Scientific analyzes and excavations will take many more years, but the Albanian waters of Lake Ohrid have already revealed a secret. They hide the remains of the oldest lakeside city discovered to date on the European continent.
Recently arrived from a laboratory at the University of Bern, the results of radiocarbon dating of pile samples recovered from this pile-dwelling site, discovered off the coast of the small Lin peninsula, place its age between 6,000 and 5,800 years before our era. “To our knowledge, the lake site of Lin is the oldest in Europe. It dates back several hundred years and is older than those known until now in the Mediterranean and in the Alpine region, ”explains to AFP archaeologist Albert Hafner, director of research at the University of Bern.
This professor has been co-directing for four years the work of a team of Albanian and Swiss archaeologists who are carrying out excavations in the emerald waters of Lake Ohrid, the oldest lake in Europe, listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. , which Albania shares with North Macedonia. “In the north of the Alps, the oldest sites date from around 4000 BC, further south, in the Italian alpine lakes they date from around 5000 BC”, specifies this expert on cities. Neolithic European lakes. These villages consisted of houses on stilts, above water or in areas regularly flooded by rising waters.
The city of the Balkan lake could have been populated by 200 to 500 people, according to the first estimates. Assisted by professional divers, archaeologists continue to take turns descending to the bottom of the lake to bring up fossilized fragments and pieces of oak wood piles. The analysis of the growth rings of these trunks by the method of dendrochronology should make it possible to have “a valuable insight into the climatic and environmental conditions” of the time and the daily life of the inhabitants of this city, explains the archaeologist Adrian Anastasi, at the head of the team of Albanian researchers. “Oak is like a Swiss watch, very precise, like a calendar,” emphasizes Albert Hafner.
“To understand the structure of this pile-dwelling site without damaging it, we move very slowly and with great caution,” says Adrian Anastasi. Abundant vegetation does not facilitate this work. “Building their village on stilts was a complex task, and it is important to understand why these people chose this type of architecture,” he adds. It is assumed, for the time being, that agriculture and cattle-raising had been the main occupations of these villagers. “We found various seeds, plants and also bones of wild and domestic animals,” lists Ilir Gjepali, an Albanian archeology professor responsible for sorting out the materials brought to the surface.
Each descent to the bottom of the lake brings valuable information to reconstruct the architecture of the dwellings or the organization of the life of the villagers, who could turn out to have been among the first sedentary people on the European continent, according to Adrian Anastasi. After a two-hour dive, Kristi Anastasi, an Albanian researcher in underwater archeology, found a large quantity of archaeological materials, ceramics and fragments of flint tools at a depth of four meters. Samples of piles and other organic matter are regularly sent to university laboratories in Bern for analysis.
Archaeologists have discovered that the city was probably fortified. They estimate at some 100,000 the number of piles driven into the bottom of the lake, off Lin, “a real treasure for research”, welcomes Mr. Hafner, specifying that research on the site could take another twenty years. . “To protect themselves in this way, they had to cut down a forest,” he says. Protect from whom? Difficult for archaeologists to have an immediate answer. “These are key sites for prehistory and which are not only interesting for the region, but also for all of south-west Europe,” says the archaeologist.
