How long have people lived in the area that today includes Baden-Württemberg? That is a question to which we will probably never have an answer. In Africa, there have been found the skeletal remains of human or human-like beings who lived three or four million years ago. What is the situation here with such discoveries? In the territory of today's Baden-Württemberg there are important discoveries from the earliest history of mankind.
Close to Mauer on the Elsenz, not far from Heidelberg, a mandible
was excavated from an archaeological dig from an age estimated at 500,000
to 600,000 years ago in the early Stone Age.
Around 200,000 years ago, it is assumed, lived the man whose skull was
found near Steinheim on the Murr.
The past of which we speak encompasses a half million years. Those are
unimaginable time periods. Man of this early time nourished himself from
what Nature offered him; he collected fruits and vegetables, and hunted
animals that he could overcome. One supposes that these hunters and gatherers
who walked on two legs lived in communities, perhaps in extended families
to which 25 to 30 members belonged. Not very often such groups would had
contact with others. It is considered that not more than 500 humans crowded
the todays region of Baden-Württemberg.
The world in which Man eked out his existence has indeed changed greatly
over hundreds of millenia. At the time of Heidelberg Man it was warm,
and forests covered the land. There were animals that we find today only
in Africa. Quite gradually the climate became harsher. In the Alps, snow
and ice accumulated slowly. The glaciers, especially the gigantic Rhine
Glacier, became still mightier, pushed ever further into the Alpine foreland
and covered it eventually as far as the Danube. Trees no longer flourished;
the forests disappeared; the land became a cold steppe, a tundra.
Cold and warm periods alternated many times over. The last ice age in
our area ended about 10,000 years ago. The mighty period of prehistory
that we call the Early Stone Age lasted up to that time.
From the Early Stone Age, there are remains that give us a more exact
idea of the mode of life of primitive Man. There are caves and cliff overhangs
once occupied by people, especially in the Swabian Jura. These shelters
provided by Nature were not permanently occupied, but were again and again
sought out as places of refuge and storage. In the caves, researchers
found not only bones of humans, but also those of animals they had killed.
Plant remains permit conclusions about plants used for food and especially
about the vegetation of the time. Toward the end of the Early Stone Age,
about 30,000 years ago, the residents of mountain caves carved small figures
out of ivory, the first works of art of Mankind. In the fowling cave near
Stetten in the Valley of the Lone, were found depictions of a mammoth,
a wild horse and a cave lion. These also illustrated the animals the people
had to fight. Next to that was also found a figure that could be recognized
as human. In the Little Cloister of Geissen cave site in the Ach Valley
near Blaubeuren there was discovered in the form of a smooth, squared
stone (3.8 x 14.0 x 0.45 centimeters, 1 ½ x 5 ½ x 3/16 inches) a human
image with legs spread and arms raised.
More recent are the scratched drawings and female figures of 3 to 4 centimeters
(about 1 3/16 to 1 5/16 inches) size from the Peter's Cliff cave near
Engen.
With the end of the Ice Age 10,000 years ago, the large animal herds disappeared
as the basis for livelihood for the Early Stone Age hunter. The Middle
Stone Age began. Hunting for smaller animals, trapping birds and gathering
fruits and vegetables required broader roving about by small groups. They
changed their lodging place seasonally from mountain caves to the shores
of Lake Feder.
A large, even colossal, change in existence of our ancestors brought quite
another innovation: farming. How might that have started? How did Man
come to till the soil, put seed in the ground, in order to harvest? In
Egypt and in the Near East farming and raising livestock had already been
practiced for a long time. From there, they spread out to Europe, slowly,
to be sure, certainly not overnight. That men also continued to hunt is
not to be doubted.
But he who practices farming becomes settled. He needed a sturdy dwelling.
He became accustomed to humans living together with wild animals, so that
they eventually became domesticated animals. He raised cattle. Settlements
grew up. A time in which so many new things came into being and in which
human existence so changed so fundamentally deserves a special designation.
With farming begins the Late Stone Age.
The remains of houses from the Late Stone Age have been excavated in many
sites in Baden-Württemberg. The settlements (lake dwellings) lay chiefly
along the shores of Lake Feder (Buchau) and of Lake Constance (Hornstaad-Hörnle)
and in the climatically favorable river valleys of the Danube and the
Blau (Ehrenstein), the Tauber, the Neckar (Grossgartach near Heilbronn,
Gerlingen) and the Rhine (Munzingen, Michelsberg near Bruchsal, Mannheim).
A settlement consisted of thirty or more houses. A large quantity of interesting
discoveries found their way into our museums: weapons and implements,
jewelry and ceramic pots. Today, we can imagine very well how people of
the Late Stone Age lived.
