The houses were built over a calm river. But one day a disaster happened.
No one knows why it started to burn.
Maybe it was enemies who set fire to the houses? Or perhaps the fire spread from a hearth? What we do know is that an entire small village burned down that day, around the year 850 BC.
For the cluster of houses in the village stood on stilts over a shallow river. And in the fire, the houses fell straight into the muddy water below. There the remains were buried and preserved.
Almost 3,000 years passed before researchers found the site again.
The fantastic find has been named Must Farm and is located in the south-east of England.
Round houses
In recent years, researchers have worked to excavate and preserve things from the old village. And now they can tell a lot about how people lived at that time.
The people had thus built their village directly over a river.
But inside the houses it was dry and cosy, the researchers believe.
They have found the remains of four round wooden houses and a square cabin. Everyone was on stilts. And the researchers believe there were even more at the time people lived in the village. Perhaps as many as 60 people lived there.
The houses had tight roofs of straw and peat and clay. Between the houses there were walkways and around everything there was a two meter high fence of pointed sticks.
Pearls and fine clothes
The researchers believe that the houses had different areas where the people did different things. There were sleeping areas and places where the people worked making yarn.
The findings suggest that these people could make very soft and fine fabrics for clothing. They probably enjoyed dressing up too. Because in the ruins lay many pearls. Even a piece of jewelry with amber and glass beads.
Many of the pearls came from places far away. Some were from Denmark. And some came all the way from Iran!
Old porridge
The researchers also found an area that may have been a kitchen. Here there were cups, bowls and jars made of wood and ceramics.
One of the bowls actually contained food. It was a porridge of wheat grains with fat from an animal. Maybe a goat or a deer.
In another jar there were remains of honey and meat. There were also traces of fish such as pike and bream.
Besides, the people also had sheep. In one of the houses lay the remains of several lambs that had died in the fire.
Garbage and recycling
The researchers found many tools and other nice things in the remains of the house. But they also found trash! In a ring around the houses were shards from broken jars and bowls, and bones from animals.
And poo! Both from dogs and people.
But the people also practiced recycling. The researchers found a bucket full of broken bronze objects. They were probably to be melted down and become new things.
But then came this fire. A real disaster. It was not more than a year since the people had built the village on stilts. But now everything was destroyed.
Why didn’t they collect their things?
The researchers have not found any remains of people who died in the fire. But the inhabitants did not return to retrieve their belongings from the shallow water either. Why?
Nobody knows.
Maybe they had to flee from enemies? Or maybe they just decided to leave and build a new village somewhere else?
We will probably never get a definite answer to that.
