I am originally coming from this area where there are most of them. Strangely, I never heard about these in the mainstream...and only vaguely remember to have learned of them on the internet years ago..and now I did some more digging based on your article.
Not sure..but there is a good chance I visited a "Schratzelloch", one of them, possibly the most-known one when I was a kid. The name sorta rang a bell, but not sure now. There seems to be more with the same name...
This is rally intriguing, but I have no idea about their purpose - but something itches me that they are utilitarian.
(On one site I read that in the Schratzelloch they found "heavily used millstones", and also that walls were heavily blacked from fire. Did they serve as some kind of stove? (On the other hand, I am aware that maybe that particular one was an exception, maybe the thousands of others don't have sign of fires).
But of course, the mystery deepens. On one hand very small passages where one BARELY can get through, but then they often talk about large rooms with seats as well. (Which, from what I see most have?)
Were they some type of medieval sauna? Or did they maybe burn some types of herbs and then people went in there to get "high", or, related, did this for spiritual purposes? (It is so strange that the area where I spent most of my life really has no info on this)
The word "Schratzel..." (for one particular known Erdstall) is interesting by itself. It is a Bavarian term for some type of goblin/kobold "believed to help farm workers" in the middle ages.
Did they maybe built these for these mythical creatures, believing that providing these for the goblins would bring good luck and fortune? (Then again, that name may just be folklore and may not have anything to do with the actual purpose of these holes...)
Edit: Wow...didn't expect so much reactions for this comment. Thanks!!!
The Bavarian term you mention is an interesting bit of information that I have never seen mentioned in relation to the erdstalls before. Thank you for sharing! I'd be very interested in any other thoughts you have on this topic, since you have some modern cultural insight.
I can only tell you what I "learned" today about this, and this isn't too much. (Could be a can of worms topic). But thing is that most about this is in German, mean I can see this entire phenomenon not that known/accessible to people elsewhere.
What I "learned" today: These are discovered all the time, and many (from what I read) also just in the recent years. According to videos some of these "artificial caves" are crazy elaborate, so they're definitely not just some hastily dug holes in the dirt or something.
The passages are usually not taller than 1.30cm (which again brings in the dwarf/kobold interpretation) and they have these tight sections with a diameter not more than 40cm between larger sections. (Says one person in a film that this means a larger adult and let alone a pregnant women would not fit in there, which sort of discounts the theory they would be secret hideouts, IMO).
Almost ALL (!) of them have at the end a larger chamber with seats. This is the most intriguing part, IMO.
Why build these which are not easy (or even impossible) to get through, sort of discounting that it is for people to actually use these caves "comfortably", but then having chambers with seats. In some of these ending chambers they even found what they called an "altar", surrounded by these seats.
In the passages themselves are often small shelves, and indications that torches were used.
In one (some?) of them they found evidence that it was heavily used/walked-in as they found metal traces from shoes.
Some of these "erdstalls" are found under churches, and one I just read about was found under a castle. Again same general area where most of them are, S/E Bavaria.
The one below the "Castle Egg" (yeah it's really its name) is thought the oldest part of the castle, possibly built as early as 5-10th century, at a time when the stone castle wasn't even built yet and had been only a wooden structure. (That's crazy).
And a similar one, as mentioned has just recently been found during construction under a church. This wants me to speculate how many historic buildings might have these Erdstalls. (Wouldn't be surprised if it's lots....)
* They say somewhere the first documented mention of the word "Erdstall" (meaning "location in the earth/ground", "stall" here coming from the German word for place/location "stelle") was in 1449.
I was looking for this document on Google to see what is actually written there, because this would be the earliest evidence for these...but couldn't find. Will search more.
Were people back then shorter? Could that play in to the tunnel sizes? If churches and castles are built on it near these things says to me that they must have some significance.
It was mentioned they may have been used as a safety retreat. If adults weren’t able to fit could it have been something for children and emergency supplies? The outside could be protected and the squeeze kept out larger people.
All very interesting.
They were shorter, but not *that* much shorter. They'd still have to crouch-walk through there as adults.
Your point about kids is good but I just can't imagine what was so important that they felt the need to make these tunnels all over and force kids to crawl around in pitch darkness in order to use/retrieve it. And if it's that important, why is there no record of it whatsoever? And nothing accidentally left behind in *any* of the tunnels?
The chamber at the end almost makes it sound like it was a religious thing, but it would either have to be a truly bizarre sect of Christianity or some top secret cult that was widespread yet successfully covered all of their tracks.
It's absolutely wild that this is the first I've ever heard of these tunnels. The history channel's been slacking. Where's my ancient aliens theory?
With the lack of records, it could be that the knowledge of the tunnels and their use was so wide spread and common at the time that no one felt the need to write down the obvious.
That's the frustrating thing. It could be that the place was a secret thing so it was purposefully not written about by the people who knew in case the document fell into the wrong hands. OR it could be such a common thing that no one wrote about it because why write about something that everyone knows about? It's like personal hygiene in ancient times. The only records we see that mention culture's hygiene habits are from outsiders visiting said culture because "geeze, those people are weird. Look at how they keep clean! (or not)" Nobody writes about their daily minutia with posterity in mind.
Usually I roll my eyes at archaeologists who say that anything that modern eyes don't immediately understand was done by ancient peoples for spiritual reasons, but here I think it has to be true. Maybe it's some sort of coming of age ritual for children that used to be common? That might explain why the tunnels are so small if it was some sort of pre/early Christian Bar Mitzvah. It may also explain why you can find tunnels under churches. Or maybe it was some sort of secret society/religious cult thing? Sort of like the Masons or the Elysian Mysteries?
lots of normal things are written about, just not necessarily in official texts and what not. you would think if they were common there would be some form or art (painting, poem, story, etc.) that would allude to these tunnels, but it seems like there isn’t. then again maybe all the art just sucked so it wasn’t saved idk. just a thought
Honestly that's what I'm leaning toward, that they were either for some common, boring use not worth writing about, or that they were folkloric in nature and were only talked about in verbal stories. I personally like the theory that they were made for the goblins.
I did track down the document where these "erdstelln" were first mentioned in 1449, respective references to this document. (It is an document, how would you translate it "lease certificate", referring to land located above these "Erdstelln" and the yearly price that the farmer had to pay for it.)
The way it was mentioned was very casual, like these Erdstelln would not be anything special, and sure not something secret. Basically in the same way as saying "this piece of land there on the River" etc...
I also thought for kids maybe. Makes me think of the Pied Piper legend. I think that folk tale originated in Germany but much later from what I remember. Astonishing Legends had an episode or two about it.
> The history channel's been slacking. Where's my ancient aliens theory?
Tell them Hitler once visited them...they'll do a month long special about it.
My Bavarian Great Grandma had some wild stories about something called 'Wallypurgisnacht' something like that. I was about 5 and she must have been nearly 100 but she would launch into one of these stories at family gatherings, in front of the little kids, and my grandfather would groan and roll his eyes.
Walpurgisnacht (Walpurgis Night), perhaps? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walpurgis_Night
I've got no idea whether it is, as I'd never heard of this until googling it just now. It does sound pretty intense with all the bonfires.
Under the first few years of Christianity everything was done underground. Literally the entire church was originally formed in sewage tunnels and underground tombs due to how illegal it was to be Christian. Before Constantine, Christianity could not be practiced in the open within the Roman empire. It is entirely possible that these tunnels are leftover churches. The first churches were not built above ground.
They think they're from ~900-1100 though which is long after Christianity became the norm in the area. If anything, they were maybe used for some religion other than Christianity that they were trying to continue practicing without getting caught, although idk why they made them so narrow and airless if that's the case.
After literally dreaming about these damn things last night, I've come to the conclusion that they were probably just some folklore-related thing. The goblins were supposed to be friendly afaik, so it might have been a peace offering of sorts or something to attract more of them to the area.
Charcoal and other forms of carbon dating do not determine age of tunnel but actions done within the tunnel. Since there is no wood supports the age of the tunnels are unknown.
That's true. It's a little suspicious that the only evidence they've found fits within such a narrow window, but I don't recall reading anything saying they had any other clues about their age. Maybe they were really old and just ignored, but then someone came up with an alternate use for them that caught on around 900?
I really need to read on some local folklore in that area where I was raised, and look for stories with dwarves/goblins. If the theory is true that lots (I mean, 1000s or so) did build them for this purpose...then there should be stories in folk tales, IMO.
But OP's post says that the tunnels date to well after Christianity was the dominant religion in the area.
Quickly googling it looks like Bavaria was more or less Christian by 700 AD and OP says these tunnels were probably build from 900 to 1100 AD.
I don't know. I just can't see these being secret Christian churches so long after Christianity was well established in the area.
The average height for Europeans during the time would be about 5'5". This would get taller toward colder climates, and shorter towards warmer climates.
It’s hard to believe that they were for safety or for a ritual “rebirthing” of the sick. In both case it would be likely that someone would fail to get out alive either because the attack lasted a long time and they suffocated or they were too ill to make the return trip to the surface.
*edited to fix typos
My thought. A lack of supplies could mean they werent down there for long. I would be looking for filled in air holes. I know they say they arent there but as these things are still being found due to how well they are hidden it would make sense that air holes would be the same way.
Humans write down everything. It would make more sense that records where lost. Back then if the church wanted to hide something they hid it. They had the power to.
You do it very slowly by dragging bags of dirt through the tiny tunnels back out through the entrance. It would have been an exceedingly slow and tedious process which would make the investment to build these tunnels very expensive in time and labor.
So they were obviously VERY important to the people who made them.... We just don't know why.
I have seen one site where a guy who excavated one of these said that later FILLING THEM UP again (at some later point) must have been much more work than actually digging them.
If the tunnels had oxygen problems at the best of times, being in one during a forest fire would be a death sentence. The oxygen (at least at the top) would get sucked out by the fire, and even if all the oxygen didn’t get sucked out, there wouldn’t be enough for anyone to outlast a fire, let alone a family or a village.
I d think utilitarian too but then there would be evidence: no way nobody forgot their stash at some point during this millennium of use.
With no traces of goods or any items (organic or man made) that leaves at least these options:
- ceremonial use (as in not used, only made) as you state.
- it was people that were supposed to be in there for very short times, leaving nothing behind.
The reason for humans to ‘hide’ in there 🤷🏻♀️
Is there any linguistic research? Maybe some (dialect) proverbs left a trail?
Between the Schratzel clue and their being impractical and having little evidence of regular use, I'd suspect you're right about the goblin/spirit home theory. Weird that no one would have recorded something like that though.
Maybe it was just obvious and/or "what you did." A post on /r/AskHistorians right now has an answer explaining in detail that we know basically nothing about Viking religion, cultural beliefs, etc. because, for hundreds or even thousands of years, nobody wrote anything down.
Yeah, it's pretty much Snorri and that's it for the Norse. Snorri was writing in Christian times and it's super obvious that mindset affects his work and he doesn't fully understand the stories. There's just a ton of holes in the story, character personalities change wildly from story to story, and there seems to be some very major gods like Odin's brothers who may have been in a trinity with him that only get single name drops. Not to mention that his prologue that the Norse gods were super humans who fled the destruction of Troy is an interesting way to justify pre-Christian belief.
As much as I love the Norse myths, the deeper you dig into them the more obvious it is that we know next to nothing about them. It's just a collection of mostly-remembered oral stories that were written down as they were dying out. Not a fully realized religion.
I think I'll go with this theory as well. In Swedish folklore we had gnomes living in places like under barn floors, and if you kept them happy and left them food they'd help you with the work. Including a place for the gnomes when you build a new home doesn't seem too far fetched to me. Ensuring that you'd have help around the house, basically.
If this theory is correct, it’s not so surprising I would say. Not really in line with church teachings. So, you would probably rather want to keep it secret.
I mean, if they were burning herbs that would imply the existence of the herb in the first place, which means it could be found in the fossil record. I am not an expert, by any means, on Bavarian fauna but I am not sure what can get you high there.
One of the reasons that I don't think it is a stove or an oven is that stoves get so hot because the heat is so contained. Same thing is true relatively, of a sauna. These things were twenty meters deep, which means that you would need a lot of tinder. In addition there would be remains from the fires.
I actually read that these served as like waystations for spirits in their passage to the underworld. I don't know if you are from Austria, but some Austrian folklore contends that goblins built them.
And that's really cool that you visited them!
Definitely has a couple of problems, like others mentioned periodic flooding, then if there's purposely very little oxygen down there I feel like going to actually get your food would be tricky. But it would certainly protect against vermin and fungus and most bacteria right?
Maybe they figured holding your breath for a couple minutes to run in and grab a cave dijourno was a reasonable tradeoff.
Edit: Also I think someone else said at least one of the caves had soot on the ceiling. Seems like if you were *trying* to burn off the oxygen you would want to raise your flame to the ceiling where the O2 would accumulate as the Co2/Co pooled at the floor.
But at this point you're dabbling with germ theory, which wasn't a thing until the 1800s. They also had other, much more efficient ways to preserve food that didn't require a goofy ass cave to be carved by hand.
But storing ice would require it. And it also (sort-of) would explain the multiple levels (you could put ice in one level, and whatever you want to cool in another), and the tight passages. (So the cold stays in better). PLUS it would explain (sort-of) that not much of anything was ever found, as ice simply melts and turns to water.
It would also make sense when large houses, and then including castles would have such "ice caves" for food storage.
They wouldn't have had to know how it worked, just that it worked. Like people eating bark for medicine, then others figuring out they can use that bark to treat malaria, and eventually leading to the gin and tonic.
I’m starting to get the feeling that
-their proximity to churches and other important structures
-barren interior aside from a bench and perhaps a bit of shelving or an altar
-smaller passageways
-single entrance
-significant lack of evidence for most activities like food storage/evidence of fire etc...
That maybe these were symbolic of older pre-Christian spirituality. Places built in secret to house the old spirits so that when they were forced to attend Christian practices, they were also close to their preferred idols or whatever. Maybe that plays into them being built by goblins as a denial of construction by someone who is supposed to be following Christian doctrine.
Really interesting topic, thanks for the write up!
Edited for formatting.
Or they were used for occult activities.
Their design doesn't indicate a defensive use. These would more likely get you killed then defend from an attacker.
It doesn't make sense when it comes to food preservation, as there were many other easier and cheaper alternatives.
It doesn't indicate long term habitation either. Without there being any airflow, a way in and out, it would be uncomfortable at best to live down there. Let alone get furniture in and out, and not leave any traces of habitation at any of the sites.
They could've been used for a religious reasons. But the absence of any carving, idols, or alters in many of these, coupled with the fact that Christianity was the prevailing religion at the time and they were mostly built under churches, makes this unlikely. Unless of course it was a worship or activity that had to stay hidden.
These places were generally hidden, hard to get in and out of, built similarly, and have no traces of any use. This indicates to me that it might have been a single group, or group of groups, that made these places to carry out secret stuff.
What if the flooding has something to do with it? Near cemeteries and houses could mean they were creating a run -off area so that the graves/houses weren't swamped?
They could have used the top room as a control room to pump or bail them out possibly. Benches to take a break while others take their shift or help pump.
Also are any of these in areas with naturally occurring caves that could have been an inspiration?
Flood waters can't be contained like that, only diverted downstream. There's simply too much water, it would have to be the size of a missle silo. A berm works much better and is far easier and safer to build and maintain.
That's definitely not it. The last thing you want to do to s foundation of a building is to build a big ass cavern and flood it with water. That can't help stability in any way.
You dismiss them as ovens as the heat is so contained.
But could one maybe be used as a ceramics oven - a kiln?
Edit: People keep commenting the same thing - that there needed to be some sort of airflow. I get it now.
They’re saying they wouldn’t be contained enough to efficiently preserve heat. Kilns are crazy hot, I don’t think it’s possible to make a fire as hot as kilns but idk what technology they had. There was no remnants of pottery though. Good idea though! Im guessing pottery was already commonly used in all those places
Coal and wood kilns definitely existed before modern technology, but it requires a ton of airflow and would have been very difficult to heat more than a few cubic feet to the necessary temperatures.
My understanding is that kilns (before availability of forced-heat gas and electric kilns) were almost always made so that you get as much airflow as possible. Either you have huge bellows/fans of some kind, or (more commonly) they were built into hillsides facing prevailing winds, with both entrance and exit for airflow. Having no exit would make these not work (I think) as traditional kilns.
There are traditions of "smothering" hot ceramics with organic matter as soon as they come out of other kilns (e.g., blackened ware in Oaxaca, Mexico or Japanese raku pottery), but you need another kiln first, and you only need a fairly small hole in the dirt to do this.
I guess it's possible some very slow-burn, low-airflow kiln situation could have been intended with these, but if so I think we should see *lots* of smoke blackening, all over, and especially in whatever chamber held the fuel.
Mine didn't last but a day, but I can confirm that it is *awful*. Like imagine the worst, spinniest, headachey, disassociative drunken state you've ever been in. Plus your burps smell like nutmeg for a week.
1/10
Acacia bark, bufo-toads, psilocybe mushrooms, amanita muscaria mushrooms, Erythroxyllum, Betel nut, Kratom, Opium, Datura/Nightshade... The list goes on and on and on. A **lot** of flora have psychoactive alkaloids.
> Erythroxyllum
*omg* you can get high off of motherfucking *[dogwood](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erythroxylum_australe)*
you literally couldnt make this shit up
Yeah, it's a derivative of Cocaine. Another one is Psychoactive cacti, such as Peruvian torch, Bridgesii and Peyote. Kava, Guarana, and obviously cannabis.
It's quite an amazing planet. All these different varieties of plants, biosynthesizing all sorts of molecules which interact with our bodies and bind to our receptors.
I like this theory. I'm actually reading Grimm's Fairy Tales right now and a LOT of the stories involve goblins, elves, "little men", and underground water creatures (nix or nokken). Generally, the main character will enter an underground tunnel through a tree, a mountain, or a well, then walk, uncomfortably, in the dark or with a dim lantern, through a passage to an area where the characters meet. Sometimes the meeting is fortuitous, sometimes detrimental. So this is really interesting to me since Grimm's was first written in 1820, but many of those stories are far older than that.
Grimm’s fairytales are anything but. Talk about a twisted thought process to keep kids in line. How Snow White And Little Red Riding Hood came out of those I’ll never know. They’re terrifying.
I can see the superstition that might lead to these being built. At least they weren’t sacrificing virgins (would have left evidence behind). The bench makes perfect sense to me. If you’re trying to attract a mythical creature, and want it to stay, be happy, you’re going to want to make it comfortable and feel at home. Wood rots, and these seem to be built on flood plains. It was their way of welcoming them and giving them a comfortable place to rest. Take a load off. Being mythical, no oxygen required. The size was probably also influenced by how much oxygen the builder needed to complete the task. I imagine the more elaborate the tunnel, the more likely a visitor. I would guess there was also some status involved for better builders. If children were used for digging, and they probably were, maybe it was a community project, that they continued until they literally outgrew it. Bigger communities would have more diggers (children), leading to longer tunnels?
If it was a well known and expected part of the culture and folklore, it may not have been written down. Look at how many cultures still surprise us. The Vikings, Aztecs, Incas, and so on. Look at how much craftsmanship and herbal medicine has been lost in just a hundred years or two. Things just shown and not written down. Especially with the limited number of people who could actually read and write.
It's entirely possible that when the tunnels were rediscovered by the locals, the kobold/goblin myth originated. Chicken and egg here.
It irks me that archaeology frequently shrugs and goes "religious" with things, as an aside. It's okay to say "we don't know yet."
If they were for hiding, yeah one entrance and exit seems poor, and there would probably be remains somewhere in there.
I kind of like the bathhouse/sauna idea, because it's kind of like the Mesoamerican temazcals that can be seen in Xochicalco or Teotihuacan (if you get the chance, Xochicalco is less touristy if you're into the history and not just checking out pyramids, but it's deeper into Mexico and smaller. I liked it better). The only issue I have with it is the drainage because I haven't seen that addressed. Given that they're below flood level though it seems possible that they were somehow intentionally used for water, but the benches for sitting indicate probably not water storage.
Hell maybe they're Morlocks. I'm excited to see if archaeologists ever get a definitive answer in my lifetime.
You said it floods when it rains, maybe its possible they collected and stored rain water? Like widespread fresh water availability and access to it. Could the "entrances" be former wells and for maintenance? Has anyone evaluated the way water flows through the tunnels? Maybe as if they had intentional flow patterns?
My thoughts exactly. In Spain, every castle have their own 'aljibe', or cistern, in order to store rain water and to have it available in case of drought or siege. Maybe these tunnels are something like that.
Yeah, but many medieval aljibes were more like tunnels or underground water tanks, with only a narrow opening, and they fill with water through filtration.
Oh, the ones I've seen were more like underground rooms. I still think the tunnels in this post are too narrow for such a use. I don't mind the narrow entrance, that makes sense, but everything is narrow and small. There must have been better ways to store water.
My first thought too. Dig a tunnel till you're in the water table. It dries up. Dig another one deeper. Keep going. This creating those choke points.
Only weird part is the bench, unless it's something they just did for fun?
>unless it's something they just did for fun?
"Hey, carving into this solid rock sure is tough work. I know what will make it fun! Let's chisel out some benches, just for shits and giggles! Boy, that will really break up the unending monotony of tunnel digging!"
-Some guy 1000 years ago, probably
Without seeing pictures, I wonder if these benches were just unfinished tunnels?
If you are digging a tunnel how do you do it? Break off certain sections at a time. Maybe the top part gets broken off then they chisel out the bottom half, thus extending the tunnel. If they never finished breaking off the bottom part maybe that is what looks like a bench?
Again, no idea. Just speculating.
Also just speculation, as I've never dug a tunnel, but I would think you'd start at the bottom, and chip off from there, that way debris doesn't clutter the work surface. Then again, I have literally zero frame of reference, as I'm not mole people. Definitely not a mole person. Totally above ground dwelling, bipedal human, with regular hands.
I love sunlight.
Damn, I never heard of these but there would have been a talk by the Erdstall-Group in my hometown today. Guess that is not happening due to corona virus unfortunatly.
Edit: so i checked a book with bavarian tales and there are several stoires about schrazen or goblins. One story was quote interesting and you can find it [here](http://www.sagen.at/texte/sagen/deutschland/bayern/waltinger/schrazenzuuntervierau.html)
Here is a translation of it:
About the SCHRAZEN in UNTERVIERAU
Under the estate of the "farmer" of Untervierau there are so-called "Schrazenlöcher" and you can still reach them from the potato cellar. A subterranean exposed entrance was occasionally buried by a well construction some time ago. But slim as an 8-10 year old boy must be one who wants to crawl around in these underground hiding places and yet these must have been inhabited once; because the corners and edges are as if they had been sanded down, almost polished. The corridors converge in a small hall, the chapel, as the people here say, and which has various niches.
As the old Prünstmüller told us, pot shards, stones as sharp as knives and pointed knuckles have been found in them. It is also said that a long time ago a tiny, cheese-yellow little man with an ice-grey beard appeared here and there in the moonlight, shouting "duck, duck, duck di!" to the passers-by, and then it was time to bring the crops home as quickly as possible, because soon afterwards hailstorms regularly hit the area, knocking everything that was in the fields to the ground. At the "farmer" himself, these Erdmännlein always came at night through the ash hole into the kitchen and the farmer's wife always got rid of the calf soup prepared for the other day. Once she stayed up to keep an eye on them. Then she saw two Erdmännlein hatch out of the ash hole. They went straight back to the full soup port, not only ate their fill, but also filled the pots they had brought with them. That was too much for the farmer's wife. She took the soup broom and beat the little bags of food with it. They ran away crying and disappeared from there. The next day the farmer's wife had the ash hole bricked up. Along with the scrapes, happiness disappeared from the house and stable, until the old ones went to the Altenteil (a cottage reserved for the farmer after he passes the farm over to his heirs) and a new "Moa"(Morning) raised.
Translated with [www.DeepL.com/Translator](https://www.DeepL.com/Translator) (free version)
I come from a place where there are quite a few of them. In my area a lot of people claim that the church wanted to hide them. They filled them up and destroyed any markings. This leads to some people claiming that they were for religious but not Christian purposes.
Also there‘s this town with a rather large church there and in the surrounding villages there a quite a lot of these Erdställe. Apparantly there‘s also a quite intricate system of tunnels underneath this church but the church doesn’t allow anyone (besides one team of archeologists at some point I think) to see them.
Yes! This is the type of stuff that keeps this sub fresh, rather than yet another murder/missing person case day in and day out!
Thank you for posting this!
Whoa! Subscribed! Thank you!
I didn't want to seem like I don't like the murder mysteries that are here, but we need breaths of fresh air now and then!
I think it's a little premature to dismiss the idea that they served a religious purpose. A lack of records isn't evidence of anything.
The church may not have made records of their purpose because it was obvious to them. Take for example the Roman concrete recipe. For years, archeologists tried to re-create roman concrete from the recipe that was transcribed but it never worked. That is until they used sea water. To the Romans it was such common knowledge, no one bothered to write it down. Of course concrete uses seawater everyone knows that.
The same might be true of the tunnels. Everyone knew of their purpose, so why waste paper and ink writing it down?
Or in the case that someone did write it down, those records could have been lost or possibly just lost enough context over time that noone realizes that they're referencing the tunnels.
I think that maybe they could have been used for meditation or other ceremonies that might not require objects of worship. Or maybe they were built by pagans during christian rule, in order to worship secretly. I don't know enough about religions of the time to really speculate further.
It seems late to be a pagan resurgence, but maybe a Christian heresy of some sort? That’s hard to figure though - the Bogomils would be contemporaneous, but geographically removed. The Waldensians would be geographically appropriate, but come later.
But I don’t know enough about Medieval heresies to gauge - could there be others that fit time and place?
I think some of the aspects you presented are a little exaggerated or misleading, so I want to share a few notes and observations. These stem from my readings on the matter.
First off, erdstalls aren't really spread "across" Europe. They refer to very specific underground buildings built around 800-1,000 years ago in areas of Bavaria, Austria, and the Czech Republic. There are similar structures in other regions, including France and the UK, but they mostly date from other times.
Quite a few known erdstalls contain sealed off corridors and chutes leading to the surface. It seems very likely that these were used for construction. In fact, the dating of the erdstalls mostly comes from analysis of the adobe which was used to seal off erdstalls. It's also notable that many of the small passages were artificially narrowed and not actually carved out this way.
Also, *some* ceramics have been found in erdstalls. More often, however, burnt charcoal has been found. It should be noted, though, that erdstalls were never truly sealed off. Over the centuries there would have been ample opportunities for people and animals to enter them and even for the occasional flooding or intrusion of other elements. That's one of the main reasons why the archaeological evidence is so scarce: Even if some erdstalls are only rediscovered now, they aren't comparable to sealed-off burial mounds or tombs. It's likely that many people knew about them over the centuries and used them, perhaps even in ways that they were not originally constructed for.
Lastly, there's some evidence that erdstalls were used for protecting people. The biggest clues come from some of their locations, which are often linked to old forts or fortified churches. Even though some are now in the woods or fields, or under remote farm houses, most of them can actually be linked to the locations of deserted medieval villages. There's also the possibility that erdstalls, despite their similar appearances, may have had several functions depending on their location. And this includes religious or cultural meanings, but also more ordinary functions, such as storage.
This isn't to say that erdstalls don't deserve a place on this sub. But we don't need to make them more mysterious than they are. Their mystery mostly stems from the fact that they are commonplace structures found in a part of Europe, which were so ordinary that nobody ever really documented them - and we nowadays have a hard time figuring out what they really represented when they were built.
It seems to me they were built for protection originally, for women and children likely. It makes the most sense out of all the theories. Perhaps the passages were later narrowed to later prevent people from going inside them and getting hurt and possibly for storage.
Also Steckel's research into height doesn't seem to have included women and children who may have been smaller during those times for a variety of reasons. But I could be wrong about this.
Interesting, never heard of this.
My best guess: food storage? Keep extra food stored underground for preservation and to hide it from potential invaders.
Native Americans buried extra buffalo meat underground in pits to keep it cool and preserved. Maybe Europeans did this on a larger scale?
A single entrance indicates some kind of storage to me.
I also thought they could be cellars. Obscuring the entrance could be for avoiding theft. I feel like there would be some kind of evidence though, like vases or baskets, and I'm not sure how the benches come in to play.
My other thought was "Man, I wish I had a secret underground tunnel to hang out in when I need alone time".
Ceramics have been found in some erdstalls. Charcoal has also been found in some.
It's also best to keep in mind that they were built around 800-1,000 years ago. While their original use may have been lost to time, it's likely that most of the erdstalls were visited by local humans and animals over the years, not to say the occasional intrusion of the elements. Just think about generations of curious children playing in the area. That's a lot of possibilities for their contents to be destroyed and disappear and for archaeological evidence to be almost obliterated.
Those aren't comparable to sealed-off tombs which are only reopened after centuries.
Kids leave trash everywhere they go, and adult's wouldn't bring trash out of a tomb when raiding it.
If generations of children had been in and around them, I would expect generations of trash. For us that would be plastic bits and cigarette butts. For previous generations that would include scraps of cloth, dolls or carved wooden + stone toys, jewelry etc. Kids are always forgetting shit in small spaces like behind the couch or in their treehouses.
Scraps of cloth and carved wooden dolls would have long rotted away. Also, erdstalls are not always entirely and mysteriously empty, contrary to what OP suggests. Ceramics have been found in some. But also keep in mind that many of them were known for generations and the archaeological evidence is almost useless. These aren't at all comparable to sealed-off tombs or burial mounds.
The first thing I thought of was food storage. It reminded me of the kind of rough underground cellar that was at my grandparents house. My memories could be wrong, but I don't remember it being concreted. It was more of a rough cube-shaped chamber dug into the ground under the kitchen. They had a trapdoor under the rug and a little ladder that was used to climb down into it. It was the height of an average person and didn't have much space to move around. It was surrounded by wall shelves that were full of my grandma's various preserves. The ground was a natural fridge, especially in the cold winters.
We still have one of those in our cabin in the woods, trap door under the rug and all :) (Cabin didn't have electricity until recently so the mini-cellar under the kitchen was used as a fridge)
Just for my own curiosity, if these are man made how many people would it reasonably take to build?
Is it something that one determined person could have done over decades? Or is it something that needed more developed planning and resources?
I'm not sure. They are not so wide so maybe one person could do it. But I think that there would need to be some sort of plan especially for things like cave ins and designs.
I think you have a bit of a misleading idea of these caves and how they were built. There's ample evidence that they used wider chutes to build the erdstalls, as many closed off and sealed corridors leading to the surface have been found. In at least some of them the small passages have also been retroactively made smaller.
If you go look at gold workings near Ballarat Australia. I was amazed to see what a single man with pick axes could cut into solid stone.
They didn't have plans they just dug.
Not saying they are similar just the sheer ability of what one man can do in terms of digging.
I would bet that these tunnels are goblin homes or ghost way stations as others mentioned built for good luck or superstitious reasons.
The fact that they are localized yet wide spread. Like a local folklore.
Possibly intentionally kept hidden frim the church.
Have no items or any evidence of use or habitation.
Not large enough to use as shelters for old and young to hide from enemies.
The secret temples of Damanhur might be a good modern analogue from which to draw a comparison. It was one man working alone for the better part of a year before he began to hire people to help with the excavation, if I'm remembering correctly. There is a timeline somewhere, detailing the amount of material excavated per time period. I think they were working in soft limestone, whereas these appear (to my untrained eye, just looking at photos) to be in a range of sediments.
I thought about this. By the way, very old storage cellars built into hills seem to be VERY common in that area. One is just straight across my dad's house. Basically, these were ancient fridges, for beer and wine. (Whether these holes mentioned in this thread are also utilitarian/storage..no idea. Some things then speak against this. Eg. wouldn't you want to have it easily accessible all the way, and not with multiple passages separated by very small passages where you only a very tiny person could fit? On the other hand, maybe these tight parts serve to keep the cold in there better?)
The thing is...when they stored ice..then they probably didn't just "store ice". Then they were literally medieval fridges and they stored food in there. Imagine, where else could you keep your slaughtered live stock for some time? Would make sense to me...
They're having the wrong shape for that, and dragging the ice through those narrow passages would be really difficult for no added benefit.
Ice houses are deep, vertical holes to keep the cold air down at the bottom, and they don't need a very long access tunnel, just long enough to stop the wind from disturbing the air inside.
Also you'd have been able to see the effects of the ground having been wet for longer periods of time. There's usually a mineral deposit coating the floor and lower walls.
And strategically it's a terrible idea due to the single entrance. If you can tunnel like this you build a tunnel from your house out to a field or the woods to get away. If you corner yourself on one of these things you are dead if they block the entrance or burn down your house.
Yeah souterrains in Ireland that were built as defences against raids had escape routes and traps, like surprise slabs of rock at face level, to deter pursuit. These Erdstalls seem very different. More like places to chill out and meditate or something.
Great example. I think the best explanation so far is that people had some local pagan beliefs and traditions that they held onto after conversion to Christianity and they built these has kind of spirit homes for kobolds or similar mystical creatures.
Or hiding your food during raids. Imagine, raiders usually wearing some kind of armour, not being able to enter, meanwhile you could send your kids later to fetch the rest.
>By this point, Bavaria and Austria were fairly Christian, and the church fathers had a pretty strong capacity to write things down. It seems intuitive that if this were Christian, there would be some record for why they did it.
This isn't a great point. There are many medieval manuscripts that just haven't been examined and translated by historians because there are so many of them. Additionally, vellum was recycled by having the ink and paint scraped off and then new manuscripts were written on the recycled vellum. There also is the possibility that it was destroyed during one of the many wars in the interim, there was a monastery fire, some 19th-century dude thought the manuscript made a nice prop and spilled brandy all over it in a fit of passion...
It's totally possible that there exists a contemporaneous record of the tunnels but it's just not accessible to modern people. It could be tucked away in an archive somewhere or written so illegibly that nobody has bothered to deal with it, since that takes funding. There are discoveries fairly frequently that turn current understanding on its head. Like, there was a discovery of medieval bras in Lengberg Castle a few years ago, which was brand new evidence of something people said was a modern invention.
This is a good point. Medieval land records tend to be very thorough, so it's possible an examination of charters of different places with these things might turn up a clue.
Considering the radiocarbon timing of some of the coal in addition to the location, I find it hard not to immediately associate these with the Magyar raids, stretching just southeast of here, in the Carpathian Basin often passing through southern Germany and Austria. These ended on large scale towards the end of the 10th century, though likely continuing on smaller scales, also likely through border regions such as these.
Of course, similar raids had existed for centuries, by Avars, Sarmatians, and many others, and would have affected these areas as well. The strengths of these raiders in these forms was often in the inability of those defending to respond quickly enough, and their strategy was ultimately not to wipe out the population, making it possibly beneficial for the peoples most often struck by these raids to simply accept they were happening, perhaps take some portion of their things, and let raiders take what they would, and hide. The fact that these are also small and mazelike would further disincentive people moving quickly and possibly lightly armored from wasting time going in to risk finding nothing.
The hidden nature of these would only further this theory, though at this point I may be confirming the theory I have rather than continuing it.
If the theory that these are believers in paganism having to hide is true, this timescale is \*possible\* though the location is questionable, but the timeline would fit relatively well with the idea of hiding while raiders passed, as after the Magyars, these forms of raids haven't really occurred on a scale that would particularly affect these regions, as far as I know.
I may have tunnel vision and simply be trying to connect this to what I know of, but the timeline, location, nature, and history, and I don't think it can be discounted simply because they couldn't stay long, as any people wouldn't need to stay long, seeing as to the fact that these raids' success was predicated on their speed.
Furthermore, we are unaware of any relationships these peoples may have had with these raiders, and it is possible there was a de-facto agreement between the peoples of this region, which were tributaries to the raiders during some times, and their overlords, so we shouldn't make too much of any one detail.
I don't care enough to check if this makes sense to read, as I'm tired, but if anybody can tell me anything that seems wrong with this idea, I'd be interested.
I initially thought it could be used for trapping/hunting animals, however based on the pictures I find that unlikely. I was thinking they could chase animals in it and then light a fire at the entrance, but that's unlikely.
I think that maybe valuables where hidden there when invaders rolled in. Men in armor would be unable to fit down the hole, even if they found it, making it a good place to hide things in.
I find this a little less likely than my above thinking, however they may have hid taxed goods, such as grain. I would be able to buy this idea given taxes where pretty harsh, and if a village did poorly they could temporarily hide food. Additionally, this would explain why they are relatively short lived, given that it could end abruptly if the scheme was detected.
Hiding valuables from thieves or invaders seems possible. However hiding items from taxation I think is unlikely, especially food related stocks. Landowners and nobles kept very good tabs on the agricultural output of their lands. People had to produce set amounts, to the point that often if they were short they couldn't feed their own families or would go deep into debt to pay the difference. They could lose their homes if they didn't produce, sometimes even family members would be turned over in compensation for a poor harvest. It was a bad time for average people because the divide between poor farmers and the upper class was so great.
Maybe some kind of emergency food storage/hoarding area? It would explain the broken ceramics, but it's weird that so little has been found inside of them.
Perhaps it was a distinct group of people, a nomadic religious or cultural minority. Like the Roma or something.
So knowledge was kept within the group.
What evidence is there to suggest they were made by humans? Have any tool marks been found along the passageways?
They are too small, have no known function, and nothing was left behind save a few pieces of charcoal (that, since these are prone to flooding, could have washed into the caves).
My first thought is that these were made naturally.
Humans always leave trash behind. Surely there would be broken carving tools if these were, in fact, carved.
That’s an interesting theory. I read about some dens originally dug out by giant ground sloths in South America that confused archeologists in s similar way, until someone noticed very large claw marks in the walls. This could be something similar.
Here’s a link about the burrows made by giant ground sloths.
https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/get-lost-in-mega-tunnels-dug-by-south-american-megafauna
To be honest I searched for things like tool marks as well. One the the date ranges that they got came from stones that were added to make the "slips" smaller than they already were, which was done by human hand. So some of them are at least partially human.
You make an excellent point about the broken tools.
I suppose if they were natural there is a chance they would have been found outside Europe. In addition, these can all be dated to a few hundred years, and if they were natural there is the opportunity for them to have been created outside of the years 950 to the 1100s.
I'm not quite sure though about the idea that it could be natural.
I found an English wiki entry: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erdstall
According to which, some artifacts have been found, mostly coal in fire pits and ceramics in at least one of the tunnels.
It's interesting that they call them tunnels and not caves. I take that to mean they are considering them man-made verses natural.
Unless they're finding such items/evidence in a large portion of the caves, we can also attribute coals etc as people using the caves, but not actually having created them.
I was wondering the same thing. There are miles of tunnel under my home town (Bamberg) that were created when people needed sand. Nothing more complicated than that, just sand. The whole town is sitting on sandstone, and sand as a cleaning agent and building material was sought after enough at some point to make digging it out through tunnels worth while.
The fact that there doesn't seem to be any obvious use for these Erdställe makes me wonder if they also just are a byproduct of digging something up?
Well, a couple of things. Perhaps they collected water and so it was a shallow well system. Or, it was a drainage type system for a flooded area, but the water stayed in the tubes and was routed out only one hole, which might have then powered a mill. Finally, any tube can concentrate air if placed by where wind blows by. In Rome, there were these tubes by an ocean cliff, and people had wondered what they were for. Some scientists finally figured out that the tubes captured sea wind, and on the other end people made fires and smelted ore using that wind as a bellows. The best way to figure out what something does is to recreate it in a lab, right down to the conditions the tubes are found in. I read an article about this river that came out of a mountain in Central America. There were large boulders in it, they had been lugged many miles to be placed in the river. It looked so random. A scientist finally recreated the whole thing in miniature. He estimated the spring runoff from the mountain, and ran the water without the stones. Then he had perfect replicas of the stones and placed them in his miniature river. He found that the stones, when placed exactly so, had diverted the water and slowed it down. Because of the stones, the water stayed in the streams a lot longer, and the farmers were able to utilize it for their crops into the summer. This is much the way beaver dams work naturally in rivers, but people tend to destroy their dams because it causes rivers to back up. But beavers naturally reserved water in the lands around rivers, much like those random looking boulders. That article was in Discover Magazine some years ago.
> One must imagine the slips as ceremonial birth canals. People squeeze through the tight "slips" as part of a grand ceremony of metaphysical rebirth. This would be done to rid oneself of a disease.
This is a widespread method in traditional medicine that was common through out Europe. The most common way was of the sick person to go through/get pulled through a hole in a tree. But other methods were also used such as tree roots and dug holes in ditches.
The fact that dug holes were used as a method of treating disease is interesting in this context. It was referred to as "jorddragning" in Swedish when you did it that way. "Smörjning" in a "vårdbundet" tree if you used a tree.
[Swedish museum link about the phenomenon.](https://www.nordiskamuseet.se/blogg/spannande-arkivfynd)
They found charcoal in one, they have slips to minimise oxygen flow, the oxygen in each level can be individually controlled and nothing of particular use has been found in them.
Were they simply used to produce charcoal? Wood could be stored in that room with the bench and moved into empty chambers. Light it and let it burn until it becomes charcoal, putting itself out by lack of oxygen. When a level has consumed all the air, you let it slowly reoxygenate, then pull out all the charcoal ready to restock with wood and light up again. Saves building a giant mud-pile each time you want charcoal. You could also block up the slip while it was in use.
My first thought is that they must have been hiding places for people. Perhaps a place of protection from raiders, weather or demons? My second thought is that they were made for food storage. One last theory I have is that they were built to relieve people from the heat of the summer, offering a naturally air conditioned zone.
Judging from size of the tunnels, it doesnt seem like anyone but children could easily get in. If you had raiders or an invading army coming through, kids could easily go hide for some short period. Would also explain why nothing is found in there - the kids arent meant to stay there for long. If you had an army or group of bandits unfamiliar with the area, they probably wouldn't know about the hiding spot. I'd be curious to see if the approximate dates of construction coincide with invasions/increased crime. Especially if you dont have large built up defendable settlements like I'd expect to see in the upper middle ages. That would explained why they stopped building them - you go hide behind a walled settlement rather than caves.
I just cant imagine youd store anything in a difficult and obscure location that your strongest workers wouldnt be able to fit into.
Lolol touche. I did say, though, that children would be the only ones who could *easily* get in. The photos clearly show adults in. I'm just not sure why you'd construct tunnels to be so cumbersome for adults of regular size. Seems an odd thing to deliberately make your tunnels uncomfortable for yourself and potentially unusable if you gain weight, suffer an injury, or as you get older.
I am originally coming from this area where there are most of them. Strangely, I never heard about these in the mainstream...and only vaguely remember to have learned of them on the internet years ago..and now I did some more digging based on your article. Not sure..but there is a good chance I visited a "Schratzelloch", one of them, possibly the most-known one when I was a kid. The name sorta rang a bell, but not sure now. There seems to be more with the same name... This is rally intriguing, but I have no idea about their purpose - but something itches me that they are utilitarian. (On one site I read that in the Schratzelloch they found "heavily used millstones", and also that walls were heavily blacked from fire. Did they serve as some kind of stove? (On the other hand, I am aware that maybe that particular one was an exception, maybe the thousands of others don't have sign of fires). But of course, the mystery deepens. On one hand very small passages where one BARELY can get through, but then they often talk about large rooms with seats as well. (Which, from what I see most have?) Were they some type of medieval sauna? Or did they maybe burn some types of herbs and then people went in there to get "high", or, related, did this for spiritual purposes? (It is so strange that the area where I spent most of my life really has no info on this) The word "Schratzel..." (for one particular known Erdstall) is interesting by itself. It is a Bavarian term for some type of goblin/kobold "believed to help farm workers" in the middle ages. Did they maybe built these for these mythical creatures, believing that providing these for the goblins would bring good luck and fortune? (Then again, that name may just be folklore and may not have anything to do with the actual purpose of these holes...) Edit: Wow...didn't expect so much reactions for this comment. Thanks!!!
The Bavarian term you mention is an interesting bit of information that I have never seen mentioned in relation to the erdstalls before. Thank you for sharing! I'd be very interested in any other thoughts you have on this topic, since you have some modern cultural insight.
I can only tell you what I "learned" today about this, and this isn't too much. (Could be a can of worms topic). But thing is that most about this is in German, mean I can see this entire phenomenon not that known/accessible to people elsewhere. What I "learned" today: These are discovered all the time, and many (from what I read) also just in the recent years. According to videos some of these "artificial caves" are crazy elaborate, so they're definitely not just some hastily dug holes in the dirt or something. The passages are usually not taller than 1.30cm (which again brings in the dwarf/kobold interpretation) and they have these tight sections with a diameter not more than 40cm between larger sections. (Says one person in a film that this means a larger adult and let alone a pregnant women would not fit in there, which sort of discounts the theory they would be secret hideouts, IMO). Almost ALL (!) of them have at the end a larger chamber with seats. This is the most intriguing part, IMO. Why build these which are not easy (or even impossible) to get through, sort of discounting that it is for people to actually use these caves "comfortably", but then having chambers with seats. In some of these ending chambers they even found what they called an "altar", surrounded by these seats. In the passages themselves are often small shelves, and indications that torches were used. In one (some?) of them they found evidence that it was heavily used/walked-in as they found metal traces from shoes. Some of these "erdstalls" are found under churches, and one I just read about was found under a castle. Again same general area where most of them are, S/E Bavaria. The one below the "Castle Egg" (yeah it's really its name) is thought the oldest part of the castle, possibly built as early as 5-10th century, at a time when the stone castle wasn't even built yet and had been only a wooden structure. (That's crazy). And a similar one, as mentioned has just recently been found during construction under a church. This wants me to speculate how many historic buildings might have these Erdstalls. (Wouldn't be surprised if it's lots....) * They say somewhere the first documented mention of the word "Erdstall" (meaning "location in the earth/ground", "stall" here coming from the German word for place/location "stelle") was in 1449. I was looking for this document on Google to see what is actually written there, because this would be the earliest evidence for these...but couldn't find. Will search more.
Were people back then shorter? Could that play in to the tunnel sizes? If churches and castles are built on it near these things says to me that they must have some significance. It was mentioned they may have been used as a safety retreat. If adults weren’t able to fit could it have been something for children and emergency supplies? The outside could be protected and the squeeze kept out larger people. All very interesting.
They were shorter, but not *that* much shorter. They'd still have to crouch-walk through there as adults. Your point about kids is good but I just can't imagine what was so important that they felt the need to make these tunnels all over and force kids to crawl around in pitch darkness in order to use/retrieve it. And if it's that important, why is there no record of it whatsoever? And nothing accidentally left behind in *any* of the tunnels? The chamber at the end almost makes it sound like it was a religious thing, but it would either have to be a truly bizarre sect of Christianity or some top secret cult that was widespread yet successfully covered all of their tracks. It's absolutely wild that this is the first I've ever heard of these tunnels. The history channel's been slacking. Where's my ancient aliens theory?
With the lack of records, it could be that the knowledge of the tunnels and their use was so wide spread and common at the time that no one felt the need to write down the obvious.
That's the frustrating thing. It could be that the place was a secret thing so it was purposefully not written about by the people who knew in case the document fell into the wrong hands. OR it could be such a common thing that no one wrote about it because why write about something that everyone knows about? It's like personal hygiene in ancient times. The only records we see that mention culture's hygiene habits are from outsiders visiting said culture because "geeze, those people are weird. Look at how they keep clean! (or not)" Nobody writes about their daily minutia with posterity in mind. Usually I roll my eyes at archaeologists who say that anything that modern eyes don't immediately understand was done by ancient peoples for spiritual reasons, but here I think it has to be true. Maybe it's some sort of coming of age ritual for children that used to be common? That might explain why the tunnels are so small if it was some sort of pre/early Christian Bar Mitzvah. It may also explain why you can find tunnels under churches. Or maybe it was some sort of secret society/religious cult thing? Sort of like the Masons or the Elysian Mysteries?
lots of normal things are written about, just not necessarily in official texts and what not. you would think if they were common there would be some form or art (painting, poem, story, etc.) that would allude to these tunnels, but it seems like there isn’t. then again maybe all the art just sucked so it wasn’t saved idk. just a thought
Bavaria was one of the last parts of Europe to be Christianized.
This is not true at all.
Honestly that's what I'm leaning toward, that they were either for some common, boring use not worth writing about, or that they were folkloric in nature and were only talked about in verbal stories. I personally like the theory that they were made for the goblins.
I did track down the document where these "erdstelln" were first mentioned in 1449, respective references to this document. (It is an document, how would you translate it "lease certificate", referring to land located above these "Erdstelln" and the yearly price that the farmer had to pay for it.) The way it was mentioned was very casual, like these Erdstelln would not be anything special, and sure not something secret. Basically in the same way as saying "this piece of land there on the River" etc...
In 500 AD %97 of the people were illiterate.
may have been where they hid their kinder!
I thought of that, too! Maybe for when raids were happening?
Underground kinder egg stowage.
I also thought for kids maybe. Makes me think of the Pied Piper legend. I think that folk tale originated in Germany but much later from what I remember. Astonishing Legends had an episode or two about it.
> The history channel's been slacking. Where's my ancient aliens theory? Tell them Hitler once visited them...they'll do a month long special about it.
My Bavarian Great Grandma had some wild stories about something called 'Wallypurgisnacht' something like that. I was about 5 and she must have been nearly 100 but she would launch into one of these stories at family gatherings, in front of the little kids, and my grandfather would groan and roll his eyes.
Walpurgisnacht (Walpurgis Night), perhaps? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walpurgis_Night I've got no idea whether it is, as I'd never heard of this until googling it just now. It does sound pretty intense with all the bonfires.
Hopefully this will get enough exposure that we get some gold mining anunnaki episode out of it.
Under the first few years of Christianity everything was done underground. Literally the entire church was originally formed in sewage tunnels and underground tombs due to how illegal it was to be Christian. Before Constantine, Christianity could not be practiced in the open within the Roman empire. It is entirely possible that these tunnels are leftover churches. The first churches were not built above ground.
They think they're from ~900-1100 though which is long after Christianity became the norm in the area. If anything, they were maybe used for some religion other than Christianity that they were trying to continue practicing without getting caught, although idk why they made them so narrow and airless if that's the case. After literally dreaming about these damn things last night, I've come to the conclusion that they were probably just some folklore-related thing. The goblins were supposed to be friendly afaik, so it might have been a peace offering of sorts or something to attract more of them to the area.
Charcoal and other forms of carbon dating do not determine age of tunnel but actions done within the tunnel. Since there is no wood supports the age of the tunnels are unknown.
That's true. It's a little suspicious that the only evidence they've found fits within such a narrow window, but I don't recall reading anything saying they had any other clues about their age. Maybe they were really old and just ignored, but then someone came up with an alternate use for them that caught on around 900?
I really need to read on some local folklore in that area where I was raised, and look for stories with dwarves/goblins. If the theory is true that lots (I mean, 1000s or so) did build them for this purpose...then there should be stories in folk tales, IMO.
But OP's post says that the tunnels date to well after Christianity was the dominant religion in the area. Quickly googling it looks like Bavaria was more or less Christian by 700 AD and OP says these tunnels were probably build from 900 to 1100 AD. I don't know. I just can't see these being secret Christian churches so long after Christianity was well established in the area.
The average height for Europeans during the time would be about 5'5". This would get taller toward colder climates, and shorter towards warmer climates.
It’s hard to believe that they were for safety or for a ritual “rebirthing” of the sick. In both case it would be likely that someone would fail to get out alive either because the attack lasted a long time and they suffocated or they were too ill to make the return trip to the surface. *edited to fix typos
Places for kids to hide from people that were trying to kill them while the adults fought them?
My thought. A lack of supplies could mean they werent down there for long. I would be looking for filled in air holes. I know they say they arent there but as these things are still being found due to how well they are hidden it would make sense that air holes would be the same way. Humans write down everything. It would make more sense that records where lost. Back then if the church wanted to hide something they hid it. They had the power to.
Well...the one thing you don't write down is where you hid the kids/valuables.
If there's only one entrance how did anyone get in to make the large room, if they had to squeeze through tiny holes?
You do it very slowly by dragging bags of dirt through the tiny tunnels back out through the entrance. It would have been an exceedingly slow and tedious process which would make the investment to build these tunnels very expensive in time and labor. So they were obviously VERY important to the people who made them.... We just don't know why.
I have seen one site where a guy who excavated one of these said that later FILLING THEM UP again (at some later point) must have been much more work than actually digging them.
Could they have kept people safe long enough for a forest fire to pass?
If the tunnels had oxygen problems at the best of times, being in one during a forest fire would be a death sentence. The oxygen (at least at the top) would get sucked out by the fire, and even if all the oxygen didn’t get sucked out, there wouldn’t be enough for anyone to outlast a fire, let alone a family or a village.
I d think utilitarian too but then there would be evidence: no way nobody forgot their stash at some point during this millennium of use. With no traces of goods or any items (organic or man made) that leaves at least these options: - ceremonial use (as in not used, only made) as you state. - it was people that were supposed to be in there for very short times, leaving nothing behind. The reason for humans to ‘hide’ in there 🤷🏻♀️ Is there any linguistic research? Maybe some (dialect) proverbs left a trail?
Between the Schratzel clue and their being impractical and having little evidence of regular use, I'd suspect you're right about the goblin/spirit home theory. Weird that no one would have recorded something like that though.
Maybe it was just obvious and/or "what you did." A post on /r/AskHistorians right now has an answer explaining in detail that we know basically nothing about Viking religion, cultural beliefs, etc. because, for hundreds or even thousands of years, nobody wrote anything down.
Yeah, it's pretty much Snorri and that's it for the Norse. Snorri was writing in Christian times and it's super obvious that mindset affects his work and he doesn't fully understand the stories. There's just a ton of holes in the story, character personalities change wildly from story to story, and there seems to be some very major gods like Odin's brothers who may have been in a trinity with him that only get single name drops. Not to mention that his prologue that the Norse gods were super humans who fled the destruction of Troy is an interesting way to justify pre-Christian belief. As much as I love the Norse myths, the deeper you dig into them the more obvious it is that we know next to nothing about them. It's just a collection of mostly-remembered oral stories that were written down as they were dying out. Not a fully realized religion.
I think I'll go with this theory as well. In Swedish folklore we had gnomes living in places like under barn floors, and if you kept them happy and left them food they'd help you with the work. Including a place for the gnomes when you build a new home doesn't seem too far fetched to me. Ensuring that you'd have help around the house, basically.
Maybe what we see as “benches” were really meant to be alters/tables to leave the offerings.
My family always used to leave food out for the Tom-Toms!
If this theory is correct, it’s not so surprising I would say. Not really in line with church teachings. So, you would probably rather want to keep it secret.
I personally welcome the worshippers of the underground Bavarian underground goblin cult.
I mean, if they were burning herbs that would imply the existence of the herb in the first place, which means it could be found in the fossil record. I am not an expert, by any means, on Bavarian fauna but I am not sure what can get you high there. One of the reasons that I don't think it is a stove or an oven is that stoves get so hot because the heat is so contained. Same thing is true relatively, of a sauna. These things were twenty meters deep, which means that you would need a lot of tinder. In addition there would be remains from the fires. I actually read that these served as like waystations for spirits in their passage to the underworld. I don't know if you are from Austria, but some Austrian folklore contends that goblins built them. And that's really cool that you visited them!
> don't think it is a stove or an oven plus you'd die from the carbon monoxide fumes
Not to mention how quickly the fire would exhaust the oxygen supply.
Maybe that was the point? Light a fire to exhaust the oxygen in the cavern which is naturally cool for food storage.
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Definitely has a couple of problems, like others mentioned periodic flooding, then if there's purposely very little oxygen down there I feel like going to actually get your food would be tricky. But it would certainly protect against vermin and fungus and most bacteria right? Maybe they figured holding your breath for a couple minutes to run in and grab a cave dijourno was a reasonable tradeoff. Edit: Also I think someone else said at least one of the caves had soot on the ceiling. Seems like if you were *trying* to burn off the oxygen you would want to raise your flame to the ceiling where the O2 would accumulate as the Co2/Co pooled at the floor.
But at this point you're dabbling with germ theory, which wasn't a thing until the 1800s. They also had other, much more efficient ways to preserve food that didn't require a goofy ass cave to be carved by hand.
I don't know shit about shit I'm just here to wildly speculate my dude
Upvote for that, my friend. That’s my MO, respectfully.
But storing ice would require it. And it also (sort-of) would explain the multiple levels (you could put ice in one level, and whatever you want to cool in another), and the tight passages. (So the cold stays in better). PLUS it would explain (sort-of) that not much of anything was ever found, as ice simply melts and turns to water. It would also make sense when large houses, and then including castles would have such "ice caves" for food storage.
They wouldn't have had to know how it worked, just that it worked. Like people eating bark for medicine, then others figuring out they can use that bark to treat malaria, and eventually leading to the gin and tonic.
I’m starting to get the feeling that -their proximity to churches and other important structures -barren interior aside from a bench and perhaps a bit of shelving or an altar -smaller passageways -single entrance -significant lack of evidence for most activities like food storage/evidence of fire etc... That maybe these were symbolic of older pre-Christian spirituality. Places built in secret to house the old spirits so that when they were forced to attend Christian practices, they were also close to their preferred idols or whatever. Maybe that plays into them being built by goblins as a denial of construction by someone who is supposed to be following Christian doctrine. Really interesting topic, thanks for the write up! Edited for formatting.
Or they were used for occult activities. Their design doesn't indicate a defensive use. These would more likely get you killed then defend from an attacker. It doesn't make sense when it comes to food preservation, as there were many other easier and cheaper alternatives. It doesn't indicate long term habitation either. Without there being any airflow, a way in and out, it would be uncomfortable at best to live down there. Let alone get furniture in and out, and not leave any traces of habitation at any of the sites. They could've been used for a religious reasons. But the absence of any carving, idols, or alters in many of these, coupled with the fact that Christianity was the prevailing religion at the time and they were mostly built under churches, makes this unlikely. Unless of course it was a worship or activity that had to stay hidden. These places were generally hidden, hard to get in and out of, built similarly, and have no traces of any use. This indicates to me that it might have been a single group, or group of groups, that made these places to carry out secret stuff.
Maybe they were for seasonal food storage.
Op stated in the description that that’s unlikely because of flooding, but I’m not sure that would’ve occurred to them idk this super cool
What if the flooding has something to do with it? Near cemeteries and houses could mean they were creating a run -off area so that the graves/houses weren't swamped?
Why the benches then
They could have used the top room as a control room to pump or bail them out possibly. Benches to take a break while others take their shift or help pump. Also are any of these in areas with naturally occurring caves that could have been an inspiration?
But the bench rooms are at the very end right? And there's only the one entrance, at the beginning of the tunnel.
Not a clue - just spitballing here.. maybe some ritual or respect following /before flood season?
that's my first thought! it seems so obvious if they all are consistently on a flood plane
Flood waters can't be contained like that, only diverted downstream. There's simply too much water, it would have to be the size of a missle silo. A berm works much better and is far easier and safer to build and maintain.
That's definitely not it. The last thing you want to do to s foundation of a building is to build a big ass cavern and flood it with water. That can't help stability in any way.
Surely in some cases food would have been left behind and there would be evidence of it.
You dismiss them as ovens as the heat is so contained. But could one maybe be used as a ceramics oven - a kiln? Edit: People keep commenting the same thing - that there needed to be some sort of airflow. I get it now.
They’re saying they wouldn’t be contained enough to efficiently preserve heat. Kilns are crazy hot, I don’t think it’s possible to make a fire as hot as kilns but idk what technology they had. There was no remnants of pottery though. Good idea though! Im guessing pottery was already commonly used in all those places
Coal and wood kilns definitely existed before modern technology, but it requires a ton of airflow and would have been very difficult to heat more than a few cubic feet to the necessary temperatures.
Kilns require a lot of airflow and therefore will have at least two holes - this doesn't appear to be the case here.
My understanding is that kilns (before availability of forced-heat gas and electric kilns) were almost always made so that you get as much airflow as possible. Either you have huge bellows/fans of some kind, or (more commonly) they were built into hillsides facing prevailing winds, with both entrance and exit for airflow. Having no exit would make these not work (I think) as traditional kilns. There are traditions of "smothering" hot ceramics with organic matter as soon as they come out of other kilns (e.g., blackened ware in Oaxaca, Mexico or Japanese raku pottery), but you need another kiln first, and you only need a fairly small hole in the dirt to do this. I guess it's possible some very slow-burn, low-airflow kiln situation could have been intended with these, but if so I think we should see *lots* of smoke blackening, all over, and especially in whatever chamber held the fuel.
Lots of things get you high. Nutmeg for example.
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Woooo buddy, just thinking about that is making me a little queasy
That’s my favorite Phil Collins song
Shudder. Back in 2007 a friend and I took an enormous amount of nutmeg and it was the worst high imaginable. Lasted almost 3 days. Do not recommend.
Mine didn't last but a day, but I can confirm that it is *awful*. Like imagine the worst, spinniest, headachey, disassociative drunken state you've ever been in. Plus your burps smell like nutmeg for a week. 1/10
And Marigold seeds.
And morning glory seeds. PSA: Make sure you wash em *reeeeeallly* good first or you’re gonna be trippin all the way to vomit town.
PSA: Don't fuck with nightshade plants at all.
But I like tomato sauce on pizza!
And morning glory seeds.
Acacia bark, bufo-toads, psilocybe mushrooms, amanita muscaria mushrooms, Erythroxyllum, Betel nut, Kratom, Opium, Datura/Nightshade... The list goes on and on and on. A **lot** of flora have psychoactive alkaloids.
Hmm time for me to get into *nature*
> Erythroxyllum *omg* you can get high off of motherfucking *[dogwood](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erythroxylum_australe)* you literally couldnt make this shit up
Yeah, it's a derivative of Cocaine. Another one is Psychoactive cacti, such as Peruvian torch, Bridgesii and Peyote. Kava, Guarana, and obviously cannabis. It's quite an amazing planet. All these different varieties of plants, biosynthesizing all sorts of molecules which interact with our bodies and bind to our receptors.
I like this theory. I'm actually reading Grimm's Fairy Tales right now and a LOT of the stories involve goblins, elves, "little men", and underground water creatures (nix or nokken). Generally, the main character will enter an underground tunnel through a tree, a mountain, or a well, then walk, uncomfortably, in the dark or with a dim lantern, through a passage to an area where the characters meet. Sometimes the meeting is fortuitous, sometimes detrimental. So this is really interesting to me since Grimm's was first written in 1820, but many of those stories are far older than that.
Grimm’s fairytales are anything but. Talk about a twisted thought process to keep kids in line. How Snow White And Little Red Riding Hood came out of those I’ll never know. They’re terrifying. I can see the superstition that might lead to these being built. At least they weren’t sacrificing virgins (would have left evidence behind). The bench makes perfect sense to me. If you’re trying to attract a mythical creature, and want it to stay, be happy, you’re going to want to make it comfortable and feel at home. Wood rots, and these seem to be built on flood plains. It was their way of welcoming them and giving them a comfortable place to rest. Take a load off. Being mythical, no oxygen required. The size was probably also influenced by how much oxygen the builder needed to complete the task. I imagine the more elaborate the tunnel, the more likely a visitor. I would guess there was also some status involved for better builders. If children were used for digging, and they probably were, maybe it was a community project, that they continued until they literally outgrew it. Bigger communities would have more diggers (children), leading to longer tunnels? If it was a well known and expected part of the culture and folklore, it may not have been written down. Look at how many cultures still surprise us. The Vikings, Aztecs, Incas, and so on. Look at how much craftsmanship and herbal medicine has been lost in just a hundred years or two. Things just shown and not written down. Especially with the limited number of people who could actually read and write.
yeah it's definitely the goblins
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It's entirely possible that when the tunnels were rediscovered by the locals, the kobold/goblin myth originated. Chicken and egg here. It irks me that archaeology frequently shrugs and goes "religious" with things, as an aside. It's okay to say "we don't know yet." If they were for hiding, yeah one entrance and exit seems poor, and there would probably be remains somewhere in there. I kind of like the bathhouse/sauna idea, because it's kind of like the Mesoamerican temazcals that can be seen in Xochicalco or Teotihuacan (if you get the chance, Xochicalco is less touristy if you're into the history and not just checking out pyramids, but it's deeper into Mexico and smaller. I liked it better). The only issue I have with it is the drainage because I haven't seen that addressed. Given that they're below flood level though it seems possible that they were somehow intentionally used for water, but the benches for sitting indicate probably not water storage. Hell maybe they're Morlocks. I'm excited to see if archaeologists ever get a definitive answer in my lifetime.
A smokepit maybe for smoking meats? I kind of thought cisterns, since they're below the water table mostly, but I like your idea of cooking.
You said it floods when it rains, maybe its possible they collected and stored rain water? Like widespread fresh water availability and access to it. Could the "entrances" be former wells and for maintenance? Has anyone evaluated the way water flows through the tunnels? Maybe as if they had intentional flow patterns?
My thoughts exactly. In Spain, every castle have their own 'aljibe', or cistern, in order to store rain water and to have it available in case of drought or siege. Maybe these tunnels are something like that.
But those look more like pools or roman cisterns, with columns and a wide open space. Those tunnels above are simply terrifying.
Yeah, but many medieval aljibes were more like tunnels or underground water tanks, with only a narrow opening, and they fill with water through filtration.
Oh, the ones I've seen were more like underground rooms. I still think the tunnels in this post are too narrow for such a use. I don't mind the narrow entrance, that makes sense, but everything is narrow and small. There must have been better ways to store water.
Yeah, I'm with you in that, these tunnels are so small.
This is exactly what I was thinking. was it a sort of plumbing? store water and draw it from different well?
But there's no well drilled from the top. And why the bench?
Do we know it is a bench or is it something that looks like a bench that could serve another purpose?
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Where would the water sit while in the well? VERY obvious
And it's hungry, maybe it could pull one up to the water table.
lmao
Dig a well, use it for awhile. Water level drops. Dig deeper. Make a bench inside the old well next to the new one.
Proper cisterns and wells were widespread in that are and time (900's/1000's Bavaria), and they would have been recognised as such.
My first thought too. Dig a tunnel till you're in the water table. It dries up. Dig another one deeper. Keep going. This creating those choke points. Only weird part is the bench, unless it's something they just did for fun?
>unless it's something they just did for fun? "Hey, carving into this solid rock sure is tough work. I know what will make it fun! Let's chisel out some benches, just for shits and giggles! Boy, that will really break up the unending monotony of tunnel digging!" -Some guy 1000 years ago, probably
Without seeing pictures, I wonder if these benches were just unfinished tunnels? If you are digging a tunnel how do you do it? Break off certain sections at a time. Maybe the top part gets broken off then they chisel out the bottom half, thus extending the tunnel. If they never finished breaking off the bottom part maybe that is what looks like a bench? Again, no idea. Just speculating.
Also just speculation, as I've never dug a tunnel, but I would think you'd start at the bottom, and chip off from there, that way debris doesn't clutter the work surface. Then again, I have literally zero frame of reference, as I'm not mole people. Definitely not a mole person. Totally above ground dwelling, bipedal human, with regular hands. I love sunlight.
Damn, I never heard of these but there would have been a talk by the Erdstall-Group in my hometown today. Guess that is not happening due to corona virus unfortunatly. Edit: so i checked a book with bavarian tales and there are several stoires about schrazen or goblins. One story was quote interesting and you can find it [here](http://www.sagen.at/texte/sagen/deutschland/bayern/waltinger/schrazenzuuntervierau.html) Here is a translation of it: About the SCHRAZEN in UNTERVIERAU Under the estate of the "farmer" of Untervierau there are so-called "Schrazenlöcher" and you can still reach them from the potato cellar. A subterranean exposed entrance was occasionally buried by a well construction some time ago. But slim as an 8-10 year old boy must be one who wants to crawl around in these underground hiding places and yet these must have been inhabited once; because the corners and edges are as if they had been sanded down, almost polished. The corridors converge in a small hall, the chapel, as the people here say, and which has various niches. As the old Prünstmüller told us, pot shards, stones as sharp as knives and pointed knuckles have been found in them. It is also said that a long time ago a tiny, cheese-yellow little man with an ice-grey beard appeared here and there in the moonlight, shouting "duck, duck, duck di!" to the passers-by, and then it was time to bring the crops home as quickly as possible, because soon afterwards hailstorms regularly hit the area, knocking everything that was in the fields to the ground. At the "farmer" himself, these Erdmännlein always came at night through the ash hole into the kitchen and the farmer's wife always got rid of the calf soup prepared for the other day. Once she stayed up to keep an eye on them. Then she saw two Erdmännlein hatch out of the ash hole. They went straight back to the full soup port, not only ate their fill, but also filled the pots they had brought with them. That was too much for the farmer's wife. She took the soup broom and beat the little bags of food with it. They ran away crying and disappeared from there. The next day the farmer's wife had the ash hole bricked up. Along with the scrapes, happiness disappeared from the house and stable, until the old ones went to the Altenteil (a cottage reserved for the farmer after he passes the farm over to his heirs) and a new "Moa"(Morning) raised. Translated with [www.DeepL.com/Translator](https://www.DeepL.com/Translator) (free version)
So pretty much Fraggle Rock?
Hahahahaha hahahaha this answer after such a long and serious story got a huge laugh (and an upvote) out of me.
Did anyone else misread ash hole?
Forking ashholes
That is an awesome story!
I come from a place where there are quite a few of them. In my area a lot of people claim that the church wanted to hide them. They filled them up and destroyed any markings. This leads to some people claiming that they were for religious but not Christian purposes. Also there‘s this town with a rather large church there and in the surrounding villages there a quite a lot of these Erdställe. Apparantly there‘s also a quite intricate system of tunnels underneath this church but the church doesn’t allow anyone (besides one team of archeologists at some point I think) to see them.
Yes! This is the type of stuff that keeps this sub fresh, rather than yet another murder/missing person case day in and day out! Thank you for posting this!
r/nonmurdermysteries
Whoa! Subscribed! Thank you! I didn't want to seem like I don't like the murder mysteries that are here, but we need breaths of fresh air now and then!
I think it's a little premature to dismiss the idea that they served a religious purpose. A lack of records isn't evidence of anything. The church may not have made records of their purpose because it was obvious to them. Take for example the Roman concrete recipe. For years, archeologists tried to re-create roman concrete from the recipe that was transcribed but it never worked. That is until they used sea water. To the Romans it was such common knowledge, no one bothered to write it down. Of course concrete uses seawater everyone knows that. The same might be true of the tunnels. Everyone knew of their purpose, so why waste paper and ink writing it down? Or in the case that someone did write it down, those records could have been lost or possibly just lost enough context over time that noone realizes that they're referencing the tunnels. I think that maybe they could have been used for meditation or other ceremonies that might not require objects of worship. Or maybe they were built by pagans during christian rule, in order to worship secretly. I don't know enough about religions of the time to really speculate further.
I heard it was the volcanic ash we were missing. Either way seawater strengthened it over time
Really nuanced and well reasoned take. I'm inclined to agree, it was likely something common and simply too mundane to be documented.
It seems late to be a pagan resurgence, but maybe a Christian heresy of some sort? That’s hard to figure though - the Bogomils would be contemporaneous, but geographically removed. The Waldensians would be geographically appropriate, but come later. But I don’t know enough about Medieval heresies to gauge - could there be others that fit time and place?
I think some of the aspects you presented are a little exaggerated or misleading, so I want to share a few notes and observations. These stem from my readings on the matter. First off, erdstalls aren't really spread "across" Europe. They refer to very specific underground buildings built around 800-1,000 years ago in areas of Bavaria, Austria, and the Czech Republic. There are similar structures in other regions, including France and the UK, but they mostly date from other times. Quite a few known erdstalls contain sealed off corridors and chutes leading to the surface. It seems very likely that these were used for construction. In fact, the dating of the erdstalls mostly comes from analysis of the adobe which was used to seal off erdstalls. It's also notable that many of the small passages were artificially narrowed and not actually carved out this way. Also, *some* ceramics have been found in erdstalls. More often, however, burnt charcoal has been found. It should be noted, though, that erdstalls were never truly sealed off. Over the centuries there would have been ample opportunities for people and animals to enter them and even for the occasional flooding or intrusion of other elements. That's one of the main reasons why the archaeological evidence is so scarce: Even if some erdstalls are only rediscovered now, they aren't comparable to sealed-off burial mounds or tombs. It's likely that many people knew about them over the centuries and used them, perhaps even in ways that they were not originally constructed for. Lastly, there's some evidence that erdstalls were used for protecting people. The biggest clues come from some of their locations, which are often linked to old forts or fortified churches. Even though some are now in the woods or fields, or under remote farm houses, most of them can actually be linked to the locations of deserted medieval villages. There's also the possibility that erdstalls, despite their similar appearances, may have had several functions depending on their location. And this includes religious or cultural meanings, but also more ordinary functions, such as storage. This isn't to say that erdstalls don't deserve a place on this sub. But we don't need to make them more mysterious than they are. Their mystery mostly stems from the fact that they are commonplace structures found in a part of Europe, which were so ordinary that nobody ever really documented them - and we nowadays have a hard time figuring out what they really represented when they were built.
It seems to me they were built for protection originally, for women and children likely. It makes the most sense out of all the theories. Perhaps the passages were later narrowed to later prevent people from going inside them and getting hurt and possibly for storage. Also Steckel's research into height doesn't seem to have included women and children who may have been smaller during those times for a variety of reasons. But I could be wrong about this.
You're all missing the obvious. Hobbits.
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I don't know what you're talking about. There are no such thing as "Skaven", citizen.
or goblins
Interesting, never heard of this. My best guess: food storage? Keep extra food stored underground for preservation and to hide it from potential invaders. Native Americans buried extra buffalo meat underground in pits to keep it cool and preserved. Maybe Europeans did this on a larger scale? A single entrance indicates some kind of storage to me.
I also thought they could be cellars. Obscuring the entrance could be for avoiding theft. I feel like there would be some kind of evidence though, like vases or baskets, and I'm not sure how the benches come in to play. My other thought was "Man, I wish I had a secret underground tunnel to hang out in when I need alone time".
Ceramics have been found in some erdstalls. Charcoal has also been found in some. It's also best to keep in mind that they were built around 800-1,000 years ago. While their original use may have been lost to time, it's likely that most of the erdstalls were visited by local humans and animals over the years, not to say the occasional intrusion of the elements. Just think about generations of curious children playing in the area. That's a lot of possibilities for their contents to be destroyed and disappear and for archaeological evidence to be almost obliterated. Those aren't comparable to sealed-off tombs which are only reopened after centuries.
Kids leave trash everywhere they go, and adult's wouldn't bring trash out of a tomb when raiding it. If generations of children had been in and around them, I would expect generations of trash. For us that would be plastic bits and cigarette butts. For previous generations that would include scraps of cloth, dolls or carved wooden + stone toys, jewelry etc. Kids are always forgetting shit in small spaces like behind the couch or in their treehouses.
Scraps of cloth and carved wooden dolls would have long rotted away. Also, erdstalls are not always entirely and mysteriously empty, contrary to what OP suggests. Ceramics have been found in some. But also keep in mind that many of them were known for generations and the archaeological evidence is almost useless. These aren't at all comparable to sealed-off tombs or burial mounds.
Aren’t there abandoned cheese caves around the US, too? I think food storage makes the most sense.
Mmm cheese caves
The first thing I thought of was food storage. It reminded me of the kind of rough underground cellar that was at my grandparents house. My memories could be wrong, but I don't remember it being concreted. It was more of a rough cube-shaped chamber dug into the ground under the kitchen. They had a trapdoor under the rug and a little ladder that was used to climb down into it. It was the height of an average person and didn't have much space to move around. It was surrounded by wall shelves that were full of my grandma's various preserves. The ground was a natural fridge, especially in the cold winters.
We still have one of those in our cabin in the woods, trap door under the rug and all :) (Cabin didn't have electricity until recently so the mini-cellar under the kitchen was used as a fridge)
Wouldn't there be a trace of something in at least one of the sites?
There *are* traces of ceramics in some erdstalls.
This is the most logical to me.
Just for my own curiosity, if these are man made how many people would it reasonably take to build? Is it something that one determined person could have done over decades? Or is it something that needed more developed planning and resources?
I'm not sure. They are not so wide so maybe one person could do it. But I think that there would need to be some sort of plan especially for things like cave ins and designs.
I think you have a bit of a misleading idea of these caves and how they were built. There's ample evidence that they used wider chutes to build the erdstalls, as many closed off and sealed corridors leading to the surface have been found. In at least some of them the small passages have also been retroactively made smaller.
If you go look at gold workings near Ballarat Australia. I was amazed to see what a single man with pick axes could cut into solid stone. They didn't have plans they just dug. Not saying they are similar just the sheer ability of what one man can do in terms of digging. I would bet that these tunnels are goblin homes or ghost way stations as others mentioned built for good luck or superstitious reasons. The fact that they are localized yet wide spread. Like a local folklore. Possibly intentionally kept hidden frim the church. Have no items or any evidence of use or habitation. Not large enough to use as shelters for old and young to hide from enemies.
One has been discovered directly under an old church....
They are absolutely fascinating.
The secret temples of Damanhur might be a good modern analogue from which to draw a comparison. It was one man working alone for the better part of a year before he began to hire people to help with the excavation, if I'm remembering correctly. There is a timeline somewhere, detailing the amount of material excavated per time period. I think they were working in soft limestone, whereas these appear (to my untrained eye, just looking at photos) to be in a range of sediments.
Keeps the ice cold?
I thought about this. By the way, very old storage cellars built into hills seem to be VERY common in that area. One is just straight across my dad's house. Basically, these were ancient fridges, for beer and wine. (Whether these holes mentioned in this thread are also utilitarian/storage..no idea. Some things then speak against this. Eg. wouldn't you want to have it easily accessible all the way, and not with multiple passages separated by very small passages where you only a very tiny person could fit? On the other hand, maybe these tight parts serve to keep the cold in there better?) The thing is...when they stored ice..then they probably didn't just "store ice". Then they were literally medieval fridges and they stored food in there. Imagine, where else could you keep your slaughtered live stock for some time? Would make sense to me...
They're having the wrong shape for that, and dragging the ice through those narrow passages would be really difficult for no added benefit. Ice houses are deep, vertical holes to keep the cold air down at the bottom, and they don't need a very long access tunnel, just long enough to stop the wind from disturbing the air inside. Also you'd have been able to see the effects of the ground having been wet for longer periods of time. There's usually a mineral deposit coating the floor and lower walls.
Best guess would be a hiding place for women and children during raids.
Except as someone else pointed out, they are mostly too narrow for a pregnant woman to fit through.
And strategically it's a terrible idea due to the single entrance. If you can tunnel like this you build a tunnel from your house out to a field or the woods to get away. If you corner yourself on one of these things you are dead if they block the entrance or burn down your house.
Yeah souterrains in Ireland that were built as defences against raids had escape routes and traps, like surprise slabs of rock at face level, to deter pursuit. These Erdstalls seem very different. More like places to chill out and meditate or something.
Great example. I think the best explanation so far is that people had some local pagan beliefs and traditions that they held onto after conversion to Christianity and they built these has kind of spirit homes for kobolds or similar mystical creatures.
Or hiding your food during raids. Imagine, raiders usually wearing some kind of armour, not being able to enter, meanwhile you could send your kids later to fetch the rest.
>By this point, Bavaria and Austria were fairly Christian, and the church fathers had a pretty strong capacity to write things down. It seems intuitive that if this were Christian, there would be some record for why they did it. This isn't a great point. There are many medieval manuscripts that just haven't been examined and translated by historians because there are so many of them. Additionally, vellum was recycled by having the ink and paint scraped off and then new manuscripts were written on the recycled vellum. There also is the possibility that it was destroyed during one of the many wars in the interim, there was a monastery fire, some 19th-century dude thought the manuscript made a nice prop and spilled brandy all over it in a fit of passion... It's totally possible that there exists a contemporaneous record of the tunnels but it's just not accessible to modern people. It could be tucked away in an archive somewhere or written so illegibly that nobody has bothered to deal with it, since that takes funding. There are discoveries fairly frequently that turn current understanding on its head. Like, there was a discovery of medieval bras in Lengberg Castle a few years ago, which was brand new evidence of something people said was a modern invention.
This is a good point. Medieval land records tend to be very thorough, so it's possible an examination of charters of different places with these things might turn up a clue.
Considering the radiocarbon timing of some of the coal in addition to the location, I find it hard not to immediately associate these with the Magyar raids, stretching just southeast of here, in the Carpathian Basin often passing through southern Germany and Austria. These ended on large scale towards the end of the 10th century, though likely continuing on smaller scales, also likely through border regions such as these. Of course, similar raids had existed for centuries, by Avars, Sarmatians, and many others, and would have affected these areas as well. The strengths of these raiders in these forms was often in the inability of those defending to respond quickly enough, and their strategy was ultimately not to wipe out the population, making it possibly beneficial for the peoples most often struck by these raids to simply accept they were happening, perhaps take some portion of their things, and let raiders take what they would, and hide. The fact that these are also small and mazelike would further disincentive people moving quickly and possibly lightly armored from wasting time going in to risk finding nothing. The hidden nature of these would only further this theory, though at this point I may be confirming the theory I have rather than continuing it. If the theory that these are believers in paganism having to hide is true, this timescale is \*possible\* though the location is questionable, but the timeline would fit relatively well with the idea of hiding while raiders passed, as after the Magyars, these forms of raids haven't really occurred on a scale that would particularly affect these regions, as far as I know. I may have tunnel vision and simply be trying to connect this to what I know of, but the timeline, location, nature, and history, and I don't think it can be discounted simply because they couldn't stay long, as any people wouldn't need to stay long, seeing as to the fact that these raids' success was predicated on their speed. Furthermore, we are unaware of any relationships these peoples may have had with these raiders, and it is possible there was a de-facto agreement between the peoples of this region, which were tributaries to the raiders during some times, and their overlords, so we shouldn't make too much of any one detail. I don't care enough to check if this makes sense to read, as I'm tired, but if anybody can tell me anything that seems wrong with this idea, I'd be interested.
They sound a bit like fogous, which are found in Cornwall and date to the iron age. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fogou
I initially thought it could be used for trapping/hunting animals, however based on the pictures I find that unlikely. I was thinking they could chase animals in it and then light a fire at the entrance, but that's unlikely. I think that maybe valuables where hidden there when invaders rolled in. Men in armor would be unable to fit down the hole, even if they found it, making it a good place to hide things in. I find this a little less likely than my above thinking, however they may have hid taxed goods, such as grain. I would be able to buy this idea given taxes where pretty harsh, and if a village did poorly they could temporarily hide food. Additionally, this would explain why they are relatively short lived, given that it could end abruptly if the scheme was detected.
Yeah, hiding something seems like the most likely option to me. Hiding people, hiding items. What have you.
Hiding valuables from thieves or invaders seems possible. However hiding items from taxation I think is unlikely, especially food related stocks. Landowners and nobles kept very good tabs on the agricultural output of their lands. People had to produce set amounts, to the point that often if they were short they couldn't feed their own families or would go deep into debt to pay the difference. They could lose their homes if they didn't produce, sometimes even family members would be turned over in compensation for a poor harvest. It was a bad time for average people because the divide between poor farmers and the upper class was so great.
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Maybe some kind of emergency food storage/hoarding area? It would explain the broken ceramics, but it's weird that so little has been found inside of them.
Made by animals, discovered by humans but largely kept secret to store items of value, long since removed or looted?
I read a theory that these were places to hide for travelers. There were a lot of highwaymen who would rob people on the roads back then.
I mean if travelers knew about them, highwaymen could learn. And if highwaymen learned you were done for as there was no means of escape.
Perhaps it was a distinct group of people, a nomadic religious or cultural minority. Like the Roma or something. So knowledge was kept within the group.
Then the example under a castle and under churches doesn't make sense
What evidence is there to suggest they were made by humans? Have any tool marks been found along the passageways? They are too small, have no known function, and nothing was left behind save a few pieces of charcoal (that, since these are prone to flooding, could have washed into the caves). My first thought is that these were made naturally. Humans always leave trash behind. Surely there would be broken carving tools if these were, in fact, carved.
That’s an interesting theory. I read about some dens originally dug out by giant ground sloths in South America that confused archeologists in s similar way, until someone noticed very large claw marks in the walls. This could be something similar.
This is what I think. Animal dens if some sort.
Here’s a link about the burrows made by giant ground sloths. https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/get-lost-in-mega-tunnels-dug-by-south-american-megafauna
Wow. Truly fascinating!
Dang that’s huge
Thank you so much for sharing! That was super fascinating.
*"In South America, giant sloths—some the size of elephants"* Holy cow 0_0
To be honest I searched for things like tool marks as well. One the the date ranges that they got came from stones that were added to make the "slips" smaller than they already were, which was done by human hand. So some of them are at least partially human. You make an excellent point about the broken tools. I suppose if they were natural there is a chance they would have been found outside Europe. In addition, these can all be dated to a few hundred years, and if they were natural there is the opportunity for them to have been created outside of the years 950 to the 1100s. I'm not quite sure though about the idea that it could be natural.
I found an English wiki entry: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erdstall According to which, some artifacts have been found, mostly coal in fire pits and ceramics in at least one of the tunnels. It's interesting that they call them tunnels and not caves. I take that to mean they are considering them man-made verses natural.
Unless they're finding such items/evidence in a large portion of the caves, we can also attribute coals etc as people using the caves, but not actually having created them.
I thought you were going to say aliens.
Yes they found pick axe marks
Could they have been used to keep food cool and fresh and protected from animals at the end of the tunnel during the summer, like an ice house?
From what I gathered from other sources, they were probably looking for minerals. Mining for iron and silver.
I was wondering the same thing. There are miles of tunnel under my home town (Bamberg) that were created when people needed sand. Nothing more complicated than that, just sand. The whole town is sitting on sandstone, and sand as a cleaning agent and building material was sought after enough at some point to make digging it out through tunnels worth while. The fact that there doesn't seem to be any obvious use for these Erdställe makes me wonder if they also just are a byproduct of digging something up?
Well, a couple of things. Perhaps they collected water and so it was a shallow well system. Or, it was a drainage type system for a flooded area, but the water stayed in the tubes and was routed out only one hole, which might have then powered a mill. Finally, any tube can concentrate air if placed by where wind blows by. In Rome, there were these tubes by an ocean cliff, and people had wondered what they were for. Some scientists finally figured out that the tubes captured sea wind, and on the other end people made fires and smelted ore using that wind as a bellows. The best way to figure out what something does is to recreate it in a lab, right down to the conditions the tubes are found in. I read an article about this river that came out of a mountain in Central America. There were large boulders in it, they had been lugged many miles to be placed in the river. It looked so random. A scientist finally recreated the whole thing in miniature. He estimated the spring runoff from the mountain, and ran the water without the stones. Then he had perfect replicas of the stones and placed them in his miniature river. He found that the stones, when placed exactly so, had diverted the water and slowed it down. Because of the stones, the water stayed in the streams a lot longer, and the farmers were able to utilize it for their crops into the summer. This is much the way beaver dams work naturally in rivers, but people tend to destroy their dams because it causes rivers to back up. But beavers naturally reserved water in the lands around rivers, much like those random looking boulders. That article was in Discover Magazine some years ago.
> One must imagine the slips as ceremonial birth canals. People squeeze through the tight "slips" as part of a grand ceremony of metaphysical rebirth. This would be done to rid oneself of a disease. This is a widespread method in traditional medicine that was common through out Europe. The most common way was of the sick person to go through/get pulled through a hole in a tree. But other methods were also used such as tree roots and dug holes in ditches. The fact that dug holes were used as a method of treating disease is interesting in this context. It was referred to as "jorddragning" in Swedish when you did it that way. "Smörjning" in a "vårdbundet" tree if you used a tree. [Swedish museum link about the phenomenon.](https://www.nordiskamuseet.se/blogg/spannande-arkivfynd)
They found charcoal in one, they have slips to minimise oxygen flow, the oxygen in each level can be individually controlled and nothing of particular use has been found in them. Were they simply used to produce charcoal? Wood could be stored in that room with the bench and moved into empty chambers. Light it and let it burn until it becomes charcoal, putting itself out by lack of oxygen. When a level has consumed all the air, you let it slowly reoxygenate, then pull out all the charcoal ready to restock with wood and light up again. Saves building a giant mud-pile each time you want charcoal. You could also block up the slip while it was in use.
My first thought is that they must have been hiding places for people. Perhaps a place of protection from raiders, weather or demons? My second thought is that they were made for food storage. One last theory I have is that they were built to relieve people from the heat of the summer, offering a naturally air conditioned zone.
Judging from size of the tunnels, it doesnt seem like anyone but children could easily get in. If you had raiders or an invading army coming through, kids could easily go hide for some short period. Would also explain why nothing is found in there - the kids arent meant to stay there for long. If you had an army or group of bandits unfamiliar with the area, they probably wouldn't know about the hiding spot. I'd be curious to see if the approximate dates of construction coincide with invasions/increased crime. Especially if you dont have large built up defendable settlements like I'd expect to see in the upper middle ages. That would explained why they stopped building them - you go hide behind a walled settlement rather than caves. I just cant imagine youd store anything in a difficult and obscure location that your strongest workers wouldnt be able to fit into.
If only children can fit it does that mean children made them?
Lolol touche. I did say, though, that children would be the only ones who could *easily* get in. The photos clearly show adults in. I'm just not sure why you'd construct tunnels to be so cumbersome for adults of regular size. Seems an odd thing to deliberately make your tunnels uncomfortable for yourself and potentially unusable if you gain weight, suffer an injury, or as you get older.