Circular ditches
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About 150 arrangements of prehistoric circular ditches are known to archaeologists spread over Germany, Austria and Slovakia and the Czech Republic. Their diameters range from ca. 20 to ca. 130 m, and they date to the 5th millennium BC. Tools, bones, and some artefacts 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. From finds in the context of these ditches, and associated settlements of longhouses, it was established that they were in use for about 200 years, until roughly 4600 BC.
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[edit] Background
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. The structures were built in a stretch of Central European land some 760 km (400 miles) across, over a period of one or two hundred years. They are believed to have migrated into this region during the 6th millennium BC from the plain of the Danube in what is now Hungary and Serbia. They made tools of wood, stone, and bone, and artwork of ceramic and pottery.
[edit] Function
An article in The Independent of June 11, 2005 identified these structures as "monumental temples", although there has been no scientific assessment of their purpose.
