Ancient civilization “murdered” their own homes. We still don’t know why

The huge settlements of the Tripilian culture had up to 40,000 inhabitants. They all ended up being consumed by flames — and the fires were not accidental. Archaeologists think that we are dealing with cases of “domicide” — that is, the “murder of a house”.

A thousand years before the first pharaohs ruled Egypt, Eastern Europe boasted a network of settlements larger than any other in the world. They were the megassítios of Tripiliasalt and copper production centers.

Some of these large settlements covered several square kilometers and housed up to 40,000 people.

And all these megasites ended up being consumed by flames.

The culture Cucuteni-Tripiliana occupied, between around 4600 and 3500 BC, what is currently the Romania, Moldova and Ukraine. Known for its elegant ceramics, it left us the oldest known example of potter’s wheel.

The Tripilians practiced agriculture, especially cereal cultivation and dairy production, which allowed the development of small dense settlementswith houses “pau a pique”or rammed earth — ancestral construction technique that intertwines wooden or bamboo sticks and fills the gaps with clay and straw to form the walls.

In the fourth millennium BC, these settlements had a own stylewith several hundred or even thousands of buildings organized in concentric rings. In some, the streets radiated towards the center of an oval, like the spokes of a wheel, counts the .

Os burnt clay debristhe result of intense fires, are a striking feature of the Tripillian ruins. Its presence is so common that, for decades, archaeologists thought the Tripilians used fire during the house construction process.

However, It’s not just the walls of houses which show signs of damage caused by fire, as would be expected if it were used in construction. Many of the houses are full of piles of burnt rubbishcharred cereals and burnt furniture.

Everything indicates that These fires were not accidental. Faced with this enigma, researchers saw an opportunity to apply classical experimental archaeology. Several teams of researchers bought or built wattle and daub houses in Eastern Europe and set them on fire.

All these teams found that a natural fire, left to chance, could not reproduce the damage observed in Tripillian dwellings.

Only when they added extra fuel is that the heat reached temperatures comparable to the ruins. Furthermore, inside the houses a lot of few human or animal remainswhich suggests that the fires were caused deliberately.

The map below shows part of Eastern Europe in the Late Stone Age. In the marked area in redmost people burned down their own homes after living there for years. Outside of that line, this didn’t happen.

This line is known as the “horizon of burned houses” and, to this day, archaeologists still do not know why it exists.

A cena do crime

O way of working of the destruction of Tripilian houses evolved over time. There are exceptions, but in most cases the following rules apply:

• Houses were burned individually or in small groupsand not the entire population at once
• Houses were set on fire no people or animals inside
• Houses were burned with furniture and waste insideor next to another house with these objects
• The houses were destroyed by fire with food still inside
• The fire reached temperatures so high that each fire could consume between 100 and 250 trees as fuel
• New houses were built over the rubble of the ancient

Putting all these elements together, you begin to design a clearer picture. The Tripilians burned houses that were still in usable conditionand they did not do so just to free up space, since, in that case, others could have occupied these rooms.

They did not use the houses as crematoriums of the dead, not just as rubbish bins, although objects were burned in them. And they were true experts in the use of fire.

Can we immediately exclude a possible explanation for these fires: if invaders had been responsible Due to the regular destruction of these settlements, other signs of conflict would be found in the ruins. Bodies, some burned alive, others killed violently. Weapons. Defensive structures more elaborate than a simple two-meter-wide ditch.

As the confirmation of the intentional and non-aggressive nature these fires, archaeologists began to discuss the concept of domicilethat is, the “murder” of a house.

This term describes a act of violence against the inhabitants of a housereferring, for example, to the treatment of Native Americans during the Indian Removal Act. More recently, a United Nations Special Rapporteur applied the term to bombings in the Gaza Strip.

Domicile in the “horizon of burned houses” is, however, a different phenomenon. It’s personal, otherwiseno ceramic pieces would have been left valuable interior of burned houses.

One theory suggests that the Tripilians saw houses as having a soul of their own and helped them to “die” at the end of their life cycle. Another hypothesis suggests that the house was burned after the death of an important inhabitant.

But domicide ends up being, above all, a reflection of our ignorancemore than an answer to the issue of fires. Without written records or objects with clear spiritual significance, the role of houses in Tripilian society remains shrouded in mystery.