by Karin Bojs
Perhaps not everyone subscribes to the interpretation that the great Neolithic stone circles are actually a kind of wheeled vehicle. However, traces of wheels and ploughs undeniably began to appear about 5,700 years ago, and they radically altered the conditions for farming on different kinds of soil.
The same applies to the fine, soft loess soils. The first generation of people from the Linear Pottery culture in Saxony-Anhalt tilled fields the size of the relatively small garden of a detached house – about 500 square metres (5,400 square feet). One and a half millennia later, the fields had become tens of times larger. Oxen and wooden ploughs may partly account for this change.
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With today’s knowledge, it is impossible to be sure who invented the wheel and began to use ploughs with oxen as draught animals. Once the technology was there, it spread like wildfire everywhere between northern Europe and Mesopotamia. But in my view, northern Europe, particularly Jutland or northern Germany, might very well have been the birthplace of the wheel.
What came first – the chicken or the egg? Were farmers able to leave loess soils behind them and move northwards only once they had invented the wheel and started to use ploughs and draught animals? Or did they begin to use ploughs and draught animals out of necessity, when they had already migrated northwards to areas with harder soils?
The areas around the coast of the Baltic Sea and in southern Scandinavia had a number of drawbacks for a farmer. Not only was the climate harsher and the soil harder to till, but the coastline was already peopled by vigorous hunters. But one day, about 6,000 years ago, a number of farmers from the region that is now Germany took that step. And after that things moved very fast.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Farmers Arrive in Skåne
That they arrived by boat is beyond doubt. Setting off from northern Germany, they landed along the coastline of Skåne and Halland in southern Sweden, and, at the same time, on the Danish island of Fyn (Funen). We know Sweden’s first farmers had boats, as they also reached the islands of Bornholm and Gotland at about the same time.
The oldest traces of agriculture in Sweden go back about 6,000 years. Within just a few generations, farming had spread all the way up to Bohuslän, the Oslo Fjord in Norway, and Uppland in eastern Sweden.
Sweden’s first farmers loaded their boats with cattle, sheep, pigs, barley and several types of wheat. They used a specific kind of stone axe to fell trees, and they built longhouses of a characteristic type. They also used a particular kind of terracotta ware known as Funnel Beaker pottery (TRB), which developed out of the older Linear Ware (LBK) of central Europe.
The distinguishing feature of Funnel Beaker pottery, as the name suggests, is that vessels were often shaped like funnels, ending in brims that flared out to varying degrees. When laying their dead to rest, the Funnel Beaker people would often bury a beaker with this type of brim as grave goods. The vessel’s shape meant it could be attached to a belt, like a hip flask.
It seems quite clear that Funnel Beaker vessels had a very special significance, which may have stemmed from their contents. Many archaeologists strongly suspect that the Funnel Beaker people used the barley they cultivated to brew beer, which would have been quaffed from these beakers. One clue is the numerous finds of burnt grain in their settlements. Roasting is a stage in malting barley for brewing.
The evidence would be even stronger if chemists had been able to detect traces of oxalate in Funnel Beaker vessels. This involves analyses like those conducted by archaeologists searching for traces of brewing at Göbekli Tepe in Turkey. If it were proven that Sweden’s first farmers drank beer at their ritual gatherings, there would be a link running all the way from the place of worship at Göbekli Tepe, which dates back 12 millennia, to the Sweden of 6,000 years ago, and to celebrations in our own time.
Archaeologists from Skåne have put forward a nice idea: the newly arrived farmers may have asked the original hunting people round for a beer, as a conciliatory and fraternal gesture. Whether there is any truth in that we shall never know. We have no idea what feelings and relationships may have existed between the hunters of earlier times and the farmers who arrived subsequently. However, what research can show clearly today is that there were two quite separate groups to begin with.
For over 30 years, the predominant view held by Swedish archaeologists was that agriculture emerged in Sweden when local hunters decided to start tilling the soil and raising livestock. However, modern DNA research has shown that this narrative cannot be correct. DNA evidence shows clearly that agriculture arrived as a result of inward migration – with people who came by boat and on foot from distant Syria, via Cyprus, Turkey, the Balkans and central Europe, to northern Europe.
The Danish archaeologists Lasse Sørensen and Sabine Karg have demonstrated the same thing, though using quite different evidence. They have made a thorough and extensive compilation of excavations in Denmark and Sweden. Their study differs from previous ones in that it covers more sites – both on the coast and inland – and in the exacting standards they applied to radiocarbon dating.
As a result, a new pattern has emerged that is quite different from the one many archaeologists believed they could discern in the 1980s. The old view was based on a smaller number of excavated sites – nearly all of them on the coast – and less reliable dating, mostly based just on the layer from which buried objects had been retrieved.
Sørensen and Karg demolish most of the arguments that groups of hunters along the coasts of Skåne and Denmark engaged in farming early on. They show that bones claimed to have belonged to a cow may actually come from a wild ox. Grain and bones from domestic animals which, it was claimed, were over 6,000 years old and came from a group of hunters, are actually far more recent; it just so happens that they slid down to a lower level in the soil. Individual bones from domestic animals and impressions of grains in shards of pottery may have been ascribed to the correct layers. However, individual finds of this type may mean that hunters bartered goods for animals or grain from farmers further south, not that they began to farm themselves.
The overall picture that emerges if you consider all archaeological sites is that farmers began to arrive in Sweden six millennia ago, and that most of them settled in inland areas. The hunters continued to live along the coasts for many hundreds of years, during which they retained their way of life at least in part.
There would certainly have been a good deal of contact between these groups, and the boundary between them was not watertight. Some farmers also went hunting and fishing. Hunters were given domestic animals from time to time, or acquired them through barter. Sometimes farmers and hunters had children together. Little by little, the two groups merged completely.
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Why, it is worth asking, did the farmers suddenly begin moving northwards into Sweden and Denmark?
One standard answer is that early agrarian cultures always had a need to expand. According to one hypothesis, farmers generally had more surviving children than groups of hunters. The farmers’ young children had a major advantage: they could stay in one place. They were not obliged to move from one hunting ground to another, which meant long treks with unreliable access to food and clean water. Since more children survived to adulthood, farming settlements grew faster. However, their limited farming techniques meant they were unable to provide for the expanding population. Consequently, there were always people who had to move and find new ground.
There is nothing wrong with that hypothesis. However, it fails to explain why the farmers of the Linear Pottery culture came to a halt for 1,300 years at the northern limit of loess soils – and why their successors, the Funnel Beaker people, suddenly moved into northern Germany and Poland, and a little later into Denmark and Sweden.
Many archaeologists mention the flint in Skåne as a major attraction. Exceptionally high-quality flint can be found in Södra Sallerup, Kvarnby and Tullstorp, outside Malmö. Thousands of pits up to seven metres (23 feet) deep
show that flint was already quarried on a large scale six millennia ago. Some of the first traces of farming in Sweden are very close to these flint quarries.
There are also traces here of flint axe production on a virtually industrial scale. The farmers would certainly have needed such axes to fell trees when clearing new farmland. And it seems more than likely that the high-quality flint in the Malmö area enticed the first farmers into Skåne. However, that does not explain why agriculture continued to spread northwards into Västergötland, reaching the Oslo Fjord and Uppland within just a few generations.
Another hypothesis is based on the fact that the sea level sank at about this time, as the climate in Europe grew drier. As a result, coastal meadows and river valleys emerged that had previously been under water. Grass and plants providing ideal grazing for the farmers’ sheep and cattle flourished on this fertile land. Again, this may well be part of the story, but I remain unconvinced that the new meadowland provides an adequate explanation.
More persuasive, to my mind, are the ideas put forward by Bernd Zich from Halle, who links the spread of agriculture into northern Europe with the ox, the wheel and the wooden plough.
As far as I can see, there are two possibilities. One is that farmers started to use wooden ox-drawn ploughs over 6,000 years ago. They developed the yoke, and this technological change coincided with the upper limit of loess soils, somewhere in northern Poland, Germany or perhaps the Netherlands. Once the farmers had the necessary technology to cultivate heavier soil, they were able to continue their expansion northwards.
Alternatively, the expansion to the north may have come first, followed a few hundred years later by the new technology. When the farmers who had recently settled in northern Europe were obliged to work heavier soils, they thought of starting to use oxen as draught animals, and they developed the wheel and the wooden plough.
Whoever invented the wheel, it is clear that flint axes, oxen and cattle made their mark on the Swedish landscape. Their impact is still visible today. Dense forests of deciduous hardwood trees have given way to open landscapes – a consequence of 6,000 years of agriculture.
And at many locations in farming country you can still see formations of gigantic boulders that were dragged into position by oxen. These are particularly common on arable land in Västergötland, which I am to visit soon.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Ötzi the Iceman
But before going further and following the first farmers of Skåne on their journey northwards into Sweden, I make a detour southwards to the Alps. At a museum in the northern Italian city of Bolzano, I pay a visit to Ötzi.
‘The Iceman from Tyrol’, as he is also known, was discovered in 1991 by a German couple on holiday, the Simons. They came across the body while out hiking near the Ötz Valley, hence the Iceman’s nickname. Assuming he was a mountaineer who had had a fatal accident, the Simons immediately rang the police and the Alpine rescue service. However, forensic experts quickly realised that Ötzi was very old – so ancient, in fact, that he was a case for archaeologists rather than forensics. He was, to be precise, 5,300 years old. For all those years he had lain frozen in the glacier until the ice was melted by unusually hot weather. As luck would have it, the German holidaymakers chose to turn aside from their waymarked path, so they happened to pass by just as Ötzi was beginning to thaw out.
And there was another coincidence: Ötzi had died just before it started to snow. Owing to the cold, the dry air and the protective covering of snow, which gradually turned into ice, his body was mummified by natural processes. Quite simply, he was freeze-dried.
Ötzi’s exceptionally well-preserved body and the artefacts discovered around him make him one of the most informative finds ever in European archaeology.
His story is an eventful one. For example, it was long unclear which country had a rightful claim on him. Eventually, it was established that he had been found 90 metres (295 feet) from the border, in the Italian region of South Tyrol – which is why he is now in the museum in Bolzano.
A few years on, researchers discovered he had been the victim of a murder, albeit one committed 5,300 years ago. Someone had shot him from the back with an arrow that struck him high up on his left shoulder blade. The arrow hit a blood vessel, injuring him so badly that he must have bled to death within a few minutes. He also seems to have suffered a blow to the head just before he died, possibly as his killer attempted to pull the arrow out.
All this can be learned at the museum in Bolzano, where the visitor can look through a glass pane at Ötzi himself, lying naked and dried out in a cold store, his skin brown and leathery. You can also see a full-size reconstruction that shows what he probably looked like when alive (please see central plate section). It is based on the appearance of the corpse at the time of discovery.
The model shows a man aged about 45 and about 1.6 metres (5¼ feet) tall. Though thin, at just 50 kilos (110 pounds), he is nonetheless strong and lithe. His eyes are brown. He has a dark beard, and his dark brown hair is long and wavy, falling at least to his shoulders.
The exhibition also displays garments found where the glacier had thawed. There is a striped cloak of goat hide and a loincloth of goat leather. Ötzi’s leggings were also made of goat hide, with deerskin laces designed to keep the snow out. Ötzi’s cap is made of bearskin, while his shoes had deerskin uppers and bearskin soles, and were lined with hay. His belt, made from the hide of a calf, contained several tools of flint and bone.
He had a flint dagger, a large bow and a quiver made of chamois hide reinforced with hazelwood. The quiver contained a number of half-finished arrows made of young shoots from guelder rose trees (Viburnum opulus). A birch-bark container seems to have been used to carry glowing coals. If the glow went out, he would have been able to make fire again by striking a piece of pyrite against a piece of flint and igniting a scrap of tinder fungus with the spark. He had on him all the tools for lighting a fire and keeping it going. There was also a woven net for trapping prey and a device for carrying the wildfowl he had killed. Researchers identified a mat made of grass fibres as a sort of raincape. They think a structure made of hazel twigs was a framework for a backpack, or possibly a pair of snowshoes.
The equipment bears striking similarities to that used by outdoor activities enthusiasts today. The materials used, of course, are quite different from today’s glass fibre and synthetic fabrics that ‘breathe’. There are no fewer than 18 types of wood in Ötzi’s gear, plus hides, sinews and bones from various species of animal and fibres from several plant species.
His intestinal contents reveal that his last meal consisted of wheat, plant material and goat meat. His knee joints show signs of wear and tear, suggesting he led a vigorous life in the mountains. Nor are his teeth in perfect condition. The necks of his teeth are inflamed, for one thing. The chewing surfaces are worn, both by Ötzi’s penchant for using his teeth as tools, and as a result of eating flour containing traces of millstone grit.
His lungs show traces of soot particles, showing he often sat next to smoky fires. He suffered from Lyme disease, spread by ticks, rheumatism, and an intestinal parasite called the human whipworm (Trichuris trichiura), which is borne by dirty water. He would often have suffered from pain in his joints and back.
This may explain why he had recourse to acupuncture. His skin bears tattoos shaped like tiny strokes. Many of them are at exactly the same points as those used by traditional acupuncturists. Presumably tattooing was a way of trying to dull the pain. Before Ötzi’s tattoos were detected, acupuncture had been thought to be a purely Chinese tradition. However, there seem to have been similar ideas in Europe as far back as 5,300 years ago.
Earlier in his life Ötzi had broken some ribs and a nasal bone. His nails bear several horizontal furrows caused by illness, malnutrition or severe stress.
Isotopes in his teeth and bones indicate that he came from a valley about 60 kilometres (40 miles) to the east. However, he appears to have spent his
adult life in a valley much closer to the spot where he was found.
There have been numerous speculations, some more well-founded than others, about Ötzi’s identity. There is much to suggest that he was a herdsman who kept watch over his clan’s livestock in the mountains. He may also have been the chieftain of a clan that was at loggerheads with other clans. Alternatively, he may simply have been a thief and bandit living the life of an outlaw – or maybe he was a shaman and coppersmith.
He cannot have been an ordinary, run-of-the-mill man, as his pack contained an axe with a copper blade. Ötzi died on the cusp of the Neolithic era – the farming Stone Age – and the period known as the Chalcolithic era (the Copper Age) in the Alpine region. Objects made of copper made their appearance at this time, but they were infrequent. A copper-bladed axe must have been a very rare and costly artefact.
Traces of arsenic in his body reveal that Ötzi himself worked as a coppersmith, which must have been a high-status craft. The ability to transform stones into gleaming metal with the aid of fire must have been regarded as something extraordinary – indeed, nothing short of magical.
Ötzi was the first prehistoric individual to undergo DNA analysis. In 1994, researchers were already able to analyse his mitochondria in general terms and establish his haplogroup. He turned out to belong to haplogroup K, which we now know to be a typical marker of the expansion of early farming in Europe.
It later emerged that haplogroup K was already present in very early Syrian farmers living 10,000 years ago. The same group was also found in farmers belonging to the Starčevo culture in Hungary 7,800 years ago, and it was common among the Linear Pottery farmers of Germany 7,500 years ago. Today, about 6 per cent of the European population belongs to haplogroup K. It is more common among Kurds, Druze people and Ashkenazi Jews. However, more detailed subsequent analyses have shown that Ötzi belonged to a subgroup of haplogroup K that has no other known members today. It is known as K1Ö, with Ö standing for ‘Ötzi’.
