Evidence of the beginning of the end: pottery shards from the island of roses
Created: 05/27/2022, 15:05
By: Sandra Sedlmaier
The Roseninsel in Lake Starnberg is not only scenically wonderful, it is above all a unique testimony to history.
© photo: Castle Administration
A pottery shard from Roseninsel in Lake Starnberg provides information about the first contact between Mesolithic hunters and gatherers and Neolithic farmers.
The find shows once again how unique the history of the rose island is.
Feldafing - The shard that the researcher Dr.
Martinus Fesq-Martin found on Rose Island in 2018 has it all.
It is a piece of a vessel measuring approximately 3.5 by 3.5 centimeters and is the oldest human evidence ever found on Rose Island.
There are plenty of shards there, but Fesq-Martin saw potential in the inconspicuous dark gray particle decorated with parallel lines.
It indicates that a Mesolithic man was on the island who previously met a Neolithic man.
It all happened in the fifth millennium BC.
"It is a shell fragment from the Southeast Bavarian Middle Neolithic," says Fesq-Martin about his find.
It is dated around 4700 BC.
In view of the dating, the researcher assumes that Mesolithic, i.e. Middle Stone Age people brought the vessel to the island - Neolithic, i.e. New Stone Age farmers did not yet exist in the Fünfseenland.
Mesolithic people were hunter-gatherers and did not have pottery.
Therefore, for Fesq-Martin, the explanation is obvious: Mesolithic man met a Neolithic man who had already engaged in agriculture, animal husbandry and the firing of ceramics, and got the vessel from him.
"Mesolithic meets Neolithic," says the scientist,
Fesq-Martin: "If you look at our current problems with overpopulation and exploitation of the earth, then you have to say: That's when it started"
For Fesq-Martin, this meeting has even more meaning.
"To put it bluntly: This is the first footprint of the Neolithic in the ideal world of hunters and gatherers." In the fifth millennium BC, the nomad meets the sedentary farmer who subjugates the land.
"In the Neolithic, humans began to change the landscape, clear forests and exterminate the large animals because they threatened their own breeding," says the scientist.
Neolithic people would have claimed land and defended it, while Mesolithic hunters knew no bounds on their routes.
"If you look at our current problems with overpopulation and exploitation of the earth, then you have to say: That's when it started," says Fesq-Martin.
There have been people in southern Germany for 600,000 years.
In 99 percent of that time, they would hardly have touched the landscape with their way of life.
Then the Neolithic farmers came.
"Since then, the landscape has changed, the population density has increased - with the consequences that we now see as a climate crisis," says the researcher.
The researcher: Dr.
Martinus Fesq-Martin has been scientifically active on Roseninsel since 1999.
© Fesq-Martin
Apart from this interpretation of the small find for the big picture, there is also a lot to consider and interpret in detail.
Couldn't the find also be seen as the beginning of a new way of life in the Fünfseenland, i.e. away from hunters and gatherers and towards farmers and cattle breeders?
Research says no, because the foothills of the Alps were too inhospitable and much less fertile compared to the Danube region.
Around 5000 to 4500 BC, the average temperature on the lake shore near Feldafing was around 7.8 degrees, the annual rainfall was 989 millimeters, which is significantly wetter than today.
Fesq-Martin and his colleague Dr.
Day of action on the Rose Island for the World Heritage Information Day
For tomorrow's (Saturday) World Heritage Information Day, there will be an action day from 12 p.m. to 6 p.m. on the Rose Island in Lake Starnberg.
At nine stations, visitors learn details about the diverse history of the island, the State Association for Bird Protection and the Bavarian Society for Underwater Archeology are on site.
One station is dedicated to the shards found on the island: "6700 years in shards - pottery tells island history".
Other stations provide insights into the current state of research on the history of Rose Island, the equipment used by research divers and bird protection.
The 3000-year-old Roseninsel dugout and the Celtic wooden constructions are thematized, and it is about the oldest cultivated plants of the Stone Age farmers, peas and opium poppies.
Entry to Rose Island is free, you only have to pay for the crossing.
World Heritage Information Day: The program on the Rose Island
For tomorrow's World Heritage Information Day (Saturday) there will be an action day from 12 p.m. to 6 p.m. on the Rose Island in Lake Starnberg.
At nine stations, visitors learn details about the diverse history of the island, the State Association for Bird Protection and the Bavarian Society for Underwater Archeology are on site.
One station is dedicated to the shards found on the island: "6700 years in shards - pottery tells island history".
Other stations provide insights into the current state of research on the history of Rose Island, the equipment used by research divers and bird protection.
The 3000-year-old Roseninsel dugout and the Celtic wooden constructions are thematized, and it is about the oldest cultivated plants of the Stone Age farmers, peas and opium poppies.
Entry to Rose Island is free, you only have to pay for the crossing.
