Did shepherds actually drive their herds from Lower Valais to the Bernese Oberland and graze their sheep there around 5,000 BC? Many factors indicate that this theory, which would have just been dismissed as speculation until recently, reflects reality. “We have strong indications that argue that people were on the move in the mountains with their animals much earlier than previously assumed”, says Albert Hafner, Professor of Prehistoric Archaeology at University of Bern.
Albert Hafner and Christoph Schwörer, environmental scientist and specialist in vegetation history at the Institute of Plant Sciences at University of Bern, have just provided the chain of evidence that supports this assumption in an article in the “Quaternary International” specialist journal. Both scientists are members of the Oeschger Centre. “The combination of two approaches”, explains Albert Hafner, “allowed us to collect better data and also interpret it with a new perspective. Neither archaeology nor palaeoecology would have come to these new findings on their own.”
According to the study, this is how we have to imagine early alpine farming between Valais and the Bernese Oberland: the region around today’s Sitten was populated by people who ran arable and cattle farming around 5,000 BC. They kept sheep and goats, among others. However, the steep and dry slopes in Lower Valais did not produce much feed, which is why the shepherds undertook a two-day hike as far as the Bernese Oberland where they found good grazing opportunities below the Schnidejoch Pass situated at 2,756 metres above sea level. This nomadic pasture farming was only possible as the glaciers drastically retreated during the so-called Holocene Climatic Optimum. The Schnidejoch did not have any ice for several centuries.