Pločnik (archaeological site) facts for kids
The Pločnik archaeological site is a very old village located in the Pločnik, Prokuplje village in Serbia. It was a large settlement of the Vinča culture, covering about 120 hectares. People lived here from around 5500 BCE until it was destroyed by fire in 4700 BCE. This means it was active for about 800 years!
The site was first found when a railway was being built in 1927. However, serious digging and research didn't really begin until 1996. This work was done by the Prokuplje Museum and the National Museum of Serbia.
The houses at Pločnik had special stoves and even holes for rubbish. People who died were buried in cemeteries nearby. The villagers slept on mats made of wool and fur. They also made clothes from wool, flax, and leather. Many small statues, called figurines, have been found. Some show gods, but many also show what daily life was like for the people living there. Some rough pottery found might even have been made by children! The figurines show women wearing short tops, skirts, and jewelry. A warm spring found near the village might be evidence of Europe's oldest spa or health resort.
Amazing Metal Discoveries
Pločnik is famous for its very old metal discoveries. These finds have changed what we thought we knew about when people started working with metals.
Europe's Earliest Copper Work
In 2007, archaeologists found a copper workshop at Pločnik. It had a furnace and copper tools. Early tests suggested it was from around 5500 BCE. If this date is correct, it means the Copper Age in Europe started at least 500 years earlier than experts first believed!
This ancient furnace was quite advanced. It had special earthen pipes for air to flow in and a chimney to let smoke out. This helped the fire burn better and kept the air cleaner for the workers. Later copper workshops, which were thought to be the start of the Copper Age, were actually less advanced. They didn't have chimneys, and workers had to blow air onto the fire using bellows.
In 2008, an old copper axe was also found at Pločnik. It was also dated to 5500 BCE. This discovery further supported the idea that the Copper Age began much earlier than previously thought.
The World's Oldest Tin Bronze
A very exciting discovery was announced in 2013. Scientists found a small piece of tin bronze at Pločnik. It was dated to about 4650 BCE. This makes it the oldest tin bronze ever found in the world! This was a huge step forward in technology for its time.
This discovery was supported by looking again at 14 other tin bronze items from nearby sites in Bulgaria and Serbia. These items were all from before 4000 BCE. This showed that early tin bronze was more common than experts had realized. It also proved that this special metal was developed in Europe about 1,500 years before the first tin bronze was made in the Near East.
Another item similar to the Pločnik bronze is a bronze ring from fr:Gomolava, another site in Serbia. This ring was found to have more than 8% tin. The Pločnik bronze piece had 11.7% tin. To make tin bronze with more than 8% tin, very high temperatures (between 500 and 800 degrees Celsius) are needed. This means the people at Pločnik could reach these high temperatures, which are much hotter than what was needed to make simple copper items.
After this early period, the technology for making tin bronze seems to have been lost in Serbia for a long time. The next time we see bronze in Serbia is much later, around 3000 BCE. However, in Bulgaria, people continued to make bronze in the 4th millennium BCE, but they mostly made arsenic bronze, which is a different type. In Serbia, later on, people also mostly made arsenic bronzes.
