Paleolithic
Around 25.000 years ago palaeolithic hunters lived in the area of Stillfried. In a grassland with some trees and bushes they hunted mammoth, woolly rhino, wild horses, reindeer, arctic fox and arctic hare. Up to now traces of their camps have been found in various places. Archaeologists excavated a flintknappers workshop from the ice age loess beneath the rampart of the Bronze Age fortification. Apart from numerous stone points they found an antler of a reindeer with a half finished stone point still sticking within the antler. During earth works for the construction of a gas pipeline at the Heidenberg near Ollersdorf a couple of fire places with stone tools and bone debris had been cut through.
However the richest site so far is the Palaeolithic camp site of Grub/Kranawetberg. During recent excavations two fire places, traces of the construction of a tent and thousands of stone tools and debris have been unearthed. People living there used shells of snails and molluscs as ornaments. As yet 140 beads and pendants made of ivory are just part of an unparalleled ongoing find among ornaments from Austrian Palaeolithic sites.
Neolithic
Fertile soils, a favourable climate and the situation near the river March being useful for the exploration of new land as well as for the water supply of the settlers were an important precondition for the development of early Neolithic settlements. First settlements near the river March date back to the 6th millennium B.C..
In the painted pottery period in the middle of the 5th millennium B.C. settlements in the area of the so called Buhuberg in the north of Grub and the Rochusberg between Mannersdorf and Stillfried were established. People also used places near the river slightly above the inundation level. Typical bowls and potsherds of the so called Baden culture of the 4th millennium B. C. were found not far from the church of Stillfried.
A copper axe from Zwerndorf shows that people were familiar with the use of metal objects as early as the 4th millennium B. C. A grave from the same period found in Grub is one out of only a few incinerations from the Baden culture. We also know settlements near the river in the Area of Grub and Mannersdorf, which were used at the end of the Neolithic. Corded ware and bellbeakers mark the very end of the Neolithic in our region around 2200 B. C.
