Ancient Elites Created Hundreds of Artificial Islands to Throw Elaborate Parties, Says Study

People build lavish mansions or buy properties to display their status symbol and wealth. It turns out, that things weren't much different in ancient times either as the rich and influential used to party hard on artificial islands known as crannogs, according to the Cambridge University Press. Traces of those islands were found amongst the British Isles and a fairly recent study deduced how the artificial islands were built within lakes, wetlands, or estuaries, per Antiquity. The crannogs were spread throughout Ireland, Wales, and Scotland, dating back from 4000 B.C.E. to 16th-century C.E.

Some of these artificial islands were older than Stonehenge and were created by humans using natural materials like stone, timber, and peat over shallow reefs and elevated portions of lakebeds, stated Live Science. The crannogs had a diameter of roughly 100 feet. The lakes and estuaries happened to be popular hangout spots for traders and relayed important communications between people from different facets of life. During the Iron Age, the crannogs were used as farmsteads but it was eventually transformed into a gathering spot for the wealthy. The lead author of the study, Antony Brown, and his team from the UiT Arctic University of Norway conducted tests on DNA samples derived from sediments found in the crannogs.

"Focusing more specifically on crannogs, the frequent identification of 'high-status' activities and goods on some of these sites not only supports their role as places for the protective custody of valuable resources but also suggests a degree of social exclusion combined with the display of power and wealth," the study revealed. The team also found evidence of cereal on the islands as well as a toxic fern named bracken that was possibly used as bedding or roofing material. DNA fragments belonging to cows, sheep, and goats were also discovered on the spot, suggesting that people kept the animals on the crannogs to use them for food during festivities.

The celebrations on the islands also led to the accumulation of waste and pollution around the area. Brown and his team dug up sediments from the lakes which were enriched with phosphorous and nitrogen, indicating that the surrounding water bodies were polluted with animal and human waste. "Inferring specific activities such as feasting is always difficult, but in combination, these methods seem to draw quite a conclusive picture," Simon Hammann, a food chemist at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg in Germany, told Live Science in an email. "Given how little we still really know about crannogs and the human activities surrounding them, the methods and results described here are very interesting."

A 2019 study also hinted at the existence of 600 crannogs in Scotland which were from the Neolithic era and were nearly 3,000 years older than what the experts initially believed it to be. "This was an amazing and startling realization in and of itself," a report on National Geographic read. "It also indicated behaviors exhibited by prehistoric humans that had previously been unsuspected. At the time, researchers examining the sites were also baffled when they found 6,000-year-old pottery that had seemingly been tossed into the water near the crannogs, leading to many questions about why the crannogs were built and how they were used."