A real chance discovery: in the late 1960s, a pilot spotted the Jülich-Stetternich earthwork during a flight. He saw two massive, parallel dark stripes in the farmland, stretching over a length of several hundred metres and interrupted in some places. Through targeted flyovers, systematic field surveys and geophysical measurements, experts researched the relic from the Neolithic period.
Long before systematic road construction, a network of paths developed that was oriented towards the natural landscape and was partly incorporated into Roman road construction. In the Jülich area, there is a striking concentration of three earthworks from the Michelsberg culture, which are located at intervals of five kilometres along what later became the Via Belgica. The largest and youngest of these structures (around 3500–3000 BC), with a diameter of about one kilometre, is located on the section between Stetternich and Jülich.
An earthwork is an area enclosed by ditches – often also by ramparts and palisades. The interruptions in the ditches are earth bridges, i.e. gateways through which one could enter the interior of the structure. The ditches were up to ten metres wide, with a distance of about 15 metres between them. The oval area – comprising the ditches and the interior – covered a total of around 36 hectares.
However, the function of the Michelsberg earthworks is still unknown. It is believed that they served as a marketplace and meeting place, refuge or cattle pasture for the surrounding settlements. By the time the Via Belgica was built in Roman times, nothing remained of the Stetternich earthworks; until that momentous flight in the 1960s...
