This video explains the “Timber Longhouse culture” (known as “LBK culture”) that successfully spread farming throughout central Europe for the first time starting at about 5,500 BC, with the settlements being located along rivers.  The culture abruptly ended at around 5,000 BC in a violent fashion with massacres happening in the settlements, which is the first evidence of organized violence happening on the continent.

Following are points made in the video:

— The “timber longhouse design” was created and implemented long before the Vikings adopted a similar type of architecture thousands of years later.

— Neolithic farming groups arrived on the European continent at around 7,000 BC from Anatolia (mostly modern-day Turkey), and they slowly worked their way north and reached what is now Hungary by 6,000 BC.

— From 5,600 to 5,500 BC the “LBK” culture arose in the Austria-Hungary region (around lake Balaton), where settlements were built on the banks of rivers.  The people had developed a “winning lifestyle” where they grew crops and raised cattle and sheep.

— The culture is known for their distinctive “longhouses” which were built in a very uniform design that had large slanted thatched rooftops.

— Once the design of the houses was established, they spread very quickly throughout most of mainland northern Europe within only a few hundred years, where it is estimated that 15,000 such households existed with a population as high as 100,000 people by 5,100 BC.

— The LBK were central Europe’s first farming culture, with the Anatolian people mostly migrating into Europe rather than previous Europeans converting to that lifestyle, according to genetic studies of burials.

— They used slash and burn agriculture, causing them to need to move frequently.  They almost exclusively only lived in fertile areas along rivers.

— LBK communities were “patrilocal”— meaning that men generally stayed put and women moved around much more frequently.

— Houses usually lasted only one generation, and people didn’t re-build in the same locations.

— Milo mentions a 2018 book “The First Farmers of Europe” by Stephan Shannon, which he highly recommends.

— The LBK culture ended between 5,000 BC - 4,800 BC, where the sites were abandoned, the population crashed, long-distance trade was interrupted, settlements became fortified, and evidence of large-scale conflict such as warfare showed up in the archeological record.

— The evidence of warfare is the first time it is seen in abundance on the European continent, where mass graves from massacres have been found.

— In Kilianstandten, Germany, a mass grave was found containing 26 people which dated between 5,200 and 4,850 BC, where people were tossed carelessly into a pre-existing ditch in a village of about 18 LBK houses.  Most of the people were killed by blunt-force trauma to the head, and some were shot with arrows.  What is unique and even more horrifying about the massacre is that the people had their limbs broken while they were still alive, which perhaps even happened in a ritualistic manner.

— In Herxheim, Germany, an enclosure was found that contains the remains of 500 people, with only half of the site being excavated so far.  Additionally, it appears that the bodies were de-skinned, de-fleshed, and the bones were discarded as if at the end of a feast, suggesting that mass cannibalism even happened!

— [Milo also mentioned the “Talheim death pit,” but he didn’t mention details about it.  According to the Wikipedia page, it contains the remains of 34 bodies, being the first evidence of organized violence in Early Neolithic Europe.  Among the skeletons found, almost none of them were women, suggesting that the women were abducted by the attackers, and in fact the abduction of women may have potentially been the motive for the attacks.]

— It is likely that demographic pressures brought on the violence.

— [Note: I wonder who the attackers were— Were they other famers or were they hunter-gathers in the area?]