Prehistory

Description

The earliest human settlement of Mugello and Tuscany can be traced back to the spread of the oldest hunter-gatherer communities in our peninsula, and this dates back about a million years during the Lower Paleolithic. In this showcase, the most relevant evidence is the artifacts found during work on the construction of the Bilancino reservoir in Barberino del Mugello in 1995. Excavations for the reservoir brought to light an important settlement located on a terrace of the Sieve River, now covered by the lake. The exceptional soil conditions provided insight into the lives of a group of hunter gatherers who lived 30,000 years ago and were dedicated to working marsh grasses, as evidenced by the burins, tools used to fray their leaves. As the years passed from the Mesolithic to the Neolithic, production changed, thanks in part to climate change, and there was a shift from stone to pottery and then metalworking, about 5 thousand years ago, first using copper and then bronze, thus also changing social conditions.