(Basel, Switzerland) — March 29, 2010.
A team of Dutch, German, and French archaeologists announced today in Paris they have nearly completed a three-year excavation of an ancient woodland city hidden away in the Rhine valley for thousands of years. Radiocarbon testing conclusively dates artifacts from a period near the end of the last ice age about 10,000 years ago. Scientists also reveal for the first time a nearly complete skeleton of a human-like female recovered from the excavation site.
In a quiet forest no more than a few square kilometres large, Dutch archaeologist Ernst Voorst, Director of the Reinhard Van Gelder Institut für Anthropologie und Archäologie (Institute of Anthropology and Archaeology) at the Universität des Rheins (University of the Rhine) has led a team of 13 French, German, and Dutch archaeologists (and about 20 students) in careful excavation and analysis of an ancient gravesite near what the team describes as “a city in the trees”. Reports of the prehistoric tree-community began to circulate on the Internet in late 2008 and early 2009 until University officials clamped down on leaks. Fearing the site would be pillaged by amateur archaeologists and dealers in illegal antiquities, the French, Dutch, and German governments declared the forest an international no-travel zone. The European Commission on Antiquities extended grants to provide for tight security around the forest, which fortunately happens to lie within a NATO reserve.
“Dr. Van Gelder would have been overjoyed to see the success of our project,” Dr. Voorst said in a wistful tribute to his mentor, the late internationally esteemed Reinhard Van Gelder whose career spanned more than 2 decades. The Van Gelder Institute is dedicated to advancing the sciences of prehistoric research. Van Gelder himself bequeathed the first grant to Voorst’s project in his will. Reinhard Van Gelder died in early 2008 after a long bout with pneumonia. A special commemorative stone has been commissioned for erection in the site of the hidden forest.
“The trees in the Golden Wood are magnificent,” says Professor ordinarius Felecia Bonnet of the Van Gelder Institute. Bonnet holds the Chair of Rhine Valley Studies, the first department established for the institute by the university. “We called it the Golden Wood because of their beautiful sunset glaze in the afternoon light,” she explained.
The woodland region was probably settled before the glaciers began retreating from northern Europe. This area of the Rhine valley was well forested at the time and would have provided the inhabitants with an abundance of game and local fruits and grains. “There is some question about whether the ‘Princess’ is a modern human,” Professor Bonnet mentioned cautiously. “We do not think there is a Neanderthal burial here,” she quickly explains. “More study must be performed. Perhaps a DNA analysis will reveal some clue as to the lady’s origin.”
The team named her the Princess of the Golden Wood because her grave was found beneath a small mound near the remnants of an ancient treehouse village. Archaeologists were able to find evidence of wooden structures that could only have been used in trees. “The tree houses are truly amazing structures,” Dr. Voorst notes. “We have only just begun to discover the extent of this ancient culture.”
When asked if there is a connection between the golden woodland and a nearby castle that Dr. Voorst and another team previously excavated, he shrugged. “Ja! We have to find that out, but I will say that several members of my expedition believe they have found some connections.” He will not disclose any more information on the possible connections pending further analysis.
As exciting as the discovery of the princess’ grave was for the team, scientists around the world have begun sending in questions and applications for grants to study the remnants of the woodland culture with which she seems to have been associated. “Who was she?” Professor Bonnet asks with a heavy sigh. “Was she their last queen? Perhaps she was the last survivor of the ancient race itself? There is so much we don’t know.”
Nearby remains of wooden structures have been remarkably preserved, partially because they were deliberately buried in a fashion intended to preserve their structure. Team members are close-lipped about the preservation techniques used by the ancient tree-dwellers, except to say that an amazing knowledge of herb-lore contributed to the processing of the wooden artifacts.
“They expected to return to their homeland some day, I think,” Dr. Voorst speculates. “It is as if they all left in an orderly fashion. And that makes sense if they are the same people who waged a long war with a rival culture across the Rhine.” He refers to the subjects of his previous work, who may have fought a war that lasted hundreds or thousands of years across the river. “We never found any remains of warriors or the peoples,” Voorst admits with frustration. “The lack of graves led the scientific community to question the validity of our analysis.”
In fact, the Van Gelder-Voorst report was widely ridiculed. Van Gelder’s reputation was well established and he issued a clarifying report near the end of 2007 conceding the contrary points of view. However, he stood by the findings of the original report and it is generally accepted that the controversial report ended his career in the scientific community. He never received another grant for work in the Rhineland or nearby regions.
Van Gelder came from a wealthy family, and his estate was sufficient to fund the establishment of the institute that Voorst now leads. The reputations of both scientists, though tarnished by critical review, were sufficient to draw new talent to their next project, the excavation of the woodland grave. Professor Bonnet left a prestigious university in France to stake her career and name on the study of the princess in the grave. It was Bonnet’s group, in fact, that first realized she was connected to nearby wooden artifacts that had puzzled diggers.
“This is a most propitious discovery,” Dr. Voorst announces confidently. “Now the scientific world must once again take up the findings that Dr. Van Gelder and I published several years ago. But that is the way of science. It must continually question and re-evaluate what we believe we know as new knowledge comes to light.”
Skeptics remain, though. Voorst’s biggest critic (and Van Gelder’s, in his last years) has been Dr. Edward O’Leary, an esteemed senior member of the Irish Archaeology Fellowship. He minces no words in dealing with the latest announcement.
“While I respect the careful work that Dr. Voorst is known for, his conclusions leave me gasping once again,” O’Leary writes in an email. “He has a penchant for making grand leaps of faith in his work. It is for this reason he will never achieve the recognition he seeks.”
Voorst shrugs off the criticism. “There are factions in nearly every scientific field,” he says. “I will continue my work and to honor Dr. Van Gelder’s memory. He was a great man who led science down newly discovered pathways.”
While no one questions Van Gelder’s contributions to archaeology, Voorst and Bonnet have a long uphill battle ahead of them. They have been unable to establish who the long-vanished peoples of their mysterious ancient cultures really were or what their relationships were to modern humans. “It is quite frustrating, sometimes,” Voorst admits. “Sometimes I almost feel as though I am tracking down the Yeti or chasing ghosts. Some days, when I walk through the woods in the early evening, I imagine I hear voices whispering on the wind. They are trying to tell me something. But I cannot quite hear them. All I can do is continue working.”
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Ernst Voorst
A graduate of Basel-Doorn University, Dr. Ernst Voorst has participated in nearly every major central European archaeological dig for the past 20 years. His work is hailed as revolutionary and challenging by colleagues and scientists around the world.
Dr. Voorst originally proposed studying two Rhine fortresses in 1992 but bureacratic processes delayed work until 2006. He jointly issued a controversial report with Dr. Reinhard Van Gelder in 2007.
Dr. Voorst was appointed the first Director of the Reinhard Van Gelder Institut für Anthropologie und Archäologie in 2008.
Reinhard Van Gelder
Dr. Van Gelder first rose to international acclaim in the 1980s when he helped to excavate the twin fortresses of Italy and Illyrium. In the 1990s he took a position with the Royal Museum of Antiquities in Amsterdam, where he specialized in northern European archaeology and assisted or led several important excavations.
In 2001 Dr. Van Gelder announced the discovery of the incredible Snow angel in the Swiss Alps. However, his most significant work may have been as part of the team that investigated a huge underground city.
In 2007 Dr. Van Gelder and his friend and student, Dr. Ernst Voorst, released their breakthrough joint report on twin Rhine Canyon fortresses that had puzzled scientists for 100 years.
Dr. Van Gelder’s last major project was the establishment of an institute to study prehistoric Rhineland cultures. He died in 2008, bequeathing a generous endowment to the institute that now bears his name.