The history of the thermalism, with the increasing of knowledge related to the therapeutic properties of mineral waters and their employment along the centuries, cannot ignore the peculiar relationships that man has had with water, and to investigate, particularly, the motivations of the phenomenon for which people, for a long time, has sought the health and the comfort in this element. Still today, it is not possible, also in the use of thermal waters, to distinguish between the medical intervention and a more spiritual approach. Going back over the stages of the physical relation of Man and water, it becomes evident that already within the prehistoric societies significant aspects, with divine connotations, were linked to this element. In the context of the prehistoric religiousness water has had a strong symbolic value; it is regarded, in fact, as the primitive source of life to which are linked the symbols of rebirth and regeneration, that constitute elements of magic value and with therapeutic functions. 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 reached the offerings that, from the Bronze Age, were often thrown into springs, wells, and other bodies of water as sacrifices. The fact that the prehistoric men saw in the water the vital principle for excellence has favoured the growth of stabile settlements and conditioned the food, religious and economic habits.

According to what it is possible to reconstruct from the archaeological excavations, water-ritual in prehistoric times were widely diffused in Europe. It is likely that most of the ceremonies which included water aimed to invoking or preventing rain and flooding.This was also linked to fertility cults, so important for human communities which based their survival on the products of the mother Earth.

As it appears very difficult the exact reconstruction of the ritual practices of such ancient periods, it is only possible to try to realize which could be the expressions of a religious thought which had to be of course more complex than as it is archaeologically attested.

Vessel, 5200-4900 BC, The Budapest history Museum.

Double faced vessel, 5200-5000/4900 BC, the Budapest history Museum.

Anthropomorphic vessel, 4500-4000 BC,
the Romanian National History Museum,
probably used during religious rituals linked with the human community life

Anthropomorphic vessel, 4500-4000 BC,
the Romanian National History Museum; this item was probably used for water rituals

Anthropomorphic vessel,
the Regional History Museum of Veliko Tarnovo 4200-4100 BC

Anthropomorphic vessel, 3rd mil.BC, probably a Goddess of Fertility.
Museum of Pre - and Early History - Berlin

Vessel, 1250-800. This vessels was connected to local cults.
It has a hole to drink liquids. The Budapest History Museum

Vessel, Greath Mother praying for rain, The National Museum of History, Sofia

Less evident is the use of the waters with therapeutic aims, usually springs or lake waters, which begin to be haunted since the Copper Age. This is the case of the pit of Fonte Panighina near Forli', were it is believed that the underground spring of mineral water had curing and purge properties.

Ceramics of the late Eneolithic were recovered around and within the well, particularly closed pots used for drawing. The water therapeutic value could probably be connected with magic-religious practices that would explain the possible ritual deposition, around the well, of the vases used as water drawing containers.

To the diffused culture between the final Eneolithic and to the beginning of the Bronze Age in Italy between the high Lazio and Tuscany, can be referred some bell-shaped glasses (Bell Beaker) recovered in funeral contexts; among these, mention must be done to the ones with the typical engraved decorations, held at the Museum of Farnese.

Bell-beaker vessel with incised and encrusted decoration from grave at Fontanile di Raim (Farnese), second half of III millennium, The Farnese Museum.

Bell Beaker Ware cup, 2500-2200 BC, The Pigorini Museum

Bell Beaker Cup from Santa Cristina di Fiesse,
Late Eneolithic, The Pigorini Museum.

In Europe, the recovery of some vases, that reproduce, in the engraved decoration, the myth of the creation related to the cycle of water, testifies the continuity in the worship of places located in the neighborhoods of thermal springs also in the late Iron Age; an example of it is represented by the site of La Tene from which it comes the vase exhibited in the Historical Museum of Budapest.

In historical age, offers were thrown very often into the rivers, sometime having been previously and intentionally broken. Probably people took the idea to throw metalworks, jewels, and other votive offerings into the rivers because it was linked to the idea of generating and feeding life.

Furthermore, in proximity of thermal springs it was custom to build small sanctuaries frequented by the pilgrims that used to left the ex-vote hoping to get a recovery. In the Hellenistic Etruria, particularly, near some thermo-mineral springs are known several sanctuaries, revealed thanks by the presence of numerous anatomical ex-vote just connected to the medicinal properties of the waters.

Among so many examples of offers coming from the territory of Saturnia through occasional recoveries,it must be remembered a head of child realized in clay, and a terracotta foot with engraved footwear, held the first at the Museum of Archaeology and Art of the Maremma in Grosseto, and the latter exhibited at the Prehistory and Protohistory Museum of the Fiora in Manciano.

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

THERMAL BATHS AND VOTIVE OFFERINGS OF THE ROME WORLD

Already in a pre-Roman context, construction devoted to the care of the body through the practice of the ablutions are attested. In fact, the excavations at Delos and Olympia as well as the observations on some buildings destined to the exclusive use of thermal establishments, gave explanations for the knowledge of the Greek thermal baths of an epoch anterior to the Roman conquest, revealing the stages of its development since the beginnings, in the first half of the 5^th cent. B.C., to the First century.

With the terms "Thermae" (from the Greek words termai or termòs, warm, ardent), balnea and balneae the Romans used to name different places as bathes, changing rooms, gyms and other places of reunion inside a single complex that spread especially during the Imperial age. Such establishments were not only built in proximity of natural springs of warm waters but, thanks to specific technologies of water heating, also in cities where, often, were realized separate rooms for men and women (with related separate entrances).

The use of such environments was daily and did not depend on social class. Both the thermal baths for men and women were composed of a changing room (apodyterium), of a moderately heated room (tepidarium) and of a highly heated room (calidarium), endowed with a bath for warm baths and a fountain for quick ablutions with half-heated water.

In imperial age the Roman thermal architecture is also well documented also in the eastern areas of the Empire borders. Among the most remarkable archaeological complexes mention must be done to the thermal baths of Germisara in Romania and those of Kyustendil in Bulgaria, active among the 2^nd and the 3^rd century.  To the first complex are referred some precious engraved golden plaquettes, probably votive, recovered during the archaeological excavations, which would suggest the presence of a votive sanctuary near the thermal structure. With the decline of the Roman Empire, the damages brought to the imposing hydraulic works by the invasions of the Germanic populations and to the Christian culture with its demonization of nudity and promiscuity, marked the gradual disappearance of the use of the baths and its hygienic-healthy functions, and the banishing of the ancient social and hedonistic value of the ablution.

Nevertheless, the aspects connected to hydrology as therapeutic practice, continue to be investigated. The mechanisms of the action of the various waters are investigated to a large extent on beliefs and popular observations and to water are attributed different curative aspects: the sulphuric waters are recommended for the illnesses of the skin, those salsobromoiodic for the female sterility etc. It becomes larger, furthermore, the field of the methodics with the introduction of the therapies based on the inhalation and the applications of the muds.The Renaissance period marked above all a further ascent of the fame and the hydro- cares thanks to the discovery of the press that favored the diffusion of the works on the matter.

The use of thermal waters is today so much broadly known that the necessity to safeguard the points of breakthrough of the water spring and the naturalistic-archaeological landscapes in which they are inserted together with the wish to assure its public enjoyment, have generated in the last years the creation of different naturalistic paths.