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Prehistoric Disaster: An Alpine Pompeii from the Stone Age
Der Spiegel ^ | Friday, October 10, 2008 | Matthias Schulz

Posted on 10/11/2008 1:51:16 PM PDT by SunkenCiv

The people of the Mondsee Lake settlement were apparently relatively advanced within this cultural group. They had metallurgical skills, which were rare in Europe. They cleverly searched the mountains for copper deposits, melted the crude ore in clay ovens and made refined, shimmering red weapons out of the metal. In dugout canoes... they paddled along the region's river networks and sold their goods in areas of present-day Switzerland and to their relatives on Lake Constance. Even Otzi the Iceman had an axe, made of so-called Mondsee copper.

At approximately 3200 B.C., says Binsteiner, the master blacksmiths were struck by a "devastating natural disaster." The event began with a muffled cracking noise. Then a cliff 150 meters (492-foot) tall and five kilometers (3.1 miles) long broke off on the southern shore of Mondsee Lake and plunged into the water...

In 1872, the lake dwelling was discovered in shallow water and crudely dug up with long excavator shovels. More than 10,000 artifacts were uncovered. They are among the finest relics of the Neolithic Age. The site was already remarkable for the weapons discovered there, including 595 stone hatchets, cudgels and studded battleaxes, 451 arrowheads along with a dozen hatchets and six daggers made of copper. In the Neolithic Age, these metal tools were such sought-after status symbols that they were even beyond the reach of many a tribal leader... The countless charred fruits found in the mud beneath the settlement are yet another sign that it came to an abrupt end. They include blackened, hard hazelnuts, ears of grain and even pieces of apples, all of them extremely well preserved, because they were quickly deprived of oxygen.

(Excerpt) Read more at spiegel.de ...


TOPICS: History; Science; Travel
KEYWORDS: alps; ancientautopsies; catastrophism; chalcolithic; godsgravesglyphs; iceman; lakeconstance; mondsee; mondseelake; neolithic; oetzi; otzi; pompeii; stoneage; theiceman
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To: Monkey Face

Just when you think the left has given their worst, they exceed it.


21 posted on 10/11/2008 4:49:47 PM PDT by null and void (I'm writing about all the things I ought to do before I die. It's my oughtobiography...)
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To: null and void

I don’t think the Left HAS a “worst.” I mean, how much worse can you get than Jane Fonda, Cindy Sheehan and Jodie Whatserface? Talk about the Dogs of War....


22 posted on 10/11/2008 4:53:35 PM PDT by Monkey Face (The Big Bang Theory: God spoke and BANG! it happened!)
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To: Goonch

Thanks Goonch.


23 posted on 10/11/2008 5:03:10 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (https://secure.freerepublic.com/donate/_______________Profile updated Saturday, October 11, 2008 !!!)
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To: no one in particular

I’ve got a squirrel using me as a jungle gym.


24 posted on 10/11/2008 5:08:19 PM PDT by null and void (I'm writing about all the things I ought to do before I die. It's my oughtobiography...)
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To: SunkenCiv; All

We keep finding evidence that civilized advances occurred earlier then archeologists have originally believed. You may recall the thesis that mankind has made repeated advancements, only to be thrown back by some catastrophe and have to start over again. Fireston’s book on the catastrophe around 12,900 years ago is an important relatively recent one.

I just got my Nov/Dec issue of “ Archaeology”, and was amazed to see the article “The World’s First Temple: Turkey’s 12,000-year-old stone circles were the spiritual center of a nomadic people.” Looking at the carved stone pillars, I would have thought that they were no more than 5 or 6,000 years old. Could this have been the bouncing back of an advanced group damaged by the Firestone event? Can you post this article for others to see?


25 posted on 10/11/2008 6:44:37 PM PDT by gleeaikin
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To: gleeaikin

It’s been posted, or rather, three or four similar articles have been, lessee...

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2004911/posts?page=13#13


26 posted on 10/11/2008 7:43:48 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (https://secure.freerepublic.com/donate/_______________Profile updated Saturday, October 11, 2008 !!!)
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To: gleeaikin

“We keep finding evidence that civilized advances occurred earlier then archeologists have originally believed.”

I’ve been convinced of it since the first time one of my sons made a bow and arrows out of materials at hand, at the age of three or four.

How could the bow *possibly* be such a recent innovation?


27 posted on 10/12/2008 9:04:23 AM PDT by dsc
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To: StayAt HomeMother; Ernest_at_the_Beach; decimon; 1010RD; 21twelve; 24Karet; 2ndDivisionVet; ...

This topic was posted 10/11/2008.

I thought this was an interesting update:

[snip] They had metallurgical skills that were rare in Europe for the time, in a transitional period known as the Chalcolithic... Even the axe carried by Ötzi the iceman was made by the Mondsee smiths, who would have plied their trade along the waterways from their base in the Alps. [/snip]

http://www.pasthorizonspr.com/index.php/archives/07/2014/chalcolithic-catastrophe-on-the-mondsee


28 posted on 07/15/2014 3:07:30 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (https://secure.freerepublic.com/donate/)
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29 posted on 07/15/2014 3:09:01 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (https://secure.freerepublic.com/donate/)
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Here’s the other related piece, Oetzi’s deer residue has been sequenced.

Positioning the Red Deer (Cervus elaphus) Hunted by the Tyrolean Iceman into a Mitochondrial DNA Phylogeny
http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0100136


30 posted on 07/15/2014 3:25:30 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (https://secure.freerepublic.com/donate/)
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To: SunkenCiv
Unglucksdorf

Unless I'm mistaken, that means "Unlucky Town"

My Deutsch is a little rusty.

31 posted on 07/15/2014 3:49:05 PM PDT by BenLurkin (This is not a statement of fact. It is either opinion or satire; or both.)
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To: nkycincinnatikid

32 posted on 07/15/2014 3:54:01 PM PDT by BenLurkin (This is not a statement of fact. It is either opinion or satire; or both.)
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To: BenLurkin

Heh... they picked it right.


33 posted on 07/15/2014 4:13:44 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (https://secure.freerepublic.com/donate/)
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This topic was posted 10/11/2008, just updating the ping message, but no ping.

34 posted on 05/02/2023 5:29:44 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (NeverTrumpers are Republicans the same way Liz Cheney is a Republican.)
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