News Excerpt:

According to a study by Antiquity Journal, the new research about the World’s Oldest Fort reshapes our understanding of early human societies and challenges the popular belief that fortresses were built with the advent of agriculture. 

About the World’s Oldest Fort:

• An international team of archaeologists has found the world’s oldest known fort which dates back to 8,000 years in a remote region of Siberia.
• This indicates hunter-gatherers made complex defence structures, much before than once believed. 

Findings of the study:

• The new palaeobotanical and stratigraphical examinations reveal that inhabitants of Western Siberia led a sophisticated lifestyle based on the abundant resources of the taiga environment.
• Food: The prehistoric inhabitants caught fish from the Amnya River and used to hunt elk and reindeer using bone and stone-tipped spears.
• Structure of houses: Pit houses, surrounded by earthen walls and wooden palisades suggested advanced architectural and defensive capabilities.
• Pottery: Dozens of decorated clay pots with pointed and flat bottoms were presumably used to store the abundant food were found.

Location of the site: 

• The site is located along the Amnya River in western Siberia and includes around 20 scattered pit-house depressions which were divided into two sections – Amnya I and Amnya II. 

About the Amnya Site:

• The Amnya sites lie on a sharp bend in the Amnya River in central Siberia, a region untouched by the Neolithic farming revolution thousands of years ago.
• A centuries-long cold spell that started about 8200 years ago may have made such rich sites particularly desirable. At Amnya and other fortified settlements, burned layers show that flames periodically consumed pit houses and palisades, and archaeologists found arrowheads in the Amnya’s outer ditch—possible signs of violent conflict.