Researchers have investigated a mysterious prehistoric site in Europe’s far north, shedding new light on what is believed to be a large Stone Age cemetery.
The site, known as Tainiaro, is located in Finland’s Lapland region, about 80 miles south of the Arctic Circle. The study, published in the same journal, said it was an “unlikely” site for a large hunter-gatherer cemetery from this period. ancient This provides the first comprehensive overview of the site.
In this study, the team of researchers proposed that the site was most likely a large Stone Age cemetery dating back about 6,500 years, although it is not certain. If this hypothesis proves correct, it would be the largest archaeological site ever discovered in northern Europe from this period. Furthermore, it represents the northernmost large cemetery of this period.
Many questions about Tainiaro remain unanswered. However, the fact that large cemeteries appear to have existed so close to the Arctic Circle is surprising and challenges previous impressions of far northern Europe, suggesting that despite the harsh environmental conditions This suggests that a large and complex society may have existed in this region.
“I think the real meaning lies in our cultural compass,” said Aki Hakonen, an archaeologist at the University of Oulu in Finland and author of the study. newsweek. “The further north you go, the less interesting things you expect to happen. But the north is a magical place, full of many surprises, of which Tainiaro said he hopes to be one.” I don’t know.”
“If archeology reorients itself to thinking about the North not as a periphery but as a core place of importance in its own right, we will be able to understand humanity’s past more thoroughly,” he said. said.
The first evidence of the Tainiaro ruins, located in the vast forests of northern Finland, came to light in 1959 when local workers extracting sand discovered a collection of stone artefacts, then authorities Reported to.
The first excavations at the site, carried out by the Finnish Heritage Agency, did not take place until 1984. Subsequent excavations took place during his 1980s and early 1990s. However, these excavations investigated only a small portion of the site, and due to a lack of resources, the analysis of the findings was not completed or fully described in published scientific papers. This significantly hindered widespread recognition of the site’s potential importance.
“This place was basically buried in archives,” Hakonen said. “There are some mentions of this site and its 30-40 burials in archaeological books and papers, mainly in Finnish, but these have always been supplementary.”
Despite the absence of human remains at Tainiaro, excavations so far have led researchers to tentatively interpret around 40 ancient holes in the ground as graves, adding to the confusion in Finnish archeology. caused it. The main hypothesis was that Tainiaro represented a Stone Age burial site. But is this true?
“What you need to know is that Finland’s soil is so acidic that no organic material survives for more than 1,000 years, and we’re talking more than 6,000 years here. “All we have is the outline of the hole and traces of its interior,” Hakonen said. “But we didn’t even have a map of the location.”
For the latest study, Hakonen and colleagues examined the available evidence and the validity of the cemetery hypothesis. We also conducted new field surveys, including test excavations, to clarify the overall picture of the ruins.
Researchers believe that as many as 44 of the holes excavated at Tainiaro were buried, given that their shapes match those found in known Stone Age graves in other parts of northern Europe. It was interpreted as something that The authors said this supports the interpretation that the site was a cemetery during this period.
However, since only one-fifth of the area has yet to be excavated, it is estimated that the total number of tombs could be as many as 200. If more than one person is buried in a single burial, the total number of people buried may be even higher.
“After digitizing all the field drawings and creating a complete map of the excavation area, it became clear that there should be approximately 40 more burial sites,” Hakonen said.
When researchers examined other Stone Age graves with human remains and examined the documentation of about 900 of them, they found that the contours of the graves were often very indistinct. In some cases, especially those of children or animals, it can be difficult to determine that it is a burial without the skeleton itself.
“In the Tainiaro document, there were around 60 additional traces in the soil that could indicate either child or animal burials, or adult graves that are irregular in some way. Our estimates are that The total number of people buried in Tainiaro is between 120 and 300. This does not add up to the whole picture at all, because excluding Tainiaro, the total number of Stone Age burials discovered in Finland is 210. No,” Hakonen said.
Researchers were surprised by the size of the potential cemetery, as it was previously thought that such large burial sites from this period existed only further south.
“The research on Tainiaro clearly shows that large cemeteries also existed near the Arctic Circle. In the future, all research on this period in the north will need to be reevaluated to some extent, because… These societies may not have been as small as previously thought,” Hakonen said in a press release.
At that time, the area around Tainiaro was inhabited by the early Komu pottery culture, a hunter-gatherer-fisher people whose true identity is still unknown. Tainiaro seems to have been more than just a cemetery. Numerous fire scars and distinctive stonework also suggest that the site was inhabited.
While future research will need to test the graveyard hypothesis, the latest study questions why such a site exists so high on the map, and whether there are similar graveyards yet to be discovered in the area. The question arises as to whether there is.
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom, finding common ground and finding connections.