Pfahlbaumuseum Unteruhldingen. Image: Traveler100 (Wikimedia, used under a CC BY-NC 3.0)
Posted on 07/15/2014 4:22:50 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
This is what may have happened around 3,200 BC on the Lake of Mondsee (Lake Constance), resulting in the exodus of a metalworking community that lived there.
When the site of this particular settlement was excavated in the 19th century, 595 stone axes and studded battleaxes, 451 arrowheads along with 12 copper axes and six daggers were discovered. These items represented highly sought-after status symbols, and would never have been left behind intentionally, unless of course the settlement had been abandoned as the result of a disaster.
Well preserved foods such as charred hazelnuts, grain and pieces of apples were also found in the mud, and if a tsunami had been the culprit it would explain why they were quickly deprived of oxygen and thus had survived so well.
The people of the Mondsee Lake settlement were relatively advanced within a cultural group that straddled the new metal age. It is likely that they arrived from the Balkans around 3,600 BC and settled in an area with a connection to the supply of copper ore and the potential for excellent trading links. They had metallurgical skills that were rare in Europe for the time, in a transitional period known as the Chalcolithic. Copper is a relatively soft, easy to work metal, so they prospected the mountains and shaped and hammered nuggets of the pure material in its cold state. Later, they learnt more sophisticated techniques and were able to smelt, refine, and cast shimmering artefacts such as knives and axes. 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.
(Excerpt) Read more at pasthorizonspr.com ...
Pfahlbaumuseum Unteruhldingen. Image: Traveler100 (Wikimedia, used under a CC BY-NC 3.0)
Prehistoric Disaster: An Alpine Pompeii from the Stone Age
Der Spiegel | Friday, October 10, 2008 | Matthias Schulz
Posted on 10/11/2008 4:51:16 PM by SunkenCiv
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/2103309/posts
Must have been quite a Flood.
The people of the Mondsee Lake settlement were relatively advanced within a cultural group that straddled the new metal age. It is likely that they arrived from the Balkans around 3,600 BC... 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.
This gives a whole new meaning to that common term, "100 year flood", doesn't it?
Hey, that’s only a third of a mile. ;’) The amazing thing about it is, not only were there witnesses, some of them survived. Talk about your wrong place at the wrong time...
The survivors invented adult diapers. ;’)
They elected a Democrat Party government and it was all downhill from there.
“Chalcolithic Catastrophe”
Sounds like a Ben and Jerry’s ice cream flavor.
At first, I thought something happened in Ohio.
I haven’t read the link, but volcanic events can also seed very heavy rain which could drown a lake community rather quickly.
This whole copper thing has fascinated me for years. When I was a Kid I was taught that some WOG discovered it in his camp fire. Wilhelm Von Loon.
So I conducted an experiment, while working for a very large company that gave me little to do under slack supervision.
I built a furnace of refractory brick, several bricks stacked in a circle with a small opening on side. The crucible was a 6” steel cap.
I took some scrap copper and tossed into the pot and applied 3000 degree heat from an H2O2 torch. No melt after Eight hours.
> 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...
Good thing these preliterate craftsmen weren’t relying on you, buster. ;’)
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