Approximately one hundred and fifty prehistoric circular…
4797 BCE to 4654 BCE
Approximately one hundred and fifty prehistoric circular ditches spread over Germany, Austria, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic are known to archaeology.
Their diameters range from around twenty to around one hundred and thirty meters, and they date to the fifth millennium BCE.
Tools, bones, and some artifacts were found in their context.
The largest of these arrangements to date was found in Leipzig in the 1990s.
Another large find was at the nearby village of Aythra, outside of Leipzig.
The structures were built in a stretch of Central European land some seven hundred and sixty kilometers (four hundred miles) across, over a period of one or two hundred years.
From finds in the context of these ditches, and associated settlements of longhouses, it was established that they were in use until roughly 4600 BCE.
The people that built these structures are associated with the Linear Ceramic culture.
They appear to have lived in communal long houses and subsisted by farming cattle, goats, pigs, and sheep.
They are believed to have migrated into this region during the sixth millennium BCE from the plain of the Danube in what is now Hungary and Serbia.
They made tools from wood, stone, and bone, and artwork of ceramic and pottery.