A few miles east of Girne, in northern Cyprus, by the sea, is the Neolithic site of Vrysi. Archaeologists have examined a small part of the site and have left some of the house’s walls exposed. The sea has undermined the promontory on which the town was located, and the entire area will fall into the sea shortly. Visitors can look at the site and walk around its edges, but cannot enter, so as not to disturb this fragile place. If you’ve seen the artifacts from the site in the museum at Girne Castle, you can imagine them in use, here where they were found. Your guide is a woman who lived here and raised her family about seven thousand years ago, when the town was very old.
“Welcome to our town, strangers. Look, but don’t knock. My people have lived here for over a thousand years, and our honored dead are buried under these stones.
“Imagine this place echoing with the laughter of children, busy with the sounds we made grinding grain, chipping stone tools, chopping wood. We were a happy people, able to raise or find much food, and able to store it against drought.” years and bad harvests.
“Although we lived by the sea, we did not fish much. We had our goats, sheep and pigs, and the men hunted in the great forests. The trees provided us with carob trees, figs, lemons and olives. We raised wheat and barley, lentils, even grapes for wine… We could have dogs and cats as pets, because we always had enough to eat.
“We used stone sickles, axes, knives, spindle weights and chisels. We carved bone hooks and needles.
“You can see only six of our houses in North Cyprus. We had about twenty houses in my time. They were grouped in groups because several extended families lived in our village. We stayed here all year round, generation after generation. Before our ancestors learned to farm, only small groups of people could stay together all year long.In those ancient times, people would gather for festivals and arrange marriages, then spread out to harvest what the wild world provided.The end of winter and spring was always a time of famine, when grandparents died and too often little children died too.
“In those days before agriculture, it was difficult to preserve food for the winter. Our ancestors dug pits in the ground and covered them with fur, but mice and other vermin always found their way into the hiding place. Of course, the People have known that some types of clay harden in fire ever since the first child tried to bake a clay cake. Pottery simply wasn’t useful to our wandering ancestors: it was too heavy and too prone to breaking. But we farmed, we lived a sedentary life and made pots We could safely store food We didn’t have time to go hungry.
“We used to live here by the sea, but the spring from which we draw water is quite far away. Without pots, we would have to carry the water little by little in leather bags. Have you ever tasted water from a leather bag after a day in the hot sun Ah, then you can appreciate a ceramic water jug.
“You can see how important pottery was to us from this fact: the archaeologists who excavated here found sixty-two thousand pottery shards and only one thousand other artifacts of all kinds.
“We made pottery ourselves, each family had their own designs. You can see the grace and boldness of those designs in the museum. Our pottery was white and we painted it dark red or brown. We didn’t have a potter’s wheel, but the shape each piece by hand and baked in small ovens.
“Our pottery designs came with our ancestors when they set out from Mersin in Turkey to make a brave journey across the sea to Northern Cyprus. They were afraid at first, those pioneers. Their houses were half underground, and they built a ditch as a defense against attacks on this precious property, but, little by little, we learned that we had nothing to fear.
“Our ancestors here on Vrysi lived in flimsy houses when they first arrived. But ours, as you can see, were solidly built. We had paved paths between our houses so that too much mud wouldn’t accumulate.
“We liked rectangular houses, but sometimes the lay of the land forced an irregular shape. We rounded the corners so they were easy to keep clean, and we had beautiful clay-plastered walls. We covered our floors with woven mats. Wooden pillars held up our high thatched roofs.
“We built stone benches along the walls of our houses and had storage containers made of stone slabs. A large fireplace was the center of each house. At night, our one-bedroom houses were cozy with sunlight. fire and with the glow of burning oil, in stone lamps, we made small stone figurines that were honored in our homes, but that is a religious matter, which we do not discuss with strangers.
“My people lived here for over a hundred generations, until an earthquake made the place unsafe and we moved. For five thousand years since then, the sea has undermined our promontory. In the not-too-distant future, the sea will take it away.” will swallow.” all the town. Then all that will be left to remember our lives will be the pottery shards, bone needles and stone spindles in the Girne museum in North Cyprus.”