northern Bronze Age people, as high quality bronze sculptures, drinking vessels and jewellery that included gold, silver and amber was produced locally across the region. While less in number their artistic skills were certainly not less than their more famous southern cousins around the Mediterranean. Chariots became widespread used and textiles become more elaborate. All clear indications that the new culture of individualism, which had started in the late Neolithic and Copper Ages, continued and further developed during the Bronze Ages.

One of the most famous finds of the Bronze Age has been the necklace of Exloo (Drenthe) dating back to around 1,800BCE. It consists of 25 tin beads, 14 amber beads and 4 faience (glass paste) beads.

Drenthe seems to have been the centre for bronze casting in the Low Countries, perhaps this was because there was a trading route over the hill crest that runs through this province this might have been used for amber trade with the Baltics.

While the Copper Ages saw a wide diversity, especially in its pottery, the Bronze Age shows a far more uniform cultural pattern.

An increase in bronze production required an increase in trade. This was needed to obtain the commodities required for the production of bronze. This required a higher level of organisation from the earlier developed trading systems of the Copper Age. Local trading goods had to be produced to obtain these commodities. This will have included hides, cattle, wool and possible fur from animals trapped in the forests.

Late Bronze Age revolutions around 1300BCE

The innovative Bronze Age people also led to the spread of more advanced bronze inventions such as the lost-wax technology and the use of multiple-piece moulds. This saw the introduction of many new objects. They also invented an easier way of transporting the commodity, done in sheets.

There are also indications that the most south-eastern groups of the Bronze Age Tumuli Culture traded with Mycenae. There are a few rare finds of products based on innovations from the south; as mentioned above; northern Europe remained uninfluenced by the developments around the Mediterranean.

Towards the end of the Bronze Age, we also see a very noticeable increase in high-quality gold objects. This must have had a significant effect on the economy of on the personal wealth of the local chieftains.  Bronze artifacts played a very important role in social life with complex gift giving traditions involved over long distances, this tradition most likely dates back to well before the Bronze Age period and continued well into historic times .

Celtic Fields

Celtic fields are an innovation of the early Bronze Age (c.1800BCE) they are a popular name for the traces of early agricultural field systems, but have nothing to do with the Celts. They can date from any time between the Early Bronze Age  and were in use until the early medieval period.

These are characterised by their proximity to other ancient features such as enclosures, sunken lanes and farmsteads and are divided into a patchwork quilt of square plots rarely more than 2,000 m² in area although larger examples are known. Their small size implies that each was cultivated by one individual or family. There are some good examples of these fields In Friesland, especially the one in Hijkerveld (Drenthe) is well known. It is estimated that to feed a family of six, 100 of these patches were needed, in any given year only 25 of them could be cultivated, and the rest had to be left fallow. The Celtic fields known from this period could not sustain more than five or seven farms.

Video Clip – Celtic Field on the Veluwe (Netherlands)

A further revolution in agriculture occurred around 1300BCE. Broad beans started to appear as well as the more regular appearance of millet and rye. Oil-bearing plans became cultivated such as flax, poppy and gold-of-pleasure (false flax). These agriculture innovations started to reach the northern regions in the early Iron Age. Some of these innovations would not reach their full potential until the Middle Ages, when millet became the main staple for the populations and a key ingredient for the production of fermented drinks and porridges.

An archaeological site in Bovenkarspel (North Holland) provides evidence for the systematic breeding and herding of cattle on a rather large scale.

Increasingly iron started to become in use in daily life (tools and weapons). The technique to abstract iron seem to have started in the Tatra mountains of Slovakia. Separately it also started in Persia and India around 1200BCE. However, based on technological innovations, full developed ironware only started to reach northern Europe in the 8^th century. Iron ore is far more common that copper and tin and enabled a much more wide spread utility use of the metal. However the metallurgical processes are more complex.

Within a few centuries the millennium old stone tools were replaced by bronze. While iron rather rapidly started to replace bronze again, bronze remained the preferred metal for high quality art products.

Tumulus and urnfield cultures 1,600 – 1,200BCE – late Bronze Age

The late Bronze Age saw also a rapid change in burials; cremation became the dominant funeral tradition, perhaps indicating a change in religious beliefs, brought with the invaders and migrants coming from the steppes (tumuli = kurgans in Russian).

After a period were it was the tradition to bury their dead individually or later collectively in rather large tumuli this ritual changed and people started to cremate their dead and buried them individually under a small barrow, sometimes surrounded by a small ditch or more depending on the status of the deceased. Graves were put closer together and that’s how the urnfields formed, sometimes they were next to the old larger tumuli. As we will see later in the Low Countries the higher sand dunes formed during the ice ages, became favorable spots for these burial grounds, as well as for the first settlements here.

It is thought that these barrows were seen as houses of the dead, with their inhabitants looking over the living, welcoming new people, sometimes feasts and processions were organises at the tumulus. Several of these tumuli have a south-east entrance and the ditches sometimes have a little dam here. This looks very much like a midwinter solstice alignment and is similar to many other tumuli and megalithic passage graves and throughout Europe.  It has also been argued that there is a cosmology relationship with the burrow for the dead being ‘underground’ representing the underworld and the mound the cosmos, often a tree or a stake was put on top of it as a link with the upper world.  While there is some evidence for such decorations in Britain and Ireland there is no indication of this also happening in the Low Countries, but there is no reason to believe that also here, this has not been the case. As we will see sometimes these barrows were used for secondary burials as well, but as there are relative few people buried in these tumuli, clearly not everybody was buried in tumuli.

These tumuli were often built on higher grounds (sand hills as in the case near Oss – see below) and sometimes small hills and remained a prominent feature in the landscape for centuries even millennia and would also inspire the living and this would assist them in providing wise council to them. The higher laying Maashorst – as mentioned above – was also a popular area for burials.  Over time many of these sites accumulated larger number of tumuli. The one on the Maashorst – Slabroek – counts 38 circle ditches (see video clip). Another famous urn field is Toterfout, near Veldhoven, where some 34 burial mounds have been located dating back to 1,600 and 1,000 BCE.  There are also a significant number of them in the area near Ootmarsum and in 2007 we visited some of them in an area north of the town, known as Springendal. Two other ones in Brabant will be discussed in more detail below: Haps and Oss.

The spread of the above-mentioned Czech Únětice culture within the dynamic Bell Beaker culture period might have be the catalyst for the spread of tumuli in our region. The new trend arrived from the east via the Danube. It had such an impact on our region that it the period became known as the Tumulus culture.

A vigorous group of the tumuli culture became established in and around the Lüneburger Heide in north west Germany, they rapidly occupied the niche left open by the Beaker people to the west and opened trade routes to the north, in particular into Jutland and to the mineral rich areas to the south.

Somewhere around 1300 BCE tumuli burials started to become replaced by urnfield burials. Most urn fields are dating from 1,300 – 950BCE and will stay in use until well into Roman times. However, it was not until around 1050BCE before this trend started in Brabant where these burial grounds became especially prominent (some 135 of them).  In the (southern) Low Countries this date – 1050BCE – is used as the starting date for the late Bronze Age period in this part of the world. Above the rivers this period had started here slightly earlier. In the south the urnfields are similar to those in neighbouring Germany (Rhineland) and Belgium. The largest urnfield in the Low Countries is near Weert. One of the largest in Brabant is the burial site Someren-Waterdael where there are 185 graves.

Based on the analyses of these burial sites also during the Bronze and Iron Ages most settlements remained not much larger than one or two families

Often these new urnfields were in close proximity of the earlier tumuli and sometimes as we will see in Oss, an old tumulus was reused for an urn burial. Towards the end of the urnfield period we see the arrive of pole circles as per the picture below.

The end of the urn field burials finished as abrupt as it started. From 500BCE onwards they totally disappear, to the great despair of archeologist.

Video clips tumuli:

Oss

Mander Twente

Veluwe

 

The settlements of Oss

Oss is one of the early settlements that were established on the border between higher and lower grounds. The effects of the above mentioned peel fault had created a perfect environment  the higher grounds north of Oss further more created a barrier for the water flowing (mainly underground) of the peel morasses and surfaced in little streams that created further opportunities for settlements (wijsten). Furthermore the area was close enough to the river Maas to also take part in this trade and gift exchange network.

The fact that we know so much about this is that the University of Leiden became involved in this project back in the 1970s and in all three generation of archeologist from this university have been studying these sites over some 35 years and their work was in 2011 still continuing. Most of the information in this section is thank to the work of these people and the various publications that they have produced.

Communities were established  on the higher land dunes – a remnant of the Ice Age –  perhaps as early as 3000BCE and on the river flats, from around 2000BCE. The sandy hills also showed remnant of hunter gathers campsites dating back another 3000 to 4000 years.

We already saw above that the people in this region were influenced by the Bell Beaker culture. There is a strong indication that the hunter-gathers from the Mesolithic became the  first farmers in the north-west European Neolithic.  At the southern settlement, on the higher ground, archeologists also found evidence of a hunter-gatherers camp from the Mesolithic. Under one of the tumuli they also found evidence of two poles dating back from the late Neolithic (2900-2600BCE). ¹⁴ It is impossible that all these these cultural changes that occurred throughout this period did not effect the local population, however, there is very little evidence that these resulted in large scale changes to their societies.

There is also no evidence of invasion or large scale migration, the conclusion more likely is that the local people adopted some of the new innovations, but only those that fitted into their local pattern.

From this Neolithic period onwards there is remarkable little evidence of hunting so it looks like from that time  farming has been the main activity.

The social development of the village economy here had its origin in these very small  Neolithic, Bronze Age and Iron Age communities. Interestingly these  settlements continued into modern times. Some of these settlements didn’t really start to change at all until the Middle Ages and even many an iron age person walking around in some the more isolated part of this region as recent as the first half of the  20^th century would have recognised significant elements of the ways of life they had lived here a few thousand years earlier.

The social and economic developments in northwest Europe have been the most stable of those in the whole of Europe, isolated from the consumer market developments in the Mediterranean and the more disruptive developments in the eastern parts of the continent. There is little evidence of status or of any significant social and economic differences between the farmers who lived here.

Forest settlements

The current centre of Oss  - as well as the older  Neolithic river flat communities are 7km  south of the  forest settlement. So in the end the gravity of the farming activity ended up closer the richer river flats.

Most likely what has happened is that initially the clearing of land took place on easier to till lighter higher laying grounds such as the sandy soils in the area where also the internationally renown burial grounds are – and in which vicinity also most likely the original settlement of this community has been.

The whole area was a cleared area in the forest that existed here on the edge of the Peelhorst, In all perhaps a kilometer long and a few hundred meter wide. The major part was using for grazing and on the sandhill in the middle graves were established

Archaeologists belief that the settlement of these people was just on the southern side of the burial ground, they base this on the use of the land, agriculture evidence, tracks and shards of pottery. However, so far no hard evidence has been unearthed, there are clear indications of agriculture and pastoral activities throughout the nearly 3,000 years of occupation, so most certainly people must have lived close by. Also close by are two springs (Vinkel AA and the Munsche Wetering) and it is known that settlements would not be established without easy access to fresh water.

These sandy soils provided a few good years of agriculture followed by a longer period of pasture, early land management took place through slash and burn techniques and again archaeological research confirms that this was also used around the burial grounds. Pollen research of the burial ground has also indicated that indeed some form of  agriculture had taken place but that, far more significantly, sheep has grazed the area around the graves, perhaps already before 2,300BCE. Sheep also means wool so some economic activity could also well have taken place around that time, perhaps between the two communities.

It also seems that there was a ‘buffer zone of heath of some 250 meters between the burial ground and the forest. Another conclusion that could be made is of course that the people respected this area and didn’t want to till it and therefore let sheep graze the area.

The three communities in the vicinity that continued into modern times were Zevenbergen, Vorssel  and Mun. The farmhouse Zevenbergen was turned into an inn when in 1835  the cobblestoned highway between Nijmegen and Den Bosch. This road makes a slight bend at this spot to avoid the hills which at the time were unknown to be the tumuli, but they were high enough to influence the design of the road. At high school the boy next to me   Gerard van de Ven lived at this farm (the inn had burned down and was rebuilt as a farm house again).

The burial ground of Oss

Over the last 10,000 years we have seen a reoccurrence of different developments between the north and the south of the Low Countries. Different reindeer hunters, different farming culture influences  and also in the Bronze Age we see significant differences. In the south we see cremations and in the north we see inhumations, Oss is situated on the border and we do see rare forms of both burials in the grave fields here.

I remember that in Oss there was the saying: “Ik wou da ge op de Munse hei  lâg”. I wish you were lying on the Mun heath. Unknowingly to the people using the expression in the 19th and 20th century, they were referring to this old and long forgotten burial area.

The necropolis here consists nowadays of three clusters, new roads in this area have over the years build through this area so the integrity of the whole necropolis has been lost. The three clusters are: the graves around the largest tumuli that of the so called ‘chieftain of Oss’, the cluster Zevenbergen, named after the topographical name of the area and the neighbouring (Hooge – High) Vorssel cluster, slightly more to the south, again named after this local community. There could have been more graves but the road constructions would have destroyed them, there is also still a neighbouring forest that could reveal some more graves.

Necropolis Oss

Bell Beaker Tumuli	2 graves	2350-2000BCE
Middle Bronze Age Tumuli	3 tumuli, 8 burials – one tumulitwice  reused in Late Bronze and Iron Age, one with a double circle of poles. This one also hosted the gallows and has three Middle Age burials of criminals?	1800 – 1300BCE
Late Bronze/Early Iron Age (urnfield)	Elongated tumulus. Grave of a woman with gifts	1100- 800 BCE
Iron Age urnfield (5 graves)	No tumuli	1100 BCE
Early Iron Age	110 meters long row of poles (ritual road?)	800-600 BCE
	Hallstatt – Chieftain grave Gold plated sword, stitula, horse bits	600BCE
	Hallstatt – Chieftain grave Schräghals urn, horse harness (?)	600 BCE

The first (known)  Bell Beaker burial took place in an area that at that time had already been in use for perhaps 300 or 500 years. And as can be seen in the table above, there were gaps of a similar age between the use of the area for new burials.

In the Middle Ages (1300-1500AC) one of the tumuli hosted the local gallows and remnants of skeletons with their hands tied behind their back have been unearthed. While these burials must have been less glamorous, again this place was linked to death.

The topographic name ‘Mun’ is linked to the Germanic word ‘minnen’, which according the linguistic experts can be linked back to honouring the death.

Local burial rituals

The extensive burial ground in Oss predates the urnfield period. The origins of this  sacred place dates back to 2,300BCE and was used till 500BCE,  representing a remarkable long period of social continuation as already mentioned above.

During the Neolithic and also during the Bronze Age significant less than 5% of the population was buried in tumuli. Sex, age, family linage  and the position the deceased person had in the community were all important considerations that played a role in how that person would be buried. It is obvious that receiving a tumuli and the seize of it was linked to honour. The grave of the chieftain of Oss is with its 53 diameters the largest in the Low Countries;  so obviously this was an important person. In contrast we see at the river flat settlement that  the death were sometime buried close to the farm or when there were more farms (Roman times) urnfields.

During the Late Bronze Age and the Early Iron Age the urnfield period started and the tumuli changed in format they become a bit more elongated.

Cremation was also not a common practice, while the history of this goes back to the Mesolithic most burials were inhumations either in a burial pit or simply just under the soil, sometimes on an animal skin or on a layer of plants and leaves.  All forms of burial traditions are represented at the necropolis. In the settlements in Oss there are very very few burial gifts. While in the Late Neolithic  this practice became more prominent in other parts of the Low Countries, it didn’t catch on in the southern Low Countries. This is not an indication of the wealth of the person nor of the community, it simply is an indication of the local burial rituals. However, both the chieftain and the ‘prince’ graves (see below) contained rich gifts.

Sometimes small separate structures – approx 2×2 meters – are located close to the tumuli, they typically consist of 4 poles and look very much like the grain spiekers at the farm settlements. Sometimes they are linked with rows of poles to the tumulus. They could have functioned as platforms for the dead before they were cremated, the word shrine has also been mentioned as a possibility.

The differences in burial rituals indicate changes in believes and culture that occurred over this period, but throughout these 3,000 years – sometimes with intervals of several hundreds of years –  this necropolis remained a ‘sacred’ place. It is hard to not come to the conclusion that there must have been a very strong sense of belonging of all those generations of agriculture (rather than nomadic) people who did want to maintain their link with their ancestors. This indicates both a strong link with this place itself and the ancestors who went before them; they provided them with a strong link with the land and the legitimately of that link. While there is no evidence that Bronze Age people had a clear ethnic identity, which would differentiate them from “others”, it is hard not to see that the people who for close to 3,000 years buried their death in the same place would not have had a strong own identity.

While there is a continuity from the Bell Beaker period to the Tumuli period, there are also some differences.

Building a tumuli

One of the Iron Age  tumuli in Oss has a diameter of 53 meters and a height of 3 meters – the largest in the Low Countries – and would have required an area of 200 meters around it to produce the sods needed to built the tumuli, this must have been a rather complex and labour intensive activity. First the area needs to be cleared, next a circle was set out this was either done by digging a ditch or by installing a circle of poles. From this ground design the tumuli was built. The basic cultural and religious principles behind this tradition are also found in other tumuli cultures thoughout Europe as mentioned above.

The area was ideal for the building materials needed. The sandy soil on the Maashorst facilitates podzolization ideal for formation of soils that can be used for the production the sods. The sods here were quite thick.

Building such a grave would have involved the whole community and perhaps those from neigbouring communities. The sods need to be dug out, this was done with stone, bronze or iron knives, they also used shovels made of wood or antler. Archeologist have calculated that the 300×300 mm sods at the graves in Zevenbergen  each weigh approx. 12 kilos. After they were taken out they were transported to the (nearby)  hill. It could well have been that sod production for the tumuli  dates back to the early Bronze Age. One of the tumili at Zevenbergen required a sod production are of 2500m².

Some graves consisted of circles of poles – as we saw with the tumuli in Haps this is a feature of the period 1,500 – 1,100BCE – others had ditches around them. It has been suggested that not all of these poles were necessarily a structural part of the monument, but that it could have been used for shrines of that it was used for other ceremonial activities as part of the death rituals. Most tumuli are situated aprox.100 meters apart of each other.

The poles were placed at a distance of approx 75 cms of each other, so it didn’t create a protection zone or a closed environment. It perhaps indicate more a transition zone, the same could apply to the ditches. They most likely were of ritual significance.

While the area was first researched in the 1930s new more modern research was undertaken in the late 1990s. This has been documented in a publication by the archaeologist of the site Harry Fokkens and Richard Jansen. I have drawn upon some of their findings in the text below. ¹⁵

As mentioned above, the situation in Oss is rather unique in that we do have a combination of various burials. There are inhumations of people in stretched out position, others in a crouched position, as well as there are remnants of cremations. While inhumation was a normal activity in the Bronze Age – as for example was the norm north of the rivers, they are very rare in this part of the world, where most people were cremated at that time. There is a similar burial in the neighbouring burial ground of Zevenbergen.

Some graves have been reused, other built over and some have been flattened to allow new tumuli to be established. One of the tumuli was used four times for different burials between the Bell Beaker and the Iron Age period. Subsequent graves had cremation urns in them. There are also differences in size and form.

Zevenbergen and neighbouring burial sites

Another burial ground some 400 meters to the east of the complex of graves in the vicinity of the chieftain grave, is since time immemorial, called Zevenbergen (Seven Hills).  It again on a low laying sandhill of the aforementioned Maashorst – 100 meters from the most northern edge of the peel fault - and must have been quite a feature in the landscape in the Bronze and Iron Ages. The oldest tumulus (1800-1500BCE)  is positioned on the highest part of this hill ( approx 15 meters).

The area has been researched in 1933, between 1997 and 2004 and finally the last archaeological survey took place in 2007 . There are other burial grounds in the vicinity as well; one another 500 meters from here (Vorssel) and another large  necropolis in Slabroek (Uden)  2 kilometres from here, this last one also contains cremations from Roman times. While it is tempting to link these burial grounds together, they more likely belonged to other family groups. what however, is clear that the area was an ideal spot for the early farmers who settled here.

Finds in the graves also makes a clear link with the Únětice culture and thus a link with the bronze metallurgic innovations that came from the Danube region. The last excavated tumulus, the largest of the complex revealed valuable artefact’s perhaps belonging to the harness of a horse. Like the chieftain grave this would point in the direction of another elite grave and there for this tumuli was coined the ”grave of the prince”. ¹⁶

(See video clip: National Museum Leiden)

The river flats  settlements

With the arrival of the heavier mouldboard plough, in the first millennium BCE it also became possible to cultivate the heavier but much more productive soils of the lower laying floodplains of the river Maas 10 kms further north of the forest settlement.

Oss also has one of the largest Bronze and Iron Age archaeological sites of Western Europe, on the northern side of the current city in the floodplains 40 hectares of land have been researched. While the earliest farm dates back to approx 2.000 BCE, most finds are dating back to the Iron Age. At any given time not more than three farms were in operation. They lasted some 25 years and than a new farmhouse was built 50 to 200 meters further on. The farmhouses were approx 30 meters long and 5.5 meters wide.

While the trend towards a society based on individualism might have seen its starting point during the Bell Beaker period, it was not until the Hallstatt period before we see clearer evidence of this, namely through the elite burials.

This also had its effects on the broader society. A remarkable observation is that between 800 and 500BCE farm houses are becoming much smaller, in Ussen they decreased from 30 meters long to 12 meters. The conclusion must be that smaller units (individual families rather than extended families) occupied these farm houses.

There are 66 of such farms unearthed in this area which date back to the Middle and Late Iron Age. However, they were only occupied during a rather short period. This has brought a new expression to European archaeology: ‘roaming farms’. In some instance current farms are still within a 50-meter vicinity of these Iron Age farmhouses, again an example of this  very impressive social continuity.

One of these farmhouses has been reconstructed in a framework following the exact details and seize (17 meters long, 4.5 meters wide and 4 meters tall) as a climbing frame for children in the new suburb that now covers this area; in close proximity to its original position. The picture below shows a reconstruction at the open air museum in Eindhoven.

The increased significance of the floodplain settlements can also be concluded from the presence of a sanctuary. This particular one is known under its German name ‘Viereckschanzen’, and refers to rectangular ditched enclosures that were constructed perhaps as early as the Late Bronze Age but certainly during the Middle Iron Age (500BCE). They are widespread in Germany and parts of northern France. More recently they are also unearthed in the Low Countries, most of them in Brabant:  Oss, Alphen, Hogeloon and  perhaps also Zundert. Some of the sanctuaries became temples during Roman times, another one in Brabant, close to Oss and most probably one of the larger ones was in Kessel on the river Maas, near Lith;  a bit further a sanctuary near Empel, close to Den Bosch and one in the Roman town Ceuclum (Cuijk). Elsewhere there are known temple places in Elst (Betuwe), Nijmegen, Ardenburg (Zeeland) and Maastricht.

From the forest to the floodplains

Despite a change in population growth in the Iron Age, favouring the settlements in the floodplains, at least until the early Middle Ages there also still remained a settlement concentration on the higher grounds. There is the legend that St Willibrord baptised approx 3km north of the burial grounds. Archaeological research has uncovered remnants of an old water stream close to where the current St Willibrord well is and they also found remnants of an early chapel at this site. Pilgrimages were still taking place at the end of the 19^th century. Could it be that there was another farming settlement somewhere in between these two sites?

There is also evidence of an approx 7km long road linking these forest and river plain communities, known as the Kortfoort (means: shortest route). Indicating that both settlements were closely linked together, the walking distance between the two places is just over one and a half hour. Contacts between these two groups must have led to a unique set of social and economic dynamics: marriage, work, timber, wool, small  game from the forest and cattle, agriculture and fish from the floodplains. The first known mill from around 1300 was halfway both communities, the Jonkers van Oss held the ban rights over the mill. [18. Molen Zeldenrust, Paul Budde, 1978, p5]

Bronze Age settlement of Haps

One of the most interesting Bronze Age burial grounds has been found in Haps, this is the village where my wife’s father’s family came from; van Daal. Their farming history in Haps goes back to around 1650.

The tumuli and urnfield in Haps have been used between 1800BCA and 150AC. The tumuli were placed in a long row, perhaps along a road. There are long shaped and round shaped tumuli and one is a combination of the two. As usual in the Bronze Age the tumuli were circled by poles (paalgraven – pole graves), the function of which still eludes archaeologists, however ceremonial reasons are expected.

The dead were cremated and their remains either buried in urns or in small holes in the ground. During the 7thcentury BCE a small urnfield was added to the site, containing 80 burials. The theme continues here with some burials in urns, others in small holes, some have some simple grave gifts; some of the holes have a pottery fragment on top to close it off. These themes are continued throughout the tumuli and urnfields right across Europe.

Around 500BCE there was also a small settlement of 2 or 3 farms, this settlement remained in use Roman times. It has been suggested that earlier settlement must have been elsewhere in the vicinity of the tumuli.

Not everybody was buried within these urnfields, to the contrary often there are only indications of one of such burials with a one, two or even three generation, highlighting the importance of the person.

The Iron Age 1200BCE – 250AC

While iron was known before, it was until around 1200BCE before the first people in Anatolia started to master metal working from here it also spread to Phoenicia, Greece here it still had an air of magic around it, but slowly it became more widespread and spread into Eastern Europe as well as  further around the Mediterranean. It was not until Roman times before it spread into northern Europe, this happened during the Celtic migration period (Celtic Iron Age).

There is overlap between the Roman period and the Iron Age (Roman Iron Age). In Gaul we clearly speak about the Roman period, the Low Countries were a border area with still most of the native people linked to their old farming traditions, however with clear Roman  influences as many farmers were involved in supplying the Roman military camps along the rivers. Further north outside the lands occupied by the Romans the situation is more or less the same with Roman influences reaching as far as Denmark.

Same people different cultures: Ahrensburg-Swifterbant-Vlaardingen-Bell Beakers-Hallstatt

Archeologists have in the Bell Beaker culture also recognised influences from the earlier native Swifterbantculture. The Bell Beaker straddle both the stone and Bronze Age periods and extended into the Iron Age Hallstatt culture.

In their earlier phase their grave ware consists of Corded Ware pottery and polished stone axes. Contacts withnew developments which came from the east and finally reached this European outpost, later on resulted in the adaptation of new bronze ware, withonly a very short period of copper ware. Very rapidly graves with bell beakers started to include battleaxes, indicate a change towards a more warrior like people, perhaps also as a result of this clash of cultures. They exported this new more aggressive culture along their trading routes. Along these routes we find daggers, archery equipment with barbed-flint arrowheads and wrist guards of fine stone.

The maritime nature of these trading people also required leather and later woolen woven jerkins, held with a belt with an ornamental bone ring to secure it.

They might have taking over the more aggressive nature of the invaders or migrants from then east, as we see a first change towards the individualisation of their society

From hunter gathers to semi nomadic Swifterbantpeople, early postoral Corded Ware and seafaring Bell Beaker people this culture provides an unbroken past with the earliest occupants of this remote cornes of the continent.

Iron Age innovations

It looks like that the massive changes, which took place around this time in this region – changing the native, rather archaic, Mesolithic society into the much more modern  age of the Bell Beakers – also had its effect onthe people in northwestern Europe. Travelling people along the river Maas must have brought them in contact with other cultures and as mentioned above we know that these interchanges  greatly influenced these people. The fact that Bell Beakers are found in Oss indicates that the Mesolithic people here had also adopted this new culture.

However, settlements throughout the Bronze Age remain rather similar. They would not have been much larger than a few large farmhouses, similar as the ones mentioned above in Elsloo; three thousand years earlier. They were occupied by an extended family (10-15 people) and most probably their sheep and cattle. Reflecting the communal life of the Bronze Age communities. (See video clip: National Museum Leiden)

The impression is that there were many settlements only a few kilometres or less apart from each other. Close enough to conclude that there must have been regular contact between them.

It is estimated that in the Iron Age the population in the Netherlands increased to 25,000 people, an estimated three-fold increase in comparison to thew situation of 500 years earlier. However, this time as much as 80% of them living below the main river system. Above the rivers groundwater levels has started to rise and peat growth started to make agriculture more difficult.

By this time the Celtic fields on the less fertile sandy grounds had been largely exhausted and it is likely that (some of) the people who lived close to the tumuli on the southern side of what is now Oss, moved to the more fertile river plains. Here, on the 40 hectares excavated in Ussen, six distinct settlements and two burial grounds have been unearthed. These new and or extended settlements peaked during Roman times.

Carved wooden gable boards

Twente has a rich history of farmhouse with carved wooden gable boards (gevelteken) they are positioned at the top of the front gable and have a variety of pagan symbols that can be linked to handing over the house to the gods and invoking their protection  against thunder (so called thunder brooms), the veneration of the sun (solar wheels) and a variety of agriculkture symbols such as corn, unions, etc was used to invoke their protection against crop failures. In Twente there are also boards depicting two stylised horse heads and they are linked to two German brother heroes Hengist and Horsa, they were the leaders of the Saxon invasion into Britain. During the excavations in Oss-Ussen one of the wells also contained a remarkably well preserved carved gable board that looks very similar to ones in Twente, perhaps the sun and thunder broom symbols can be recognised here as well.

With the arrival of the Iron Age changes are starting to set in we do see changes in the structure within the settlements. Instead of a few large farms we see settlements with a larger number of smaller farms, perhaps indicating, as discussed above, more competition and an increased level of individualism. Also the use of iron tools greatly improved the yield of the Celtic Fields.

Not far from Oss towards the Peel morass an interesting Iron Age village (6^th century BCE) was unearthed in Haps. The rooftops of these houses were supported on centrally placed rows of timber; an architectural innovation.

These settlements or small villages were a characteristic feature of the north western region of Europe from the Low Countries to Denmark. There were no known hill fortresses or other more significant towns such as those that had started to occur in Eastern Europe.

It was during this period that the first coin appeared (around 650BCE).

Hallstatt culture 900 – 600BCE

One of the few more easily identifiable Iron Age cultures evolved in Central European culture from the 8th to the 6th centuries BC and developed out of the Tumulus Culture. Hallstatt an Austrian lakeside village in Salzkammergut became the centre of the  salt mining area in Europe. It stretched in influences from the upper Rhine and upper Danube regions in the east to the Champagne-Ardennes in the west.

The west Hallstatt branch started to reach our region around 750BCE. Iron stared to appear signalling perhaps better weapons, burials became more varied, fashion started to become visible, this certainly was a period of significant change.

Salt was also big business along the coast in the Low Countries and here it continued well into Roman times. As we will see below, during the excavations in Oss they also discovered lots of evidence of the salt trade, perhaps here it was used in the tannery probably for products produced for the Romans, however, the exact links in the extensive salt trade are still unclear.

A continuation of more dense settlement (in a relative sense) also happened through this period and especially the archaeological sites in Oss shows significant evidence of this that continued well into Roman times.

Cultural changes

Until the 8^th century there is no evidence of burials indicating a low level of competitiveness between people. The society remained stable, sedentary with small scale chiefdoms, where status didn’t seem to be important.

In the late Bronze Age –  the dead were burnt on a pyre – in order to set the soul free from the body – and their ashes buried in urnfields.  These sites don’t contain gifts and often there are more burials within one grave or urnfield. Offerings  to the gods were made separately in bogs, rivers and other for them sacred sites, they contained vessels with food and other gifts but no human sacrifices.Initially most of the late Bronze Age developments, including the urnfield burials, continued into this period. However, the patterns changed, graves started to move closer again to the settlements and became more spread out. Some people are buried in more elaborate graves and grave gifts started to arrive.

This ritual would indicate a changeover period between different cultures and/or believes. One suggestion has been that is signifies a period where the position of chief possibly changed form elected or earned by its people to hereditary based on its relation with the gods. Burials are now far more materialistic with for example wagons,  table settings and other necessities for for the afterlife. Perhaps it also indicates a return to ancestor worship.

The chieftain graves from the later Hallstatt period are an excellent example of that change, clearly indicating the importance of the person rather than that of the community. However, it is important to realise that we are only talking here about a few ‘rich’ graves and thousands of ‘normal’ graves.

We now also see human sacrifices. Tacitus wrote about the Semnones, most probably a branch of the Suevi,  at meetings of blood relatives  places in the woods, made sacred by their ancestors,  they sacrificed fellow humans celebrating their ancient origins. He also indicates that the victims were picked by lot. Many of these sacrifices are known from the bogs in north Germany, the Low Countries but especially Denmark. Some of these bodies have been perfectly preserved – such as the Tollund man in Denmark.

The famous and beautiful decorated silver  Gundestrup cauldron that was found in one of these bogs is also linked to sacrifices.

There are strong indications that a new goddess had supplanted her previous male partner in importance, in the northern lands this mother-goddess is often depicted naked with her hands held under her breasts and with collars around her neck and in her ears (we see this also with the Cannaanite goddess Asherah).  The sacrificed victims also showed signs that can be related to collars and/or had collars buried near by. She might already have been prominent here since the Late Bronze Age, most likely the goddess Nerthus. This goddess could be the same as Nehalennia, who was also venerated in the Low Countries and perhaps there is even a link with the Brabantine Saint Gertrud. There are also strong links with other mother-goddesses, representing fertility of key importance to these farming cultures, in other parts of the ancient world: Ishtar, Astarte, Isis, Aphrodite. The fertility rites follows the cycle of the crops and evolves around the burring of the seeds, sleeping in the earth and the awakening in the spring. These fertility goddesses also played key roles in the underworld stories were similar cycles took place. The human sacrifice is linked to these rites.

Towards the end of this period there is also evidence that these people believed in a kingdom where the dead, after some passage of time, reside. This corresponds with similar believe in the classical cultures.

Elite graves

It was also in this period that individualism really became visible, suddenly gifts started to occur in the burials. This cumulated in so called princely or elite graves throughout the Hallstatt region. Until that time gifts were seen as belonging to the community.

There is also in our region – the outer edge of the Hallstatt region – a small cluster of these elite graves (Someren, Baarlo, Oss, Wijchen and Rhenen).

The chariot in the elite grave in Wijchen (750BCE) is one of the most important findings in the Low Countries dating back to this period.

The Chieftain of Oss

The famous elite grave in Oss from a ‘local ruler’ dating back to 600BCE clearly show that Hallstatt  culture was also well established in what is now Brabant. The grave is part of large urn field that has on and off been used between 2,300BCE and 500BCE. This last date roughly coincides with the arrival of Germanic tribes in the region. It could well be that the Germanic tribes either replaced the proto-Celtic population or that the local population started to adopt cultural changes.

The bronze situla from the 53 meters in diameter large tumulus of the chieftain of Oss is also linked to this culture; interestingly the iron sword, with golden decorations, bend into the situla indicated that it was produced in southern Germany (approx 1300kms away).

The graves also provide evidence of extensive trade particularly along the rivers well into what is now southern Germany. It has been argued that the ‘king’ of Oss might have received his position because of the (salt) trade. Archaeological research in Ussen has unearthed numerous pipes used for packaging salt.

The grave also contained numerous other bronze, iron, wooden and textile fragments. They included two iron horse bits, four iron cheek pieces and two oval bronze yokes rosettes belonging to paired horse harnesses for draught horses most probably used for pulling a ceremonial cart.

The chief’s grave goods could not have been obtained through trade, they must have been gifts obtained on the basis of the importance of the person, hence the classification of  ‘chieftain’. These are manifestations of a flourishing prestige goods economy.

For a long time the grave of the chieftain of Oss was seen as the start of the Iron Age in the Low Countries, however the original dating of the grave has now been reassessed as 100 later than originally was though.

However, as mentioned above it is important to put this in the context of still rather primitive farming communities.

This is one of the first graves that includes a sword; ; until a few hundred years earlier swords were, in this region, typically deposited in rivers or bogs.

Situlae are found in other elite Hallstatt burials and clearly indicate the importance of these graves. However, there are no indications that these rich elites had any effect on the local economy. These goods were imported gifts and as such were not part of the economy.

(See video clip: National Museum Leiden)



Further possible eleite graves in the area include the above mentioned grave known as the ‘prince of Oss’ at the Zevenbergen burial ground. Another one at the Slabroek burial ground is known as the grave of the princess as possible bracelets were included in this grave.

Fortress builders started to now also reach our region, while they had already been a feature for several millennia in the more eastern parts of Europe, the competing Hallstatt elites started to establish hill fortresses reaching as far as north France and southern Belgium (Buzenol, Kemmelberg and Hastedon). However by 350BCE they were again all but abandoned.

There is also evidence that there was a brisk trade going on between the Etruscans and the people living in the west Hallstatt region, some elite graves contain the remnants of the two-wheeled chariot a fashion learnt from the Etruscans. Some other elements of the warrior culture might also been influenced by these people. The Etruscans in turn were interested in the iron ore available in the Hunsrück-Eiffel region.

The rapid growth of this new level of elite also led to the development of the La Tène art (Celtic art). However, it wasn’t the Hallstatt elite that carried that forward, it is not know why but the system of the Hallstatt elite collapsed in the 5^th century BCE.

Languages

As mentioned before, there is strong evidence that the Indo-Iranian-European languages can be traced back to the Eurasian Pontic-Caspian Steppe Cultures. The root of this language dates back to the period 4,500-2,500 BCE.

Analysing the Indo-European language, indicates that its early members were more involved in herding sheep and goats rather than in agriculture.  Increasingly these people domesticated plants and animals, which slowly led to an increase in the population. At that time the population in this part of the world will have been in the low thousands.

Following the migration pattern as mentioned above, the Indo-European language started to develop into different languages. A proto Slavo-Germanic language developed into Balto-Slavic (1500BCE) and Germanic eventually they all branched of and by around 500BC during the Jastorf period (see below) Proto Germanic would have been a recognisable separate langue, which than further developed into Norse, Gothic, Swedish, Low and High German and later in Danish, Dutch, Flemish, Frisian, Icelandic and English as well. In this process the individual language also evolved of course for example Low German developed into Middle Dutch and Modern Dutch and Flemish over the last 1,000 years. It would have been difficult for a modern Dutchmen to understand their cousins from around 1,500, let alone from around the year 1,000.

The Lex Salica from around 600 AC provides us what is perhaps the oldest text in (hardly recognisable)  Dutch: “maltho thi afrio lito”, this translate into: “ ik zeg je: ik maak je vrij, halfvrij”(I say to you: I make you free, half-free). The oldest literary – and quite famous – Dutch text is from around 1,100 :” Hebban olla uogala nestas higunnan/ Hinase hi(c) (e)nde thu”. This roughly translates into : “All the birds have made their nests except you and me.” Experts are still arguing about the ‘Dutchness’ of the text, it was most probably written in Kent (England) and could also be old-Kentish, perhaps with some old-Flemish in it as well.

 

The Celts 450 – 200BCE

As indicated the Hallstatt culture started to collapse in the 5^th century BCE, perhaps under the weight of the competing local elite, it could well be that the gift exchange system dried up but there is no evidence to pinpoint a more exact reason.

However, the culture somewhat continued in the Marne-Moselle region, it also here that the first La Tène pottery is found in some of the last elite graves. These burials are still largely believed to represent a warrior society these people started amass to migrate south and that is why we are encountering them in historic times through the writings of Romans such as The Elder Pliny. They were mentioned as Gauls or Celts (Keltoi in Greek, Gaul in Latin). Perhaps because of their earlier (Hallstatt) trading links with the Etruscan, most of them initially ended up in Alp region and moved form here into the flood plains of the river Po and even further south.

In Oss some of the ‘dullish’ Marne pottery has been unearthed during archaeological digs dating back to the late Iron Age (approx 150BCE). The Marne potters were amongst the first in north-western Europe to use the potters wheel.

This pottery was also well represented at the above mentioned sanctuaries of Empel and Kessel, clearly indicating that in the Late Iron Age, Celtic culture had well and truly penetrated the local population in Brabant. We now also come across influences from the northern Jastorf culture (see below). There are indications of locally produced material, including swords produced along Jastorf tradition.  There are indications of ritual murders near the temples – close the the confluence of two rivers (Kessel – Maas and Waal and Empel – Maas and Dieze) – which also indicates Jastorf influences.

There also was an eastern migration in the late 5^th and early 4^th centuries, along the Danube into modern day Hungary. They had intensive contacts with the Greeks and the Etruscan who influenced the famous Celtic artefacts. In 281 BCE they invaded Macedonia and two years later they mounted an army to invade but were decisively defeated at Delphi.

The also crossed the Hellespont and ended up in Anatolia (Galatians). They remained independent until it was incorporated in the Roman Empire in 25BC.

Wherever they went the intermingled with the local population, which rapidly took over the new culture.

There is no evidence of large-scale western migration, but anywhere under the river Rhine the Celtic culture became the norm even across the Channel in Britain.

Above the river Rhine, life continued as it had done for the previous 1500 years the above mentioned villages were not touched by the Celts. At this point in time we see that these people get a name (from the Romans): Germanic.

The Celts dominated most of Europe between 450 and 200BCE. They reached their largest extended in the 3^rd century BCE. Shortly after 200BCE the Celts lost several important battles with the Romans and soon their influence started to dissipate.

The term ‘Celts’ might be closer linked to a common culture rather than a common people.

Linguistically they evolved from the Indo-European language group but, they are members of a different branch of this language group: Aryo-Graeco-Italo-Celtic. The Celts split of from the language much later than for example the Germanic people did, but the Celts far more rapidly spread throughout Europe.

There was a distinct class difference between the warriors and the rest of the communities, who were farmers and crafts people. The warriors didn’t work the land but were in charge of social order. The bravest of them was the chieftain.

There are indications that the warrior tradition might have originated in the hunting activities of their forebears in the ‘heroic’ times.

The focal point of their system of maintaining social order was their feast. This took place at a round table with the chieftain taking a central position, next to the host. They were armed with their bodyguards behind them. Here rank was proclaimed, sometimes challenged (sometimes till death followed) and eventually ranks were accepted and witnessed by the assembly.

It was under the Celts that the raiding system, as already mentioned above with the Beaker People, started in all earnest. This was their key form of wealth creation; war was the status quo, peace the exception.

The Gauls had already before Roman times, built their own civilisation; they had their own coins, kings, towns, trading activities and sophisticated craftsmanship in bronze and gold.

Germanic awakening: Jastorf and Herpstedt-Nienburg cultures

The Germanic people – who also started to emerge around this time – are closely linked to the Jastorf and Herpstedt-Nienburg cultures. Initially it was believed that they had their origin in the southern parts of Norway and Sweden and the Danish peninsula. Some scholars however believe that they lived rather isolated in this area for a prolonged period of time. They slowly started to spread from what is now Denmark further into Europe, this happened in the first millennium BCE, possibly due to a deterioration of the climate in Scandinavia. Here they started to replace and intermingle with the local Celtic population. However, so far there doesn’t seem to be much archaeological evidence for this mingling of cultures.

It was in this area that Iron Age cultures started to evolve. The Jastorf (600-100BCE) in most of modern Germany) and the Herpstedt-Nienburg in northern Netherlands and neighbouring Lower Saxony. It was within these cultures that, from around 500BCE,  the Germanic culture and language started to evolve.

The Jastorf culture however, was not only influenced by the Nordic Bronze Age culture (Scandinavia 1800- 500BCE) but also by the more southern Hallstatt culture (Central Europe 800-600BCE).

The Herpstedt-Nienburg group has characteristics of material culture closer to Celtic cultures, and shows evidence of significant contact withthe Hallstatt and La Tène cultures. This seems to have happened despite the fact that there was a serious natural barrier between these two cultures; the extensive Rhine Delta with the large floodplains of the rivers Rhine and Meuse (Maas) and the extensive morasses beyond that. This area was largely unpopulated.

There are unconfirmed but possible indications that the Germanic tribe of the Eburones were the people that had also moved into Limburg and Brabant where indications of the Jastorf culture have been recognised, as mentioned above. What also adds to this speculation is that near Empel (northeastern Brabant) a significant number of so called triskelion coins were found.  A treskelion is a motif consisting of three interlocked spirals, or three bent human legs, or any similar symbol with three protrusions and a threefold rotational symmetry, it is a Greek word and they also used this symbol also for the island Sicily.  This motif was also characteristic of the Celtic art of the La Tène culture of the European Iron Age. These coins – which had status value rather than monetary value – have been linked to the Eburones and had previously been found in Belgium and also in West Brabant.

For a continuation of the story of the Eburones see: On the Roman Limes 100 – 450.

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