The World’s Oldest Man-Made Wells

here    Six Neolithic wells on the island of Cyprus has changed our view of life on the island and eclipsed the
previous oldest wells by hundreds, or perhaps thousands of years.     

    The wells were found inside and around a new hotel complex being built at Mylouthkia.  They appeared as circles of dark soil, or in some cases as long columns of soil where their stone sidewalls were quarried away. Researchers originally thought they were the remains of shallow pits dated only to the Bronze Age.
   
    Archaeologist Paul Croft described how the shafts had been cut with antler picks and that hand- and foot-
holds still survived in their walls for climbing up and down.  (101)

    Excavators found that the wells had been dug more than 30 feet into the soft rock using deer antler picks.
Hand- and footholds used for climbing up and down were discovered in each well.  The wells had been deliberately filled in, and the debris contained Neolithic artifacts, but no pottery.  Charred grains of domestic wheat and barley were found and radiocarbon dating confirmed their early Neolithic age.  Those early dates also pushed back the age of the first farming practices in Cyprus by at least 2,000 years.

    One of the wells contained fragments of stone vessels,  hammer-stones and flint flakes that may have come from a trash dump located a short distance from the well.  Yet another, however, appeared to have been ceremonially covered.  A carefully positioned human skull, along with a mace head made of polished pink stone was accompanied by 23 complete goat carcasses. 

    Some experts believe that crops and cultivation techniques used on the island may indicate that they were
originally brought there from the Levantine mainland.  Other settlers may have brought farming to other areas around the Mediterranean and it continued to spread from there throughout southern Europe and eastern regions. 

    Mylouthkia may well prove to be an important stop on the route to spreading farming techniques and crops throughout Europe. 


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