Video 6 Why did people build Ritual Monuments?

Question 1

Reasoning theory: monuments are territorial markers

Answer 1

Early farming communities concept of territory started to become important

Question 2

Why can’t monuments being territorial markers be the sole reason for monument creation?

Answer 2

Distribution of megaliths in relation to probable territories

Question 3

What culture made the Hunebeds?

Answer 3

The TRB

Question 4

Theory of why we only find megaliths and other monuments in the west

Answer 4

Zone where indigenous people lived, took over domesticated plants+animals (contact with Bandkeramik) -> First monuments indigenous imitations Bandkeramik houses -> Transformation former houses living into houses of dead (ancestral importance)

Question 5

Cerny farming culture

Answer 5

Regional culture, direct successor Bandkeramik Culture

Question 6

What supports the theory that monuments had an ancestral importance (also supporting the theory that they were Bankeramik imitations) (3)

Answer 6

• Farmers built upon deeds of predecessors who reclaimed landscape and prepared it for farming
• Often burials and cremation remains in monuments
• Examples of monuments built on former Bandkeramik houses