THE RIVER
By The Civic Museums of Pitigliano with the cooperation of EURO INNOVANET srl

Pindar, the great Greek poet (first half of the 5th cent. B.C.), sang the water for two times in his poetries, defining it as "the best of the things" that earth gives to humans, for it is lifeblood for all the living beings. Although water covers three quarters of the earth, only the 2,3% of them are usable by human beings and available for drinking, for washing and for the development of the other human activities. Without water, it would not be possible to grow the plants neither the animals could live. Fishing, farming, breeding, would not be possible.
To understand how water is important, just think that two months of drought are enough to damage heavily even the most modern agricultural economies.
In this sense, the genesis of the urban settlements is tightly connected to the water availability of the territory, and it is linked to the presence of a river or of any other kind of watercourse.
Just the watercourses, besides the choice of provisional settlements made of   huts since the most ancient prehistoric epochs, determined the development of the first cities and the first great empires of the Earth. Since prehistory, in fact, people realized the importance of water for their survival and for the existence of life itself.

The earliest, great civilizations arose in Asia and in Africa, where the presence of great rivers allowed the development of agriculture and the growth of the cities. This happened in Mesopotamia, in the regions of the Tigers and Euphrates rivers; in Egypt, along the course of the Nile; in India, in the Indo region; in China, on the banks of the Yellow River, where arose the first sedentary settlements of the great agricultural civilizations.

Egypt, thanks to the annual flooding of the Nile, became the first "barn" of the whole Mediterranean area, so that the famous historian Herodotus defined this country a "gift of the Nile." In the whole world history, rivers have been the engine and, at the same time, the mean for the economic, social and cultural development of humanity.

The attitude of people toward those great rivers consisted, above all, of controlling the watercourses: using the flood waters, holding and, at the same time, avoiding their destructive power. The digging of channels, the construction of banks and basins to contain waters as well as the development of more and more sophisticated procedures for the irrigation, led to the definitive sedentarity of people.

Since prehistory, the watercourses inspired human talent, allowing the most important discoveries: containers for collecting and storing the water, tools for fishing as well as numerous means of transport to cross the waters.

Flask shaped vessel with relief decoration, middle of III Millennium, The Fiora Valley Prehistory and Protohistory Museum

Harpoon, Late Chalcolithic–4200-4100 BC, TheRegional Museum of History, Veliko Turnovo

Harpoon and hook, The Ruse Regional History Museum

Later, it became possible to produce also metal tools:

Hook, bronze, 2000 B.C, TheRegional Museum of History, Veliko Turnovo

Besides being a source of life, of daily subsistence, of innovation and progress, the rivers are for their nature a rapid mean of communication, exchange, contact among different and distant cultural entities, a mean of commerce and of goods’ transport. In the beginning, these activities were carried out only through small means, then they were carried out through the construction of much more complex architectures as the great Roman bridges, whose impressiveness can be admired still today.

The surviving Roman bridge pier over Fiora river, St. Michele locality, datable back to II century b. C.

Thus, water becomes a unifying and conditioner element for the territories that it crosses while flowing from its source to its mouth, but it represents also an important element for the defense and the separation. Rivers divide the lands creating a natural barrier, often strongly diversifying the shape of the territory from a slope to the other, protecting human settlements from the attacks of the enemies.
Due to this creative energy, rivers have been linked in the most ancient mythologies, to the concept of earth fertility, food abundance, and life. According to the Greek mythology, that more than any other has influenced the European roots, rivers originated from the Titans "Ocean", son of Uranus (the Sky), and Gaia (the Earth).
Apart from its power to feed the earth aiding cultivation and to quench people and animals, several characteristics of the water probably brought ancient people to a real water cult: first, its capability to be in movement, making water a numinous force; secondly, its link to deep underground, from which water comes. The emanation of water from the earth must have been linked to ideas about the Otherworld. This idea, as it has been observed by some scholars, is present in Roman mythology, where we can find that Hades, the underworld, can be reached by means of Lake Avernus. Also in the early Irish mythology, we find that the Happy Otherworld could be reached by water.
As a sort of “gateway” between life and death, and between human and supernatural world, it has been since ancient times worshipped.
 Water was contained in ritual vessels and was part of votive offerings in fertility cults, and, also, reached the offerings that, from the Bronze age, were often thrown as sacrifices into springs, wells, and other bodies of water, like the objects below.

Gold Plaques, Germisara, II-III A.D. , The Deva Museum of Dacian and Romanan Civilizations. Found in a River

Child head, Half of III cent. B.C, the Civic Museums of Pitigliano

Votive hand. Hellenistic age, II-I cent. B.C. Saturnia Antiquarium

Votive foot, II-I cent. B.C. Saturnia Antiquarium

Votive offering Hellenistic age, The Fiora Valley Prehistory and Protohistory Museum

Rivers as life-generating strengths, show a masculine character and are represented, usually, with a flowing beard. In different personifications, for instance the one of  the Greek river Acheloo, today known as Aspropotamo, the river is supplied with horns: both the beard and the horns are, in fact, symbols of vigor and vital strength. This aspect is even more evident for the Scamandro river, which flows in the neighborhood of Troia.
The unmarried Trojan women used to enter the waters of the river begging the divinity to take their virginity as a gift. Likewise, in the puberty the young men used to offer to rivers their hair so as to acquire vigor. According to the author of the Dreams interpretation, the Greek writer Artemidorus (2nd cent.), dreaming a river meant to have a prosperous crop.
The great respect that in ancient times was reserved to this element, so important for the whole Earth’ life, is still attested and testified by the fact that the most sacred oaths were enacted by invoking the river divinities and, according to what Hesiod tells (8th-7th cent. B.C.), before crossing a river it was necessary to pray and to wash the hands.

The water of the river purifies, therefore it has also a strong sacred value, just think that Jesus himself was baptized (which means immersed in the water) in the Jordan River by Giovanni Battista.
Mention has been done, previously, to the importance that river have had in the history of the people, just remember the stories of the Nile.
In the ancient Italian history, two have been the rivers that played an important role for the development of the civilization, not only for the Italian peninsula, but also for the whole basin of the Mediterranean sea: the river Tevere, along whose banks the Roman civilization arose,  and the Fiora river, that flows in the heart of the ancient Etruria gushing out from the peak of the Amiata Mountain, in Tuscany, and that throws itself in the Tyrrhenian sea, not far away from the remains of Vulci, the powerful Etruscan city.
By the archaeological point of view and for what concerns the continuity of the historical testimonies, the area crossed by the Fiora river, located between the actual administrative regions of  Tuscany and Lazio, can be regarded as the most important Italian archaeological site. If the testimonies that can be referred to the most ancient history of man seem to be more sporadic,  because of the geological events which caused eruptions up to around 20.000 years ago beginning from the late Neolithic Age (around 6000 years ago), life continued without interruptions until today.
Remarkable is the strategic importance of the region for what concerns the  exchanges that connected the central Tyrrenic area to the northern Italy and, through this, to the trans-Apennine region and to the eastern Europe.

With the ancient Bronze Age (24th -18th cent.) the metallurgical production of the region, rich of metal resources, was largely developed, as attested by the numerous bronze deposits recovered in the region, partly exhibited in the Prehistory and Protohistory Museum of Manciano.

Again in the Museum of Manciano are exhibited some of the most important testimonies of the inhabited area of Scarceta, dating back to the Recent Bronze Age (14th – 13th cent.), while in the Museum of Farnese are viewable items coming from another important settlement, Sorgenti della Nova, whose chronology includes the next Age of the Final Bronze (12th – 10th cent. B.C.).

Starting from the 8th century, the whole region saw the blooming of the Etruscan Civilization: the centers of Pitigliano and Poggio Buco, the latter directly founded upon the right bank of the Fiora river, are both of particular importance, being placed in the area under the control of Vulci.
Different historical events brought Poggio Buco to definitely disappear from the history at the end of the 6th cent. B.C., while in Pitigliano, after a period of darkening of about two centuries, from the 5th to the 4th cent., a new cycle of development took place; it led gradually to the disappearance of the Etruscan supremacy in the region due to the Romans; later, under the Roman dominion and, after this, in the Middle Ages.