It happened on a day driving around that my friend and I saw the sign: Stone Age Village. I took immediately the left turn. I drove through woods and just when we thought we are completely wrong there it was: a wooden fence, some straw covered roofs, stone age housings.
We stopped by to have a closer look. Entrance fee is 4 €, a good price as I think it is also a lot of work to preserve the museum. The ticket we took in a stone age hut where we could buy some souvenirs as well.
In the area there are a handful houses and storage rooms, a garden and some animals. We started to visit a house of the late stone age when people already lived the whole year round in one place, raising animals and starting to live of agriculture. A huge house with storage space under the roof, two stores high. We saw a few women works like weaving. Something we would learn a few minutes later.
I was very fascinated by the fences as I could do some in my garden as well. I had a closer look and wondered how easy they are and how nice they look
Next there was a store-house. Very small and I think they were once much bigger. But interesting: they built them on poles or anyway higher than the ground to get away from rodents and let pass the air under the floor against humidity.
And then we learnt weaving. In another way. A woman explained the technique to weave a loose tissue but when seeing a whole sweater I thought this will be warm and soft.
The shoes look amazing and I would like to learn how to do them as well…
We passed in a kind of garden with some old cereal crops. Some kinds were growing man high.
The smell of some domestic animals let me have a look into a fence with a mini hut but no animals. Obviously they were sleeping somewhere or gone into another part of the nearby field.
The last part showed a little earlier housings, tepee alike. That was still before the agriculture started and the people were still going where food grew better.
Everywhere we found explanation boards and in the end there were some huge posters talking about an experiment. And just this experiment I was watching yesterday. Three hours of history!
A television broadcaster, archaeologists and scientists and in collaboration with the Pfahlbaumuseum Unteruhldingen they let live two families for two months in the woods of Switzerland. Seven adults and 6 children in the summer months had a week of training and then two months to live by there own. Two men of them in between passed the Alps in 30 days, walking and with the same equipment famous Ötzi had 5.000 years ago.
The videos are so mind opening, interesting and surprising as the people talk about their experiences, their emotions and what it meant to them to live just life without the modern stress. The people were accompanied by physicians to see their health conditions. They all were extremely healthy nevertheless the long rain and cold period. The only thing: because they ate a lot of grains they got more tooth decay. Caries came with cereals.
The open air museum in Kussow is offering especially for schools and groups barbecues, to do pottery, to learn weaving and much more. I would recommend this little out-of-time-experience to everyone but mostly to families.
Stone age village in Kussow, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern/Germany:
For further information:
Stone Age Village Kussow website (in German)
Stone Age Life – The Experiment (in German)
