Archaeologists working close to Prague found the remnants of a mysterious complex known as a roundel. They believed that a circular structure may have been used by a nearby farming community around 7,000 years ago. It is assumed that it was functional during the late Neolithic or New Stone Age.
Roundel in Prague Is Older than Stonehenge and Egyptian Pyramids
According to Radio Prague International, the unearthed roundel has a diameter of roughly 180 feet (55 meters), or about as tall as the height of the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Based on the estimates, the roundel is older than both Stonehenge and the Egyptian pyramids.
Jaroslav Řídký, an authority on the roundels of the Czech Republic and a spokesperson for the Institute of Archaeology of the Czech Academy of Sciences, said that it is too early to say anything about the people producing this roundel.
Yet it is evident that they belonged to the Stroked Pottery culture, which lasted from 4900 to 4800 B.C. and 4400 B.C. A Stroked Pottery culture, according to Wikipedia, is the successor to the Linear Pottery culture, a major archaeological horizon of the European Neolithic in Central Europe.
The structure's exposure may provide information regarding the building's purpose, according to Miroslav Kraus, the director of the roundel excavation in the Vino district.
Identifying Roundel's Construction History
Researchers originally discovered the Vino roundel's presence in the 1980s, when construction workers were building gas and water pipelines; but the present dig has revealed the structure's full extent for the first time. According to Řídký, his team has so far discovered pottery shards, animal bones, and stone tools in the ditch fill.
Although the scientists were not yet sure about the structure's construction date, carbon-dating would help them figure it out.
Řídký said that in the Czech Republic's Bohemian region, the people who created the Stroked Pottery ware are renowned for creating other roundels. Their sedentary farming settlements, which straddled modern Poland, eastern Germany, and the northern Czech Republic, were made up of a number of longhouses. The longhouses are enormous rectangular buildings that could accommodate 20 to 30 people each.
He noted that roundel construction expertise transcended the boundaries of numerous archaeological cultures. Roundels were constructed by many groups all over central Europe.
Roundels Function in Ancient Civilization
Prior to a few decades ago, when aerial and drone photography became an important element of the archaeological toolkit, roundels were not well-known ancient features. But archaeologists now understand that roundels represent the oldest evidence of architecture in the entire European continent.
Roundels, when viewed from above, are made up of one or more wide circular ditches with a number of holes that serve as entrances. The interior of each roundel was probably lined with wooden poles and possible mud filling the gaps.
All around central Europe, hundreds of these circular earthworks have been discovered; but they all date back to the last two or three centuries. Although their prominence in the late Neolithic is evident, it is unclear what they served for.
Řídký told Live Science that he preferred a more inclusive understanding of the Vino structure. He observed that roundels likely served a number of purposes, the most significant of which is socio-ritual.
According to him, it is possible that roundels were constructed for large-scale meetings, possibly to memorialize occasions that were significant to the community at large, such as rites of passage, astronomical phenomena, or commercial transactions.
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