Territory Settlement

The first inhabitants in the territory of Lithuania, including the land of Šiauliai, appeared after the retreat of glaciers in the last glacial period in Europe and alongside with climate warming, in the second half of the 10^th millennium BC, when the origins of the first civilizations already began to emerge on the Mediterranean coast and in the Middle East regions.

The oldest archaeological find in the territory of Šiauliai city is a flint head of an arrow, found in the ancient settlement of Lieporiai, currently one of Šiauliai residential areas in the southern part of the city. Such heads of arrows were used at the end of the 10^th millennium BC – in the first half of the 9^th millennium BC. It is known that in the vicinity of Šiauliai, like in the whole current territory of Lithuania, at least since the end of the third millennium there were settled people who, in addition to hunting, also engaged in agriculture. Šiauliai itself belongs to a very manifold region of the Baltic tribes area. The region is a merge of Semigallian, Samogitian, Highland Lithuanian and Curonian areas; but mostly, of Samogitian and Semigallian areas (archaeological data show that the latter also lived in the vicinity of Šiauliai). Šiauliai was a part of a culturally and ethnically mixed region.

1. archeology
2. ethnology