Chalcolithic

There are both large and small megalithic tombs in Drenthe (NL). The largest is near Borger. The most heavy stones used for this one weigh about 23,000 kilos!

It is a protection for the roof, to keep sparks from getting up in to it. Right now we have a piece of wool cloth, in our last house we had animal skin. As soon as we can we are building a frame of willow which we are going to coat with clay.

Well, from what we’ve seen we don’t need any more openings for the smoke to get out. The ones in each end creates a draft which makes the smoke rise up to the ceiling and escape easily without allowing any to be disturbing.

Unfortunately large parts of prehistoric house walls are only rarely preserved to allow us to ponder the question of windows. In archaeological open-air museums they reconstruct windows according to traditional house building as very small which seems probable...

Not much survived because original floors have been destroyed by erosion. Hearths are preserved more commonly (from the Aeneolithic on they were carefully built from daub, stone, isolation layers of bark and so on) or arched ovens...

Yes, they were. We found the structures inside of the postholes; and it was clear enough to separate the rest of the post itself from the surrounding soil filling...

The prehistoric houses as reconstructed in Archeon have small or no windows. Most light enters through the door and the smoke holes under the roof. Besides this, the open fire gives some light. Honestly, we do not know...

We have never recovered any prehistoric toilets. When excavating settlements from this period, usually many traces of pits are found, but in most cases it is impossible to see what exactly they were used for, for storage, garbage or something else...

Baking plates are known from the Cerny- und Chassey-cultures, the Bourgogne middle-Neolithic and the Michelsberg-culture, ca. 4500-3500 BC). Their use seem to stop abruptly around 3500 BC caused by another way of baking bread. Maybe from this time onward, people used to bake directly on hot ashes, hot stones, pots or the inner walls of furnaces...

For sure, people invented many other things earlier, like for example the use and keeping of fire. As many inventions, the wheel was first seen in the Near East, about 8,500 years ago. But these wheels were used as slow turning potter’s wheels. Pottery was already an old technology back then...