Winters in Western Siberia are harsh and long, but it is also true that the taiga (boreal forest) is a place with abundant natural resources. Imagine the attraction this area had for the hunter-gatherer tribes of prehistoric times. Living there was like entering wonderland.
The latest paleobotanical and stratigraphic examinations reveal that its inhabitants led a sophisticated lifestyle: they fished in the Amnya River and hunted elk and reindeer with spears tipped with stone and bone. To conserve their surplus fish and meat oil they made elaborately decorated ceramics. And to protect their privileged lifestyle they built the first fortresses in history.
Archaeologists from the Freie Universität Berlin have discovered several fortified prehistoric settlements in a remote region of Siberia. As explained in an article published in the magazine Antiquity, these complex defense structures were built about 8,000 years ago.
"This finding reshapes our understanding of early human societies, challenging the idea that only with the arrival of agriculture would people have begun to build permanent settlements with monumental architecture and developed complex societies," they explain.
Their research focused on the Amnya site, recognized as the northernmost Stone Age fort in Eurasia, where the team of researchers conducted field work in 2019. “We collected samples for radiocarbon dating, confirming the prehistoric age of the site and establishing it as the oldest known fort in the world,” says Tanja Schreiber, an expert at the Institute of Prehistoric Archeology in Berlin.
Approximately ten Stone Age walled sites are known to date, with semi-buried houses (excavated in ditches) and surrounded by earthen walls and wooden palisades, suggesting advanced architectural and defensive capabilities.
“The findings from Siberia, along with other global examples such as Gobekli Tepe in Anatolia, contribute to a re-evaluation of the linear development of societies, challenging the traditional view that permanent settlements, accompanied by defensive structures, only emerged with agricultural societies and refuting the notion that agriculture and livestock were prerequisites for social complexity,” the authors of the article point out.
In various parts of the world, from the Korean Peninsula to Scandinavia, hunter-gatherer communities developed large settlements taking advantage of aquatic resources. The abundance of natural resources in the Siberian taiga, such as annual fish migrations and herds of cattle, likely played a crucial role in the emergence of the forts.
Fortified settlements overlooking rivers may have served as strategic locations to control and exploit fishing grounds. The competitive nature arising from resource storage and population growth is evident in these prehistoric constructions, overturning previous assumptions that competition and conflict were absent in hunter-gatherer societies.
“The findings highlight the diversity of paths that led to complex social organizations, reflected in the emergence of monumental constructions such as the Siberian forts. They also highlight the importance of local environmental conditions in shaping the trajectories of human societies,” the experts conclude.
