When farming arrived in Europe around 6,000 years ago, it didn’t suddenly erase older ways of life. At least not in southern Denmark, where ancient communities kept hauling fish from the same fjord waters after cattle and domesticated animals appeared.
In a new study published in PLOS One, researchers analyzed thousands of animal remains from Syltholm Fjord on the Danish island of Lolland, tracing food habits from roughly 4,500 B.C.E. to 800 B.C.E. They found that fish remained a major part of life as agriculture spread through the region, with farming slowly folding into older hunting and fishing traditions.
“It was genuinely exciting,” lead author Daniel Groß told Discover in reference to the discovery. “It becomes more and more clear that in our research area [that] the boundary between the Mesolithic and the Neolithic was neither a culture-clash or violent interaction but rather a century long interaction between different ways-of-life that took inspiration from each other.”
Ancient Fish Traps Reveal Stone Age Fishing Lasted For Generations
The fjord itself still holds evidence of how heavily these communities once relied on fishing. Researchers identified massive wooden fish weirs (fence-like structures used to trap fish) stretching over 50 meters long across the shallow waters of Syltholm Fjord. Some weren’t just used briefly and abandoned, but maintained, repaired, and rebuilt over decades.
Mosaic of one weir segment.
(Image Courtesy of Museum Lolland-Falster)
“We could document four different stages of repair with roughly 15 years between them. This clearly shows that these were structures that were spanning several generations and also maintained over time,” Groß told Discover.
The researchers say that kind of long-term investment only makes sense if the fishing remains productive year after year. Otherwise, communities likely would have stopped rebuilding such big structures altogether.
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The Same Fish Fed Communities For Thousands of Years
To figure out what people around Syltholm Fjord were actually eating, the team examined more than 8,700 animal remains recovered from 17 archaeological excavations around the fjord. Many of the fish bones had been preserved in waterlogged mud, where cold, wet conditions helped keep them intact.
Excavation of one of the weirs.
(Image Courtesy of Museum Lolland-Falster)
Some fish kept showing up. Flatfish and eels remained especially common from the Early Neolithic into the Bronze Age, showing that people kept returning to the same species.
Eels became especially common around 3,200 B.C.E., likely because the shallow lagoon-like waters of Syltholm Fjord created ideal conditions for catching them.
To Groß, the results fit naturally with the lives these communities were already living along the coast.
“These people have been living in coastal environments all their (and their offsprings) lives, so it felt natural that they also made use of aquatic and marine resources,” he shared with Discover.
Farming Did Not Replace Hunting and Fishing Overnight
The animal remains also showed that livestock did not replace wild game overnight. Around 3,000 B.C.E., deer bones started appearing more often again, pointing to an increase in hunting during a period of cultural change in Denmark.
Cattle appeared alongside the bones of hunted animals and coastal fish for centuries after farming arrived.
“Our research, as well as other more recent studies, show that fish and marine resources have played a longer, and most importantly relevant role on the Stone Age dinner tables. Just as wild game did. So the introduction of agriculture and animal husbandry has for sure not completely replaced foraging lifeways — rather complemented them,” Groß told Discover.
The team also found little evidence that centuries of fishing dramatically changed the fjord ecosystem or wiped out the species they depended on.
For the people living along Syltholm Fjord, farming did not replace life along the water. Fishing remained part of daily survival for thousands of years.
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Article Sources
Our writers at Discovermagazine.com use peer-reviewed studies and high-quality sources for our articles, and our editors review for scientific accuracy and editorial standards. Review the sources used below for this article:
- This article references information from a study published in PLOS One: Fishing for millennia: Effects and impacts of prehistoric fishing in the Syltholm Fjord, Denmark
