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| Sure, modern humans had sex with Neanderthals, but only for a very brief time. |
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| Fortified settlement close to Amnya River likely provided resources (Nikita Golovanov). |
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| Siberian Jesus: Vissarion (MSN) |
A
hunter-gatherer society in Siberia built one of the oldest fortified settlements 8,000 years ago.
The fortress defies expectations because it's one of the oldest found that hunter-gatherers built.
- Hunters and gatherers are wanderers who don't settle down and protect settlements like ranchers and farmers who make war to protect the property they claim. They go about in search of food, living off the land.
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| Siberians of the past, the Ket: men and children of the Yenisei Ostiaks (wiki) |
The inhabitants likely had access to abundant fish and game they may have wanted to protect.
A cluster of houses protected by trenches, earthen banks, and wooden stakes baffled archaeologists for decades.
But radiocarbon dating from the 1980s showed one was thousands of years older, when hunter-gatherers lived in the
taiga, a cold,
subarctic forest.
The result was so surprising that some of the researchers doubted their work, archaeologist Tanja Schreiber told Archaeology magazine.
Schreiber and other scientists recently retested objects and mud deposits from the site to confirm the age of a settlement near the
Amnya River in
western Siberia. They published their findings in the peer-reviewed journal
Antiquity.
The Neolithic settlement is one of the oldest known fortified structures in the world and was constructed hundreds of years earlier than most other similar structures.
These types of defensive fortifications are usually associated with agricultural societies. Researchers long considered more mobile hunter-gatherers incapable of building such
sophisticated structures.
A strategic location near the river
Hunter-gatherers occasionally built fortifications in other parts of the world, "but the very early onset of this phenomenon in inland western Siberia is unparalleled," the authors wrote in the paper.
While there are older Stone Age settlements in other parts of the world, like the
Göbekli Tepe in Turkey which is estimated to be 12,000 years old, the Siberian settlement is about 2,000 years older than similar structures in Europe, according to
Vice.
The settlement's strategic location allowed its residents to lead "a sophisticated lifestyle based on the abundant resources of the taiga environment," Schreiber said in a
statement.
The inhabitants may have had access to large populations of fish, birds, elk, beaver, and reindeer. They may have had goods to store and protect food, such as fish oil and frozen meat.
Challenging stereotypes of hunter-gatherers
The rectangular houses were between 140 and 441 square feet — about the size of some
NYC apartments — and had fireplaces, suggesting people may have lived in them throughout the winter.
Walls made of earth, ditches, and fences made of wooden stakes surrounded the houses that were built into the ground. These protections may have been an attempt to dissuade other groups from raiding the settlement, according to the authors.
"The discovery challenges stereotypes of such societies as simple and mobile, revealing their ability to create sophisticated structures," Schreiber told
Newsweek.
The fortifications may not have always been effective, as there's evidence that the settlement was repeatedly burned.
Researchers believe the fires may have been deliberately set as an act of violence.
"The environment of western Siberia now seems to us rather harsh and unfriendly, but for hunter-gatherers and fishers it was a real paradise," Ekaterina Dubovtseva, a co-author of the study, told Archaeology magazine.
- Business Insider via MSN.com; Pat Macpherson, Seth Auberon (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly
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