Will Discovery of Ancient Tombs in Poland Halt a Proposed Coal Mine?

Locals opposing a new coal mine in Wielkopolska, central Poland, got help from an unexpected source: their ancestors. Burial mounds more than five thousand years old belonging to the Funnelbeaker culture, which used to inhabit lands from the Scandinavian peninsula to the Vistula river, were discovered in the area of the mine.

Polish archaeologists had thought that the ancient tombs had been destroyed by agriculture, which has taken place intensively in Wielkopolska for generations. And, to the untrained eye, they are easy to miss: nothing but long, narrow earthen hills covered by vegetation. But the 15 burial mounds, 100-meters long, were saved by their location, a forested area.

Over the centuries, they only lost the stone weirs surrounding them – the stone was likely collected and used for construction. Otherwise intact, they tell the extraordinary story of the culture which buried its dead within them.