Castro of Vila Nova de São Pedro

If you've listened to our most recent podcast, episode number The Chalcolithic then you've heard me talk a bit about the Castro of Vila Nova de São Pedro. Castro of Vila Nova de São Pedro is a Portuguese Chalcolithic settlement located near Azambuja that dates back to 2600 BC - 1300 BC. Most of our recent posts have been about prehistoric structures and technically the settlement would qualify as that. But, to make things simpler for me to divide up on the blog I've put a cutoff date of the "prehistoric" at 2800 BC. This figure is pretty arbitrary, but it's helpful for me in my head. In light of this, the Castro of Vila Nova de São Pedro qualifies as an ancient post, rather than a prehistoric one - even though the people of Castro of Vila Nova de São Pedro were prehistoric (not writing history down). So bear with me on that point please.

Castro of Vila Nova de São Pedro is culturally and chronologically linked with the Los Millares settlement in Spain, though not quite as old as their Spanish counterparts. But, they are just as fascinating. They left behind a treasure trove of artifacts for us to understand how they lived including buildings, pottery and arrowheads. Their importance though lies in them being at the forefront of megalithic construction. The people of Castro of Vila Nova de São Pedro started building megalithic structures almost a full thousand years earlier than their contemporaries in other parts of Europe.

There seems to have been a couple of distinct periods for the people at Castro of Vila Nova de São Pedro. VNSP I were the earliest inhabitants and began to construct a fortified settlement sometime around 2700 BC. They built dolmens and menhirs in their spare time and constructed an economy based on agriculture and domesticated animals. The fact that they built walls shows the influence of Los Millares, who we said were a warlike culture. With testy neighbors like the Los Millares, it was probably a pretty good decision to build some walls. During this period the people of Castro of Vila Nova de São Pedro began to establish trade ties and started to shape their megalithic structures in ways that aligned to celestial happenings. Archeo-astronomers (as well as the general public) can marvel at some of these complex works. Going basically on just pure will and a eyesight they were able to build some marvelous wonders that would stand up to even today's architectural prowess.

The Arrowheads of Envy

At around 2200 BC though things started to get really interesting. The Beaker People moved into the Iberian peninsula and the inhabitants of Castro of Vila Nova de São Pedro adopted some of their practices. They adopted Beaker burial traditions and their pottery making skills but kept much of their earlier cultural heritage. Basically the combined Beaker death rites and ceramic making with a growing megalithic culture. This led to prolific megalithic building and pottery making. The influx of the Beaker Culture also seems to have opened up trading ties to further flung regions of Iberia and even into France. At about this time the dominating influence of Los Millares seems to have waned a bit and after about 300 years of cultural mixing all of Iberia seems to have become a bit more decentralized. While this would be bad for someone building an empire, it seems to have been really freaking good for trade. The craftsmen of Castro of Vila Nova de São Pedro produced artifacts that have been found as far east as Bohemia. It was about this time that their copper skills were becoming the envy of Europe. It was the copper arrowheads that made their way all throughout Western and Central Europe. Great as the Castro of Vila Nova de São Pedro were, their cultural dominance couldn't last forever. Even though they retained much of their culture even after the Beaker People moved in, the decentralizing of Iberia would eventually open up the arena for another cultural explosion. This time the culture shift occurred because of the discovery and mastery of bronze. At around 1800 bronze working came into the region and slowly the Atlantic Bronze Age would begin. But the people of Castro of Vila Nova de São Pedro were stubborn and held on to their culture for another 500 years before the Bronze Age finally supplanted them. The Castro of Vila Nova de São Pedro seems to have fallen out of favor with people and the site was abandoned sometime around 1300 BC.

The Controversial Lapedo Child

Lapedo Child was discovered in Abrigo do Lagar Velho, near Leiria, Portugal. The skeleton was found in a limestone canyon and dates to about 24,500 years ago. It was found buried in red ochre and with pierced shells, indicating some type of religious burial. All around the canyon were artifacts from the Gravettian Culture, an Early Modern Human or Cro-Magnon culture. So far, none of this would cause a stir in the archeological world, let alone real world. But, it has courted some controversy because of some of the hypothesis that have come out of the discovery.

What makes this nearly complete child's skeleton controversial is that in 1998, when it was found some scientists and archeologists took a double take at it. They noticed that the skeleton seemed to have both the look of Cro-Magnon and Neanderthal. This would bolster the idea that Neanderthals didn't die out because they were killed by early modern humans, rather they breeded with their close relative and were slowly born out of existence. Now, it wouldn't be controversial if someone didn't disagree. Many do in fact. They think that the skeleton shows only Cro-Magnon features and that seeing a Neanderthal-Human hybrid is reading way too much into some of the anomalies on the skull. We'll let the hubbub sort itself out and end this way. If the Neanderthals were bred out of existence, that might not be the worst way to go. Basically Neanderthals, if they went extinct this way, went out by doing the dirty. And if you gotta go, that's not a bad way to do it.

On this day in history, a tax break on account of Visigothic bullying

On May 8, 413 AD the Roman Emperor Honorius decided to give a tax break to most of the provinces of Italy. It wasn't because he was feeling especially generous or that the Roman coffers were so overstuffed he could afford to grant some largesse. It was because the peninsula had been absolutely ravaged by the Visigoths. Three years prior to the tax break, the Visigoths had marched up to the eternal city and sacked it causing a whole bunch of physical, economic and psychological damage to the empire from which it never really recovered. So, while this day marks the anniversary of a fiscal policy enacted some 1599 years ago, the fiscal policy was in response to a seriously traumatic experience. We'll probably touch on the Visigothic sack of Rome at a later date so we'll just give a bit of blog love to the Visigoths today. Pictured here is the Visgothic wave of invasion from Eastern Europe to become lords of Spain. As you can see they entered into Roman territory around 376 and wreaked havoc down into the Balkans, sacking Athens along the way. But on the way to walking triumphantly on the streets of the brain capital of the ancient Mediterranean the Visigoths managed to completely upend the Eastern Empire in 378 at the battle of Adrianople (modern day Turkey). Then the sauntered on up the coast and down into Italy, sacking Rome in 410. They would go on to establish a kingdom in 418 that would stretch from the South Atlantic coast of Portugal up through most of modern day Spain and into France. After claiming such a big stretch of European soil, the Visigoths would go on a slow, but inevitable retreat until finally Ardo, the last of the Visogothic kings was defeated and killed by the Arab conquest of Spain in the 720's. So there you have it. You earn a tax break when you get invaded. I think I could deal with some unruly Visigoths if it got me off the hook for my income tax.