Imagine an immense building of wood and clay, dominating the entrance to a fortified village more than 6,000 years ago. This is what researchers discovered on the site of Stăuceni-Holm, in Romania, at least the remains of such a building. It is not just an old building, but fascinating remains of the Cucuteni-Trypillia culture, a civilization of farmer-artists who occupied a vast territory covering part of present-day Ukraine, Moldova and Romania. What makes this find exceptional is that we have never found such an imposing building in a village of this size and at this time.
With a surface area of 350 square meters, this megastructure literally dominates the forty-five small houses that surround it. Inside, archaeologists got their hands on a real treasure: finely decorated pottery, including a bowl decorated with a sculpted bull’s head, and flint tools. They also found henbane seeds, a plant known for its hallucinogenic and medicinal properties.
A more hierarchical society than we thought
According to details reported by journalist Tim Newcomb for Popular Mechanics magazine, this building is only the sixth of its kind discovered to date. If similar structures had already been observed in huge cities in Ukraine, their presence in a modest Romanian village of 350 inhabitants changes the situation. This means that the social organization of the time was undoubtedly much more complex than we thought: even small groups of individuals felt the need to build such buildings to come together.
The exact function of the place still divides experts, especially since only a quarter of the site has so far been excavated. Was it a temple, an early town hall or the home of a powerful leader? “It may be unrealistic to consider the function of the building as simply a warehouse or a place to consume food», Explain the authors of the study. According to them, “perhaps the megastructure was just a larger house for a larger family, a community building for decision-making, or a meeting place for high-ranking residents“.
This discovery also calls into question the Epinal image of small Neolithic tribes living in a completely egalitarian manner. The existence of this building suggests that a form of hierarchy was already beginning to take hold. To construct such a building, with its oak floors and walls covered with clay, it required an organized workforce and a leader to direct the work, enough to imagine that the first forms of political power in Europe were born here.
The Stăuceni-Holm site has not yet revealed all its secrets. Magnetic surveys show that the structure may have had one floor, a sort of terrace open to the rest of the community. The excavations are therefore continuing and the remaining three quarters of the building could well reveal the key to the mystery.
