16 ms·

Burned House Horizon

331 points by diodorus 6y ago

jjoonathan 6y ago
I think the article understates the case for fumigation. > Because the damage from the fire was almost total for the entire settlement, it would be illogical if fumigation was the only intent What? If you had pests that were bad enough to warrant burning food stores, why take a risk on the other buildings?
- dwohnitmok 6y ago
  I think the implied logic is that if you're worried about pests destroying your supplies, it's a pretty crazy move to decide the way to fix the destruction of your supplies by, well, burning the supplies of your entire settlement to the ground. Regardless, I agree the logic is incomplete as stated. It's entirely possible if there was an easy way to replenish supplies (e.g. conducting such a burning right before harvest time or ample hunting/gathering grounds nearby) that such an approach would make sense.
  - IgorPartola 6y ago
    If you had maggots living in your grain, would it be possible to save parts of the grain with primitive tech? Would it be possible to guarantee that the pest didn’t move from one side of the village to the other. Maybe they thought the old houses were C and the new ones would be Rust and this was the migration path :)
    - kubanczyk 6y ago
      > Maybe they thought the old houses were C and the new ones would be Rust Or, maybe the old houses were JavaScript and the new ones would be JavaScript.
      - IgorPartola 6y ago
        Do you mean EcmaScript? Also, if it was JS they wouldn’t have houses. Everything would be stored in matchboxes.
  - jjoonathan 6y ago
    Why is that crazy? Between eggs and pests "diffusing" into adjacent buildings only to "diffuse" back after a sweep, I can completely understand why a town would opt for the nuclear option after a few failed attempts to get rid of an infestation.
    - dwohnitmok 6y ago
      Because without a ready-at-hand large-scale method of restocking (which granted is a very real possibility that such a dismissal of the fumigation theory seems to overlook, see e.g. my comment about harvest time) this is tantamount to suicide. The difficulty required to sustain the caloric needs of a town and rebuild after complete destruction of food stores and shelter is immense, especially with only the help of pre-Bronze Age technology.
      - jjoonathan 6y ago
        So if you overlook the probable reason why it wasn't suicide, it was suicide? Come on, that's not convincing.
        dwohnitmok 6y ago
        I probably agree with you more than is coming across, but I do think it useful to steelman the fumigation argument. Burning down entire villages for fumigation even if you have a ready harvest is an extremely risk endeavor. It's no longer outright suicide, but you're still going to cause no shortage of hardship and potentially at least some lost lives. This is coupled with the fact that pests and parasites were a pretty constant fact of ancient life and so finding, e.g. bed bugs, was kind of just something people dealt with. Voluntarily and periodically razing entire towns for what amounts to sterilization is practically unheard of outside of the Burned House Horizon. Consider that even during various plague/Black Death breakouts, when disease was thought to be caused by various miasmas rather than infectious agents spread from person to person, and individual homes and personal property was readily burned, towns still were not being wholesale burned to the ground. That is even something as bad as a pestilence that could potentially kill half or more of your entire town's population still didn't warrant utter destruction of the town. It's not suicide. But only just.
- jml7c5 6y ago
  And fumigation should really be broken into two separate categories: fumigation for pests, and fumigation for infectious disease. They are very different, as infectious diseases cannot be seen: in a world where no one knows about microbes and viruses, people will do peculiar things based on their theory of disease. History provides many examples of people doing odd things to prevent plagues and disease, many of which are far stranger (and less effective) than "cleanse the buildings with fire".
  - posterboy 6y ago
    "burn the witch!" Happy belated internatiinal women's day by the way
- IgorPartola 6y ago
  It could be both. At one point a pest had moved into a settlement that caused them to decide to burn it all down and start over. They then decided to periodically do this in order to prevent the pest from ever being able to come back. Over the years the need for this had gone away but the practice remained and took on a ritualistic meaning more so than a practical one. And as these things go, the original meaning was lost. To me, this seems like the intuitive explanation.
- gostsamo 6y ago
  The period between burnings is cited as 75 years. Why would you clean from pests once in a century? It is better correlated with a lifespan of a human* which might suggest that they've considered a house to have the same lifespan. * the average lifespan was much shorter but it includes children mortality and once above the age of five a human had a good chance to reach retirement.
- NiceWayToDoIT 6y ago
  Maybe it was structural for buildings - termites...
JoeDaDude 6y ago
There is a debate that so called Anasazi people of the American southwest either ritually burned and abandoned their Kivas (ceremonial building) or that the burning is evidence of warfare. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiva https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiva https://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/online_books/hh/36/hh36c-2.htm https://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/online_books/hh/36/hh36c-2.h... https://spot.colorado.edu/~laursen/southwest/chaco/chacoMain.htm https://spot.colorado.edu/~laursen/southwest/chaco/chacoMain...
- seibelj 6y ago
  Those Kivas are really interesting. We visited one of the sites in New Mexico at Bandolier National Monument. Very cool how they carved all the houses into the cliffs. Most interesting fact that stuck with me was they ground all their grains using rocks that were too soft, so bits of rock would get in all their food, quickly removing all the enamel from their teeth and rotting them away. I can’t imagine how painful that must have been. Surviving meant the children had to chew all the food for the adults and spit it out for them to eat.
  - prawn 6y ago
    If you enjoyed those cliff houses, you might like Cappadocia in Turkey which has a lot of similar dwellings, and even an underground town of sorts. A few of the areas you can explore more freely than at Bandolier. https://www.google.com/search?q=cappadocia&safe=off&source=lnms&tbm=isch https://www.google.com/search?q=cappadocia&safe=off&source=l...
    - aasasd 6y ago
      There are also massive temples cut from rock. E.g., from a quick search: - Kailasa temple https://www.ancient-origins.net/ancient-places-asia/kailasa-temple-how-was-massive-hindu-temple-carved-out-single-rock-008249 https://www.ancient-origins.net/ancient-places-asia/kailasa-... and http://www.indiagk.net/2014/06/kailash-temple-ellora-cave-temple.html?m=1 http://www.indiagk.net/2014/06/kailash-temple-ellora-cave-te... - https://www.easemytrip.com/blog/rock-cut-temples-and-architectures-india https://www.easemytrip.com/blog/rock-cut-temples-and-archite... - Masroor temples https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masrur_Temples https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masrur_Temples - https://photoscaping.wordpress.com/2017/02/07/celestial-rock-temple/ https://photoscaping.wordpress.com/2017/02/07/celestial-rock... My favorite is Petra city that has multiple large buildings carved right in the face of rock: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petra https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petra
slickrick216 6y ago
One theory I didn’t see listed but maybe I missed it is migration and scorched earth. If a settlement had exhausted Hunter gatherer resources in an area they would move to another. However leaving structures behind would offer easy options to would be invaders for shelter which is after all a human need. So possibly they would burn the settlement as it could not be transported.
- setr 6y ago
  They would presumably do the same thing at the next area, as they move on, so you’d have multiple patches where this occurred, presumably with an offset-but-similar lifecycle at each location, as they rotated between viable lands
- colanderman 6y ago
  The "demolition" argument notes that "the archeological record shows that houses were rebuilt directly on top of the pre-existing foundations of the destroyed buildings." Presumably this wouldn't be so if the inhabitants were migrating away from an area. (Though I guess a new tribe could have come in and built on the same foundations.)
  - Valgrim 6y ago
    The reason why a settlement was built in that place could still be valid a few years after the burn, such as proximity to water sources or useful materials.
    - IgorPartola 6y ago
      It’s not clear but it sounds like they didn’t just build the settlements there but that each house would be rebuilt exactly where the old one was. If that’s the case, it would be really strange if it was built by different people or at different times.
  - slickrick216 6y ago
    Yeah foundations maybe or as another poster said it was still viable and likely enviable.
deleted 6y ago
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Townley 6y ago
Tangential to this article, but can I just say that this is HN at its best. Random, curious, snippets of learning on topics that I can’t imagine hearing about anywhere else. It’s a pure love of knowledge that leads thousands of people to spend Friday night reading a largely useless Wikipedia entry on house burning just because it’s mystery
- jbluepolarbear 6y ago
  I read the whole thing. I love learning new things like this.
- evmar 6y ago
  If you’d like more, the Wikipedia community on Reddit regularly shares neat articles like this one.
  - moehm 6y ago
    I just want to chime in, because I collect (good) Wikipedia articles and their respective discussions posted on HN: https://www.mostdiscussed.com/ https://www.mostdiscussed.com/
- Ansil849 6y ago
  > Tangential to this article, but can I just say that this is HN at its best. Random, curious, snippets of learning on topics that I can’t imagine hearing about anywhere else. The submission, I agree is the best of HN; the comments, however, are the worst. Tons of 'bikeshedding' comments offering flippant uninformed analyses that belittle established and well-researched theories. By offering 'back of a cocktail napkin' comments like 'I think such and such theory doesn't get enough attention because of my random opinion', or 'I think such and such likely happened, based on me just ruminating about this for a few minutes, versus doing years of research on'; the comments are tacitly disrespecting the work researchers whose specialty this is put into formulating theories. We HN users need to learn to just say 'we don't know', instead of playing internet experts in every single discipline a given submission is about.
  - 6y ago
ryanmarsh 6y ago
Perhaps it was all of the above: Accidents, war, etc...
mullingitover 6y ago
Reminds me of the story of the Helvetii burning their own villages before they emigrated in what would eventually lead the Gallic Wars. Seems like this might've been a customary thing when a large group migrated out of an area to keep the group from being tempted to turn back.
- stainforth 6y ago
  Quema tus barcos
throwaway894345 6y ago
This practice endured from 6500 to 2000 BC. We’re closer to the last (known) such fire than the last fire was to the first. Amazing that this was happening for so long and we know so little about it.
- gillytech 6y ago
  Can't help but wonder what else in human history has been lost to antiquity. And I wonder if in 4000 years much of this cultures written works would exist in a recoverable form to explain the artifacts left behind.
  - iandinwoodie 6y ago
    Where do you put 4000 years of data? Imagine indexing / searching that. If all data can’t be kept, who will get to decide what is important? It’s a really interesting topic
    - throwawayboise 6y ago
      This is what librarians (used to?) do. Decide what is important, and which works are the best ones to save. Then organize it all. The current mode of "save everything forever" collapses unless you have tools to find the needles in the haystacks.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  - throwaway894345 6y ago
    I’m almost certain this culture would have been illiterate. Writing was only just being invented in mesopotamia in the 4th millennium bce, and I’m pretty sure it only took root in larger administrative units while the Burned House Horizon region seems to be a relative backwater at the time. Moreover, it tended to be used for administration—how much grain do we have stored, how much have we given away and to whom, etc.
keiferski 6y ago
The “domicide” theory reminds me of how Japan historically treated architecture. Because of frequent tsunamis, earthquakes and other natural disasters, plus the influence of Shinto and Zen Buddhism, a preference for impermanence developed. Hence even many “historic” buildings are actually rebuilt from scratch every so often. The essence of the building is not seen to be in its pure material form, but rather its overall concept. An interesting response to the Theseus Paradox, for sure. The Ise Shrine is a good example: The shrine buildings at Naikū and Gekū, as well as the Uji Bridge, are rebuilt every 20 years as a part of the Shinto belief of the death and renewal of nature and the impermanence of all things and as a way of passing building techniques from one generation to the next. The twenty-year renewal process is called the Shikinen Sengū. Although the goal of Sengū is to get the shrine built within the 20-year period, there have been some instances, especially because of war, where the shrine building process is postponed or delayed.[16] The original physical purpose of the Sengu process is unknown. However, it is believed that it serves to maintain the longevity of the shrine, or possibly as a gesture to the deity enclosed within the shrine. Historically, this cyclical reconstruction has been practiced for many years in various shrines throughout Japan, meaning that it is not a process exclusive to Ise. The entire reconstruction process takes more or less 17 years, with the initial years focusing on project organization and general planning, and the last 8 years focusing on the physical construction of the shrine. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ise_Grand_Shrine https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ise_Grand_Shrine I can’t find any links on the concept in general but here is a somewhat related one: https://edition.cnn.com/style/article/how-japan-makes-houses/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/style/article/how-japan-makes-houses...
- bsanr2 6y ago
  Been there, essentially they have two shrine sites side-by-side, with one being in-use while the other is being rebuilt. This was in 2006, so there's a good chance that if I never visit again, I'll be looking at the "new" building rather than the "old". However, the "new" building will have been the newest incarnation of the one that was there before I was born. On another note, it's funny that this comes up a day after the Wandavision finale.
  - 6y ago
w0mbat 6y ago
Clearly this is the Nightfall phenomenon predicted by Isaac Asimov. The burnings must line up with total solar eclipses.
not_knuth 6y ago
The area around the black sea is super interesting for archaeology of early history (10000BCE - 2000BCE) imo, since it is quite understudied in comparison to the usual suspects in Mesopotamia and Egypt. Western Europeans also tend to forget about it. I have a feeling that there are many low-hanging fruit to be discovered which will fundamentally change the way we think about the significance of the area a lot. Take for example these (short) excerpts from an archaeological paper [0] from 2018 that discusses the farming strategy of large cities in the area from around 4000BCE. It seems to support the idea (again, my unscientific gut feel) that the spreading of agriculture from what we would today call the "Middle-East" to Europe happened by means of replacing people instead of people adopting new strategies (settling the so-called "pots or people" debate [1]). [0] https://indo-european.eu/2018/07/cereal-cultivation-and-processing-in-trypillian-mega-sites/ https://indo-european.eu/2018/07/cereal-cultivation-and-proc... [1] https://youtu.be/JTY9K1Q_Sbg?t=290 https://youtu.be/JTY9K1Q_Sbg?t=290 (apart from the specific timestamp, it's a fantastic talk about the origin and genetic makeup of Europeans in general)
- aasasd 6y ago
  Stanislav Drobyshevsky finally nicely explained for me how no one actually lived in caves but people lived and migrated on plains, from Central Europe all the way to Siberia: https://youtu.be/IihGveExaqU https://youtu.be/IihGveExaqU (English subtitles aren't great but they are there). They also took their hunting practices with them to where locals previously hunted different animals.
Mobleysoft 6y ago
What does burning down your buildings every so often achieve? It ensures the skills of building are passed down from generation to generation, that the people remain well practiced in those skills, creates the conditions for the iterative improvement of those practices, and enforces a detachment from the results of the practice of building in favor of an attachment to the practice itself, the latter of which seems like a much more valuable asset to possess, considering the life-expectancy of these buildings. What does fire do on a symbolic level? It hardens, cleanses, purifies, and refines. Perhaps they did this every time the leadership changed, so the success or failure of the tribe or settlement under the new leader/chieftain could not be blamed on nor attributed to the previous one. A clean slate for each administration, so to speak. On another note, if these structures are essentially what the guy from the neolithic technology youtube channel gets up to, then maybe they just did it for fun. Guy looks like he's having the time of his life playing in the mud.
- leto_ii 6y ago
  > What does burning down your buildings every so often achieve? It ensures the skills of building are passed down from generation to generation, that the people remain well practiced in those skills This is unconvincing. In most cultures, most of the time, people manage to pass down building skills without destroying everything they've built before.
  - LunaSea 6y ago
    In Japan there was a tradition of rebuilding every 20 years for the exact reason of transmitting building methods to the next generation.
    - mutatio 6y ago
      Do you have a source for that? Everything I can find on Japanese 20-year re-building cadence is due to religion. I'm struggling to see any sense in the 20-year cadence cliff-edge for typical knowledge transfer.
flyGuyOnTheSly 6y ago
>In their experiment, Bankoff and Winter constructed a model of a partially dilapidated Neolithic house, and then set it on fire in a way that would replicate how an accidental fire would have perhaps started from an untended cooking-hearth fire. Just a thought from an armchair-anthropologist here. Perhaps a chemical reaction transpired over the course of the typical duration of a Neolithic house before it burned? Unless they built it and waited a few decades before burning it down... it's not the same thing. Another idea is that perhaps more dung was used than we imagine? In which case if the building was mostly made of fuel and less clay I could see it building up enough heat to vitrify the clay.
- mleonhard 6y ago
  This is the first time I've heard the idea of using dung as a building material. Do you have a link to some information about it? Mud walls often contain grass or other fibrous plants. Dung decomposes and crumbles. I expect that dung in walls will rot the plant fibers.
  - cedex12 6y ago
    start here maybe? https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01876848/document https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01876848/document
    - mleonhard 6y ago
      Excellent. Thank you.
postit 6y ago
The real reason must be something so stupid that no one ever considered. Something like there was a comet in the sky every 75 years and they burned the settlement to scare it away.
- richardfey 6y ago
  I think so too; great example by the way. It's either that or religion.
- drran 6y ago
  IMHO, it used as protection against diseases transferred via bugs, rodents, which then converted to ritual. AFAIK, it still practiced: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3613126/Travellers-burn-four-caravans-Queen-Gipsies-possessions-ancient-rite.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3613126/Travellers-...
richardfey 6y ago
One way to figure it out is to go live there in a hut for a few years. Maybe nobody thought of it so far.
richardfey 6y ago
It could be a way to neutralise the smell of a settlement, imagine long toothed hyenas visiting periodically your huts by night... It is possible that a strong smell accrues over that time period and burning everything down is the only way they knew how to do this. Notice that the Jewish practice of putting lamb blood on your house door frame seems familiar here (albeit practically opposite).
- NiceWayToDoIT 6y ago
  I think it is much simpler like diseases, or pests like flees, rodents or ants they could not eradicate in any other way?
trhway 6y ago
for example Vikings were burning their leaders and prominent warriors together with a boat, so one can imagine how the house may similarly serve as a funeral pyre for a family/village elder - they do mention human remains found in some cases. That would make especial sense if the building's lifetime was on the order of those 60-80 years, say due to the climate which was more wet in that area during that period. And fire would be a great way to demolish and disinfect the place as well as probably affect the ground in some advantageous ways (say deep dry the ground for foundation like purposes and kill off the bacteria/fungus/etc (and termites or whatever was in their place back then) up to some depth in the ground, and the resulting layer of ash and ceramic-ized clay serving as a kind of barrier) before building again - a settlement was found for example with 13 such layers.
- singularity2001 6y ago
  The article says that human remains are absent in most cases
  - trhway 6y ago
    if any remains left after such a big fire it'd be expected to be taken care in some way before rebuilding.
rocqua 6y ago
This reads very non-wikipedia. It is argumentative. Stating positions, and for half of the positions flat out claiming "the evidence does not support this". Neutral language would be to list raised objections, but instead there are direct claims and arguments. It feels very much like it is written with an academic agenda. I feel wikipedia usually is a lot better at requiring a Neutral presentation.
- dkarp 6y ago
  Edit it
foreigner 6y ago
Missing the obvious answer: dragons.
- egrefen 6y ago
  I don’t know why more people aren’t talking about this. It’s the clearest explanation.
singularity2001 6y ago
This archaeological horizon is especially interesting as it is connected to the first occurrence of proto-writing (Vinca script), Advanced Metallurgy (first daggers, Varna gold burial) and the later corded ware horizon which is now almost established to be the homeland of speakers of Proto Indo European (The linguistic descendants of which are 70% of all living people today, 46% natively.)
- posterboy 6y ago
  none of that meets the strong scientific definitiins. It's doubtful if Vinca symbols recorded language by the definition of linguistics or were just graphics of another kind. Corded wear would post-date PIE, which homeland ist still hypothetic, and even Bell Beakers, but they are connected to Indo-European expansions. I never heard about the Varna Gold burial so, who knows, might be the information is wrong, too.
juskrey 6y ago
Ukrainians, descendants of that culture, have a proverb "Happiness is a neighbor's house burning". Which is not far away from everyday vibes and the way of life overall. So we may have way simpler explanation here.
- admissionsguy 6y ago
  Shame we don't have an analogous saying in Poland (or do we?) but we definitely share the sensibility.
- kzrdude 6y ago
  What does that mean exactly?
  - keiferski 6y ago
    Essentially the same thing as Schadenfreude. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schadenfreude https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schadenfreude
    - j-pb 6y ago
      Shadenfreude is amusement at small misshaps though. Someone stubbing a toe, dropping something or not winning at a contest after bragging. I've never seen it used for something serious in germany.
      - H8crilA 6y ago
        So imagine your annoyingly successful neighbour suddenly loses everything in a stock market crash because he was margin leveraged to the eyeballs.
  - admissionsguy 6y ago
    The God once said to a Pole: - You can ask me anything you want. I will grant it to you but give your neighbour twice as much. to which the Pole answered: - Please, God, gouge one of my eyes.
vonwoodson 6y ago
I had an opportunity to tour Romania, and was very surprised at how unique it is there. Fore example: The houses have eyes, small false windows installed on their tin roofs, to watch their neighbors. Jealousy is rampant, and the charming Romanian folk-saying was “Let my neighbor’s goat die.” Romanians are very proud of their Roman heritage, and also their active Gypsy culture. This is an interesting Wikipedia article. I think this area of the world and is history is generally very interesting and unique. We’re lucky today that is no longer behind The Iron Curtain and is worth a visit by and brave adventurers.
- aasasd 6y ago
  God finally answers the prayers of a dude but says to him: “I will grant you three wishes but will give your neighbor twice what you receive”. “Alright”, man says, “I want a big house”. “Sure”, God replies, “the neighbor will get a house twice as large”. “I want five chests full of gold money”. “Done, the neighbor gets ten of them”. Man says, “Now, pluck out one of my eyes”.
- Mediterraneo10 6y ago
  This is an example of why one should not post claims about a country after merely "touring" it, because tourists visiting any country typically get only a vague and often mistaken sense of the local culture and history. First of all, Romanians are not “very proud of their active Gypsy culture”: the Roma minority are largely despised by the rest of Romania’s population. Secondly, Romanian pride in their Roman heritage is largely a consequence of 19th-century trends upon the rediscovery of the roots of the Romanian language, and the dacomania and francophilia that bloomed then; that pride is not something that was actually preserved down the last two millennia. And when it comes to traditional architecture in Romania, it should be noted that the homes that are among the most celebrated today for their traditional craftsmanship are those built by the Transylvanian Saxons, i.e. neither Romanians nor Roma. I only mention this because I have seen tourists visit places in Romania and talk about Romanian this and Romanian that, when Romania is a multiethnic country and what they saw many have actually been by one of the other ethnicities.
- scribu 6y ago
  > Romanians are very proud of their [...] active Gypsy culture. As a Romanian, I regret to inform you that a lot of Romanians really don't like gipsies. This has always been the case, unfortunately.
ck2 6y ago
When something makes little sense it's probably based in religion. Some kind of ritual to ward off something. Good crop year, bad crop year, etc.
bookmarkable 6y ago
I have that on vinyl.
peter_retief 6y ago
My first thought was that people burnt the house to clean out parasites and bad smells. Second thought was firing the mud bricks. Third thought was some sort of aggression.
kvz 6y ago
Wiki lists Agression as a theory, but what about defense? In the town I live in some houses were mandatory to be built in just wood so they could be easily brunt down when they where under siege. It’s now heritage and there’s a street full of wooden houses here that tourists love (and actually so do I). It gave the aggressor no place to hide and shelter while the cannons from the city made light work of removing the threat. It’s called “vuurlinie huisjes”, or: line of fire houses. I guess it may have a double meaning: a line where all houses had to be burned as nothing could not be in the line of fire of the canons, under siege. I guess if it was done as early as 6000 BC then canons are out of the question, but it could still be a quick way to deny an aggressor shelter? That would explain why there are no corpses found in the houses.
- rossdavidh 6y ago
  It would be compatible with the food, etc. still found in the houses, if it was a "scorched earth" type defense then you want to leave the aggressor nothing that they could use, so anything you cannot carry would get burned. That would require rather large-scale warfare to be common, though, and it doesn't sound like they think that was the case yet. Of course, another possibility was disease. They didn't know why the disease was happening, so they burned everything except the people. It may even have worked sometimes, depending on the disease. I'm probably only thinking of this because I'm reading it in the middle of a pandemic, though.
  - runarberg 6y ago
    They mention the theory of disease in the Wikipedia article but dismiss it on grounds that the fires were so destructive it seems illogical they were used as a cure. > Fumigation: Another theory posits that the fires were used for sanitary reasons to smoke or fumigate a building, in order to get rid of pests, disease, insects, and/or witches. However, the evidence does not support this viewpoint. All of the structures within these settlements were completely burned and destroyed. Because the damage from the fire was almost total for the entire settlement, it would be illogical if fumigation was the only intent.[2][3]
    - 6y ago
rossdavidh 6y ago
Programmer hypothesis: it's the neolithic equivalent of the Big Rewrite. But, as Joel Spolsky could have told them, it doesn't really work.
doggodaddo78 6y ago
The got tired of making 20 trips to Home Depot to repair a leaky sink. But seriously, I think it's primarily fumigation, war, and probably expanding families. Without large lodges, smaller structures were probably rebuilt or remodeled as families grew.
- AlotOfReading 6y ago
  You don't burn down your village because the jones' first son just married a girl. You help the jones family to build an extra room.
8bitsrule 6y ago
It could be that as locations aged, better sites (for any number of practical reasons ... crops, grazing, water, disease) were found. Once moved away from, the old site might seem welcoming to unwanted neighbors.
jccooper 6y ago
See also: Vitrified forts: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitrified_fort https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitrified_fort
runarberg 6y ago
Youtuber Stefan Milo has an excellent video on the neolithic life in this region (with a mentions of the burning of houses): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Pnv3jelAO4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Pnv3jelAO4 I can’t recommend his channel enough. His narrative of how normal people lived in the ancient times is really interesting.
cma 6y ago
Maybe it was bedbug remediation.
ed_balls 6y ago
There is one theory missing. What about a sacrifice? Child sacrifice was quite common in the area (Moloch) and it was repeated in a lot of cultures. Maybe people decided that a child is a bit too much, but they still wanted to please the gods, so the give the second most valuable thing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_sacrifice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_sacrifice
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

331 points by diodorus 6y ago

I think the article understates the case for fumigation. > Because the damage from the fire was almost total for the entire settlement, it would be illogical if fumigation was the only intent What? If you had pests that were bad enough to warrant burning food stores, why take a risk on the other buildings?

dwohnitmok 6y ago
I think the implied logic is that if you're worried about pests destroying your supplies, it's a pretty crazy move to decide the way to fix the destruction of your supplies by, well, burning the supplies of your entire settlement to the ground. Regardless, I agree the logic is incomplete as stated. It's entirely possible if there was an easy way to replenish supplies (e.g. conducting such a burning right before harvest time or ample hunting/gathering grounds nearby) that such an approach would make sense.
- IgorPartola 6y ago
  If you had maggots living in your grain, would it be possible to save parts of the grain with primitive tech? Would it be possible to guarantee that the pest didn’t move from one side of the village to the other. Maybe they thought the old houses were C and the new ones would be Rust and this was the migration path :)
  - kubanczyk 6y ago
    > Maybe they thought the old houses were C and the new ones would be Rust Or, maybe the old houses were JavaScript and the new ones would be JavaScript.
    - IgorPartola 6y ago
      Do you mean EcmaScript? Also, if it was JS they wouldn’t have houses. Everything would be stored in matchboxes.
- jjoonathan 6y ago
  Why is that crazy? Between eggs and pests "diffusing" into adjacent buildings only to "diffuse" back after a sweep, I can completely understand why a town would opt for the nuclear option after a few failed attempts to get rid of an infestation.
  - dwohnitmok 6y ago
    Because without a ready-at-hand large-scale method of restocking (which granted is a very real possibility that such a dismissal of the fumigation theory seems to overlook, see e.g. my comment about harvest time) this is tantamount to suicide. The difficulty required to sustain the caloric needs of a town and rebuild after complete destruction of food stores and shelter is immense, especially with only the help of pre-Bronze Age technology.
    - jjoonathan 6y ago
      So if you overlook the probable reason why it wasn't suicide, it was suicide? Come on, that's not convincing.
      - dwohnitmok 6y ago
        I probably agree with you more than is coming across, but I do think it useful to steelman the fumigation argument. Burning down entire villages for fumigation even if you have a ready harvest is an extremely risk endeavor. It's no longer outright suicide, but you're still going to cause no shortage of hardship and potentially at least some lost lives. This is coupled with the fact that pests and parasites were a pretty constant fact of ancient life and so finding, e.g. bed bugs, was kind of just something people dealt with. Voluntarily and periodically razing entire towns for what amounts to sterilization is practically unheard of outside of the Burned House Horizon. Consider that even during various plague/Black Death breakouts, when disease was thought to be caused by various miasmas rather than infectious agents spread from person to person, and individual homes and personal property was readily burned, towns still were not being wholesale burned to the ground. That is even something as bad as a pestilence that could potentially kill half or more of your entire town's population still didn't warrant utter destruction of the town. It's not suicide. But only just.
jml7c5 6y ago
And fumigation should really be broken into two separate categories: fumigation for pests, and fumigation for infectious disease. They are very different, as infectious diseases cannot be seen: in a world where no one knows about microbes and viruses, people will do peculiar things based on their theory of disease. History provides many examples of people doing odd things to prevent plagues and disease, many of which are far stranger (and less effective) than "cleanse the buildings with fire".
- posterboy 6y ago
  "burn the witch!" Happy belated internatiinal women's day by the way
IgorPartola 6y ago
It could be both. At one point a pest had moved into a settlement that caused them to decide to burn it all down and start over. They then decided to periodically do this in order to prevent the pest from ever being able to come back. Over the years the need for this had gone away but the practice remained and took on a ritualistic meaning more so than a practical one. And as these things go, the original meaning was lost. To me, this seems like the intuitive explanation.
gostsamo 6y ago
The period between burnings is cited as 75 years. Why would you clean from pests once in a century? It is better correlated with a lifespan of a human* which might suggest that they've considered a house to have the same lifespan. * the average lifespan was much shorter but it includes children mortality and once above the age of five a human had a good chance to reach retirement.
NiceWayToDoIT 6y ago
Maybe it was structural for buildings - termites...

JoeDaDude 6y ago

There is a debate that so called Anasazi people of the American southwest either ritually burned and abandoned their Kivas (ceremonial building) or that the burning is evidence of warfare. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiva https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiva https://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/online_books/hh/36/hh36c-2.htm https://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/online_books/hh/36/hh36c-2.h... https://spot.colorado.edu/~laursen/southwest/chaco/chacoMain.htm https://spot.colorado.edu/~laursen/southwest/chaco/chacoMain...

seibelj 6y ago
Those Kivas are really interesting. We visited one of the sites in New Mexico at Bandolier National Monument. Very cool how they carved all the houses into the cliffs. Most interesting fact that stuck with me was they ground all their grains using rocks that were too soft, so bits of rock would get in all their food, quickly removing all the enamel from their teeth and rotting them away. I can’t imagine how painful that must have been. Surviving meant the children had to chew all the food for the adults and spit it out for them to eat.
- prawn 6y ago
  If you enjoyed those cliff houses, you might like Cappadocia in Turkey which has a lot of similar dwellings, and even an underground town of sorts. A few of the areas you can explore more freely than at Bandolier. https://www.google.com/search?q=cappadocia&safe=off&source=lnms&tbm=isch https://www.google.com/search?q=cappadocia&safe=off&source=l...
  - aasasd 6y ago
    There are also massive temples cut from rock. E.g., from a quick search: - Kailasa temple https://www.ancient-origins.net/ancient-places-asia/kailasa-temple-how-was-massive-hindu-temple-carved-out-single-rock-008249 https://www.ancient-origins.net/ancient-places-asia/kailasa-... and http://www.indiagk.net/2014/06/kailash-temple-ellora-cave-temple.html?m=1 http://www.indiagk.net/2014/06/kailash-temple-ellora-cave-te... - https://www.easemytrip.com/blog/rock-cut-temples-and-architectures-india https://www.easemytrip.com/blog/rock-cut-temples-and-archite... - Masroor temples https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masrur_Temples https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masrur_Temples - https://photoscaping.wordpress.com/2017/02/07/celestial-rock-temple/ https://photoscaping.wordpress.com/2017/02/07/celestial-rock... My favorite is Petra city that has multiple large buildings carved right in the face of rock: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petra https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petra

slickrick216 6y ago

One theory I didn’t see listed but maybe I missed it is migration and scorched earth. If a settlement had exhausted Hunter gatherer resources in an area they would move to another. However leaving structures behind would offer easy options to would be invaders for shelter which is after all a human need. So possibly they would burn the settlement as it could not be transported.

setr 6y ago
They would presumably do the same thing at the next area, as they move on, so you’d have multiple patches where this occurred, presumably with an offset-but-similar lifecycle at each location, as they rotated between viable lands
colanderman 6y ago
The "demolition" argument notes that "the archeological record shows that houses were rebuilt directly on top of the pre-existing foundations of the destroyed buildings." Presumably this wouldn't be so if the inhabitants were migrating away from an area. (Though I guess a new tribe could have come in and built on the same foundations.)
- Valgrim 6y ago
  The reason why a settlement was built in that place could still be valid a few years after the burn, such as proximity to water sources or useful materials.
  - IgorPartola 6y ago
    It’s not clear but it sounds like they didn’t just build the settlements there but that each house would be rebuilt exactly where the old one was. If that’s the case, it would be really strange if it was built by different people or at different times.
- slickrick216 6y ago
  Yeah foundations maybe or as another poster said it was still viable and likely enviable.

deleted 6y ago

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Townley 6y ago

Tangential to this article, but can I just say that this is HN at its best. Random, curious, snippets of learning on topics that I can’t imagine hearing about anywhere else. It’s a pure love of knowledge that leads thousands of people to spend Friday night reading a largely useless Wikipedia entry on house burning just because it’s mystery

jbluepolarbear 6y ago
I read the whole thing. I love learning new things like this.
evmar 6y ago
If you’d like more, the Wikipedia community on Reddit regularly shares neat articles like this one.
- moehm 6y ago
  I just want to chime in, because I collect (good) Wikipedia articles and their respective discussions posted on HN: https://www.mostdiscussed.com/ https://www.mostdiscussed.com/
Ansil849 6y ago
> Tangential to this article, but can I just say that this is HN at its best. Random, curious, snippets of learning on topics that I can’t imagine hearing about anywhere else. The submission, I agree is the best of HN; the comments, however, are the worst. Tons of 'bikeshedding' comments offering flippant uninformed analyses that belittle established and well-researched theories. By offering 'back of a cocktail napkin' comments like 'I think such and such theory doesn't get enough attention because of my random opinion', or 'I think such and such likely happened, based on me just ruminating about this for a few minutes, versus doing years of research on'; the comments are tacitly disrespecting the work researchers whose specialty this is put into formulating theories. We HN users need to learn to just say 'we don't know', instead of playing internet experts in every single discipline a given submission is about.
- 6y ago

ryanmarsh 6y ago

Perhaps it was all of the above: Accidents, war, etc...

mullingitover 6y ago

Reminds me of the story of the Helvetii burning their own villages before they emigrated in what would eventually lead the Gallic Wars. Seems like this might've been a customary thing when a large group migrated out of an area to keep the group from being tempted to turn back.

stainforth 6y ago
Quema tus barcos

throwaway894345 6y ago

This practice endured from 6500 to 2000 BC. We’re closer to the last (known) such fire than the last fire was to the first. Amazing that this was happening for so long and we know so little about it.

gillytech 6y ago
Can't help but wonder what else in human history has been lost to antiquity. And I wonder if in 4000 years much of this cultures written works would exist in a recoverable form to explain the artifacts left behind.
- iandinwoodie 6y ago
  Where do you put 4000 years of data? Imagine indexing / searching that. If all data can’t be kept, who will get to decide what is important? It’s a really interesting topic
  - throwawayboise 6y ago
    This is what librarians (used to?) do. Decide what is important, and which works are the best ones to save. Then organize it all. The current mode of "save everything forever" collapses unless you have tools to find the needles in the haystacks.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- throwaway894345 6y ago
  I’m almost certain this culture would have been illiterate. Writing was only just being invented in mesopotamia in the 4th millennium bce, and I’m pretty sure it only took root in larger administrative units while the Burned House Horizon region seems to be a relative backwater at the time. Moreover, it tended to be used for administration—how much grain do we have stored, how much have we given away and to whom, etc.

keiferski 6y ago

The “domicide” theory reminds me of how Japan historically treated architecture. Because of frequent tsunamis, earthquakes and other natural disasters, plus the influence of Shinto and Zen Buddhism, a preference for impermanence developed. Hence even many “historic” buildings are actually rebuilt from scratch every so often. The essence of the building is not seen to be in its pure material form, but rather its overall concept. An interesting response to the Theseus Paradox, for sure. The Ise Shrine is a good example: The shrine buildings at Naikū and Gekū, as well as the Uji Bridge, are rebuilt every 20 years as a part of the Shinto belief of the death and renewal of nature and the impermanence of all things and as a way of passing building techniques from one generation to the next. The twenty-year renewal process is called the Shikinen Sengū. Although the goal of Sengū is to get the shrine built within the 20-year period, there have been some instances, especially because of war, where the shrine building process is postponed or delayed.[16] The original physical purpose of the Sengu process is unknown. However, it is believed that it serves to maintain the longevity of the shrine, or possibly as a gesture to the deity enclosed within the shrine. Historically, this cyclical reconstruction has been practiced for many years in various shrines throughout Japan, meaning that it is not a process exclusive to Ise. The entire reconstruction process takes more or less 17 years, with the initial years focusing on project organization and general planning, and the last 8 years focusing on the physical construction of the shrine. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ise_Grand_Shrine https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ise_Grand_Shrine I can’t find any links on the concept in general but here is a somewhat related one: https://edition.cnn.com/style/article/how-japan-makes-houses/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/style/article/how-japan-makes-houses...

bsanr2 6y ago
Been there, essentially they have two shrine sites side-by-side, with one being in-use while the other is being rebuilt. This was in 2006, so there's a good chance that if I never visit again, I'll be looking at the "new" building rather than the "old". However, the "new" building will have been the newest incarnation of the one that was there before I was born. On another note, it's funny that this comes up a day after the Wandavision finale.
- 6y ago

w0mbat 6y ago

Clearly this is the Nightfall phenomenon predicted by Isaac Asimov. The burnings must line up with total solar eclipses.

not_knuth 6y ago

The area around the black sea is super interesting for archaeology of early history (10000BCE - 2000BCE) imo, since it is quite understudied in comparison to the usual suspects in Mesopotamia and Egypt. Western Europeans also tend to forget about it. I have a feeling that there are many low-hanging fruit to be discovered which will fundamentally change the way we think about the significance of the area a lot. Take for example these (short) excerpts from an archaeological paper [0] from 2018 that discusses the farming strategy of large cities in the area from around 4000BCE. It seems to support the idea (again, my unscientific gut feel) that the spreading of agriculture from what we would today call the "Middle-East" to Europe happened by means of replacing people instead of people adopting new strategies (settling the so-called "pots or people" debate [1]). [0] https://indo-european.eu/2018/07/cereal-cultivation-and-processing-in-trypillian-mega-sites/ https://indo-european.eu/2018/07/cereal-cultivation-and-proc... [1] https://youtu.be/JTY9K1Q_Sbg?t=290 https://youtu.be/JTY9K1Q_Sbg?t=290 (apart from the specific timestamp, it's a fantastic talk about the origin and genetic makeup of Europeans in general)

aasasd 6y ago
Stanislav Drobyshevsky finally nicely explained for me how no one actually lived in caves but people lived and migrated on plains, from Central Europe all the way to Siberia: https://youtu.be/IihGveExaqU https://youtu.be/IihGveExaqU (English subtitles aren't great but they are there). They also took their hunting practices with them to where locals previously hunted different animals.

Mobleysoft 6y ago

What does burning down your buildings every so often achieve? It ensures the skills of building are passed down from generation to generation, that the people remain well practiced in those skills, creates the conditions for the iterative improvement of those practices, and enforces a detachment from the results of the practice of building in favor of an attachment to the practice itself, the latter of which seems like a much more valuable asset to possess, considering the life-expectancy of these buildings. What does fire do on a symbolic level? It hardens, cleanses, purifies, and refines. Perhaps they did this every time the leadership changed, so the success or failure of the tribe or settlement under the new leader/chieftain could not be blamed on nor attributed to the previous one. A clean slate for each administration, so to speak. On another note, if these structures are essentially what the guy from the neolithic technology youtube channel gets up to, then maybe they just did it for fun. Guy looks like he's having the time of his life playing in the mud.

leto_ii 6y ago
> What does burning down your buildings every so often achieve? It ensures the skills of building are passed down from generation to generation, that the people remain well practiced in those skills This is unconvincing. In most cultures, most of the time, people manage to pass down building skills without destroying everything they've built before.
- LunaSea 6y ago
  In Japan there was a tradition of rebuilding every 20 years for the exact reason of transmitting building methods to the next generation.
  - mutatio 6y ago
    Do you have a source for that? Everything I can find on Japanese 20-year re-building cadence is due to religion. I'm struggling to see any sense in the 20-year cadence cliff-edge for typical knowledge transfer.

flyGuyOnTheSly 6y ago

>In their experiment, Bankoff and Winter constructed a model of a partially dilapidated Neolithic house, and then set it on fire in a way that would replicate how an accidental fire would have perhaps started from an untended cooking-hearth fire. Just a thought from an armchair-anthropologist here. Perhaps a chemical reaction transpired over the course of the typical duration of a Neolithic house before it burned? Unless they built it and waited a few decades before burning it down... it's not the same thing. Another idea is that perhaps more dung was used than we imagine? In which case if the building was mostly made of fuel and less clay I could see it building up enough heat to vitrify the clay.

mleonhard 6y ago
This is the first time I've heard the idea of using dung as a building material. Do you have a link to some information about it? Mud walls often contain grass or other fibrous plants. Dung decomposes and crumbles. I expect that dung in walls will rot the plant fibers.
- cedex12 6y ago
  start here maybe? https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01876848/document https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01876848/document
  - mleonhard 6y ago
    Excellent. Thank you.

postit 6y ago

The real reason must be something so stupid that no one ever considered. Something like there was a comet in the sky every 75 years and they burned the settlement to scare it away.

richardfey 6y ago
I think so too; great example by the way. It's either that or religion.
drran 6y ago
IMHO, it used as protection against diseases transferred via bugs, rodents, which then converted to ritual. AFAIK, it still practiced: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3613126/Travellers-burn-four-caravans-Queen-Gipsies-possessions-ancient-rite.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3613126/Travellers-...

richardfey 6y ago

One way to figure it out is to go live there in a hut for a few years. Maybe nobody thought of it so far.

richardfey 6y ago

It could be a way to neutralise the smell of a settlement, imagine long toothed hyenas visiting periodically your huts by night... It is possible that a strong smell accrues over that time period and burning everything down is the only way they knew how to do this. Notice that the Jewish practice of putting lamb blood on your house door frame seems familiar here (albeit practically opposite).

NiceWayToDoIT 6y ago
I think it is much simpler like diseases, or pests like flees, rodents or ants they could not eradicate in any other way?

trhway 6y ago

for example Vikings were burning their leaders and prominent warriors together with a boat, so one can imagine how the house may similarly serve as a funeral pyre for a family/village elder - they do mention human remains found in some cases. That would make especial sense if the building's lifetime was on the order of those 60-80 years, say due to the climate which was more wet in that area during that period. And fire would be a great way to demolish and disinfect the place as well as probably affect the ground in some advantageous ways (say deep dry the ground for foundation like purposes and kill off the bacteria/fungus/etc (and termites or whatever was in their place back then) up to some depth in the ground, and the resulting layer of ash and ceramic-ized clay serving as a kind of barrier) before building again - a settlement was found for example with 13 such layers.

singularity2001 6y ago
The article says that human remains are absent in most cases
- trhway 6y ago
  if any remains left after such a big fire it'd be expected to be taken care in some way before rebuilding.

rocqua 6y ago

This reads very non-wikipedia. It is argumentative. Stating positions, and for half of the positions flat out claiming "the evidence does not support this". Neutral language would be to list raised objections, but instead there are direct claims and arguments. It feels very much like it is written with an academic agenda. I feel wikipedia usually is a lot better at requiring a Neutral presentation.

dkarp 6y ago
Edit it

foreigner 6y ago

Missing the obvious answer: dragons.

egrefen 6y ago
I don’t know why more people aren’t talking about this. It’s the clearest explanation.

singularity2001 6y ago

This archaeological horizon is especially interesting as it is connected to the first occurrence of proto-writing (Vinca script), Advanced Metallurgy (first daggers, Varna gold burial) and the later corded ware horizon which is now almost established to be the homeland of speakers of Proto Indo European (The linguistic descendants of which are 70% of all living people today, 46% natively.)

posterboy 6y ago
none of that meets the strong scientific definitiins. It's doubtful if Vinca symbols recorded language by the definition of linguistics or were just graphics of another kind. Corded wear would post-date PIE, which homeland ist still hypothetic, and even Bell Beakers, but they are connected to Indo-European expansions. I never heard about the Varna Gold burial so, who knows, might be the information is wrong, too.

juskrey 6y ago

Ukrainians, descendants of that culture, have a proverb "Happiness is a neighbor's house burning". Which is not far away from everyday vibes and the way of life overall. So we may have way simpler explanation here.

admissionsguy 6y ago
Shame we don't have an analogous saying in Poland (or do we?) but we definitely share the sensibility.
kzrdude 6y ago
What does that mean exactly?
- keiferski 6y ago
  Essentially the same thing as Schadenfreude. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schadenfreude https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schadenfreude
  - j-pb 6y ago
    Shadenfreude is amusement at small misshaps though. Someone stubbing a toe, dropping something or not winning at a contest after bragging. I've never seen it used for something serious in germany.
    - H8crilA 6y ago
      So imagine your annoyingly successful neighbour suddenly loses everything in a stock market crash because he was margin leveraged to the eyeballs.
- admissionsguy 6y ago
  The God once said to a Pole: - You can ask me anything you want. I will grant it to you but give your neighbour twice as much. to which the Pole answered: - Please, God, gouge one of my eyes.

vonwoodson 6y ago

I had an opportunity to tour Romania, and was very surprised at how unique it is there. Fore example: The houses have eyes, small false windows installed on their tin roofs, to watch their neighbors. Jealousy is rampant, and the charming Romanian folk-saying was “Let my neighbor’s goat die.” Romanians are very proud of their Roman heritage, and also their active Gypsy culture. This is an interesting Wikipedia article. I think this area of the world and is history is generally very interesting and unique. We’re lucky today that is no longer behind The Iron Curtain and is worth a visit by and brave adventurers.

aasasd 6y ago
God finally answers the prayers of a dude but says to him: “I will grant you three wishes but will give your neighbor twice what you receive”. “Alright”, man says, “I want a big house”. “Sure”, God replies, “the neighbor will get a house twice as large”. “I want five chests full of gold money”. “Done, the neighbor gets ten of them”. Man says, “Now, pluck out one of my eyes”.
Mediterraneo10 6y ago
This is an example of why one should not post claims about a country after merely "touring" it, because tourists visiting any country typically get only a vague and often mistaken sense of the local culture and history. First of all, Romanians are not “very proud of their active Gypsy culture”: the Roma minority are largely despised by the rest of Romania’s population. Secondly, Romanian pride in their Roman heritage is largely a consequence of 19th-century trends upon the rediscovery of the roots of the Romanian language, and the dacomania and francophilia that bloomed then; that pride is not something that was actually preserved down the last two millennia. And when it comes to traditional architecture in Romania, it should be noted that the homes that are among the most celebrated today for their traditional craftsmanship are those built by the Transylvanian Saxons, i.e. neither Romanians nor Roma. I only mention this because I have seen tourists visit places in Romania and talk about Romanian this and Romanian that, when Romania is a multiethnic country and what they saw many have actually been by one of the other ethnicities.
scribu 6y ago
> Romanians are very proud of their [...] active Gypsy culture. As a Romanian, I regret to inform you that a lot of Romanians really don't like gipsies. This has always been the case, unfortunately.

ck2 6y ago

When something makes little sense it's probably based in religion. Some kind of ritual to ward off something. Good crop year, bad crop year, etc.

bookmarkable 6y ago

I have that on vinyl.

peter_retief 6y ago

My first thought was that people burnt the house to clean out parasites and bad smells. Second thought was firing the mud bricks. Third thought was some sort of aggression.

kvz 6y ago

Wiki lists Agression as a theory, but what about defense? In the town I live in some houses were mandatory to be built in just wood so they could be easily brunt down when they where under siege. It’s now heritage and there’s a street full of wooden houses here that tourists love (and actually so do I). It gave the aggressor no place to hide and shelter while the cannons from the city made light work of removing the threat. It’s called “vuurlinie huisjes”, or: line of fire houses. I guess it may have a double meaning: a line where all houses had to be burned as nothing could not be in the line of fire of the canons, under siege. I guess if it was done as early as 6000 BC then canons are out of the question, but it could still be a quick way to deny an aggressor shelter? That would explain why there are no corpses found in the houses.

rossdavidh 6y ago
It would be compatible with the food, etc. still found in the houses, if it was a "scorched earth" type defense then you want to leave the aggressor nothing that they could use, so anything you cannot carry would get burned. That would require rather large-scale warfare to be common, though, and it doesn't sound like they think that was the case yet. Of course, another possibility was disease. They didn't know why the disease was happening, so they burned everything except the people. It may even have worked sometimes, depending on the disease. I'm probably only thinking of this because I'm reading it in the middle of a pandemic, though.
- runarberg 6y ago
  They mention the theory of disease in the Wikipedia article but dismiss it on grounds that the fires were so destructive it seems illogical they were used as a cure. > Fumigation: Another theory posits that the fires were used for sanitary reasons to smoke or fumigate a building, in order to get rid of pests, disease, insects, and/or witches. However, the evidence does not support this viewpoint. All of the structures within these settlements were completely burned and destroyed. Because the damage from the fire was almost total for the entire settlement, it would be illogical if fumigation was the only intent.[2][3]
  - 6y ago

rossdavidh 6y ago

Programmer hypothesis: it's the neolithic equivalent of the Big Rewrite. But, as Joel Spolsky could have told them, it doesn't really work.

doggodaddo78 6y ago

The got tired of making 20 trips to Home Depot to repair a leaky sink. But seriously, I think it's primarily fumigation, war, and probably expanding families. Without large lodges, smaller structures were probably rebuilt or remodeled as families grew.

AlotOfReading 6y ago
You don't burn down your village because the jones' first son just married a girl. You help the jones family to build an extra room.

8bitsrule 6y ago

It could be that as locations aged, better sites (for any number of practical reasons ... crops, grazing, water, disease) were found. Once moved away from, the old site might seem welcoming to unwanted neighbors.

jccooper 6y ago

See also: Vitrified forts: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitrified_fort https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitrified_fort

runarberg 6y ago

Youtuber Stefan Milo has an excellent video on the neolithic life in this region (with a mentions of the burning of houses): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Pnv3jelAO4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Pnv3jelAO4 I can’t recommend his channel enough. His narrative of how normal people lived in the ancient times is really interesting.

cma 6y ago

Maybe it was bedbug remediation.

ed_balls 6y ago

There is one theory missing. What about a sacrifice? Child sacrifice was quite common in the area (Moloch) and it was repeated in a lot of cultures. Maybe people decided that a child is a bit too much, but they still wanted to please the gods, so the give the second most valuable thing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_sacrifice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_sacrifice

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]