The Oberlausitz area is not only full of scenic beauty but also boasts a rich and highly important historic past. Some of its past history is luckily still in evidence today. 

The first proven settlements in the area around Görlitz took place in the Mesolithic Stone Age (around 10000-4000 BC). Finds of flint stone tools point out to a still unsettled population of hunters and fishermen of an unidentified people who only lived in simple huts. 
Village settlements made of fixed wooden houses and a settled hunter and fishermen folk who were also active in agricultural farming and cattle breeding took place in the Neolithic Stone Age (4000-2000 BC). A more dense settlement took place in the Bronze Ago (2000 – 750 BC) and the Iron Age up to about 400 BC. 

In the time before Moses lead the children of Israel from Egypt into Canaan; men already lived on the shores of the River Neiße. Men with shiny bronze weapons to fight off their enemies; men who already new how to build houses and weapons and make jewellery and were actively conducting business with peoples from far away. It was around the time of 1500 BC, which gave us the oldest finds in our immediate homeland. 

Based on the finds, we can today depict a true picture of the high culture – one speaks about the “Lausitzer Culture” of the inhabitants of our region. Weaving, pottery and metal handicrafts reached their peak. 
At the time, it was customary to burn the dead, and it is precisely these burial sites in and around Görlitz, Ludwigsdorf and Zodel with their numerous burial gifts that show us the peak of a culture, which was no longer present 2000 years later.