The first inhabitants of the Aeolian Islands, a journey to the origins of the archipelago.
When people talk about the Aeolian Islands today, the mind immediately turns to the blue sea, the beaches, the sailboats, the volcanoes, the little villages overlooking the Mediterranean and the summer evenings spent watching a sunset. Lipari, Vulcano, Salina, Stromboli, Filicudi, Alicudi and Panarea are now among the most fascinating destinations in the Mediterranean.
But long before tourists, modern fishermen, farmers, merchants and Greek and Roman sailors reached their shores, these islands were already home to men and women who had learned to cope with a harsh and extraordinary environment.
They were people who came from the sea in simple boats, who farmed the land, gathered what nature offered, fished, raised animals and, above all, exploited a resource that would turn the Aeolians into one of the most important centers of Mediterranean prehistory, obsidian.
To truly understand the Aeolians, then, you have to go back thousands of years, to a time when the archipelago did not yet have the towns, harbors, roads and houses we know today.
You have to imagine a sea very much like today’s, but a completely different human landscape.
The first people who reached the islands did not find an entirely empty land. They found volcanoes, rocks, springs, vegetation, animals, coastlines and, above all, an archipelago in a strategic position at the center of the Mediterranean routes.
It was precisely this position, together with the wealth of natural resources, that gradually turned the Aeolians into a meeting place for different peoples.
An archipelago born of fire.
Before talking about people, we have to talk about nature.
The Aeolians are a volcanic archipelago, and their geological history cannot be separated from the history of the peoples who settled there.
Lipari, Vulcano and Stromboli are still deeply tied to the presence of their volcanoes. The mountains, the lava flows, the pumice, the volcanic rocks and the soils formed by eruptions have shaped the lives of the islanders for thousands of years.
To a prehistoric man, a volcanic island could seem both a difficult place and a land full of possibilities.
The volcano destroyed, but it also offered resources.
Rock could become raw material for tools. The land could be farmed. The sea made it possible to fish and, above all, to travel.
The Aeolians, in fact, should not be imagined as seven isolated worlds.
On the contrary, since prehistoric times the archipelago was crossed by people, goods, ideas and technologies.
The islands’ location, off the northern coast of Sicily and fairly close to the Strait of Messina, made them a natural crossing point in the central Mediterranean. The Archaeological Park of the Aeolian Islands stresses precisely this role of the archipelago as a crossroads of cultures since prehistoric times.
The first inhabitants arrive in the Neolithic
The earliest evidence of permanent human settlement in the Aeolians dates back to the Neolithic.
On Lipari, in particular, traces have been found of people already settled around the 6th millennium BC. The archaeological record from the Castle and the surrounding areas makes it possible to follow a very long sequence of cultures, from the Neolithic to historical times.
The “Luigi Bernabò Brea” Regional Archaeological Museum dates the first permanent settlements on Lipari to around 5500–5000 BC.
That means we are talking about roughly seven thousand years ago.
Seven thousand years.
It is a span of time that is hard to imagine.
When the first inhabitants reached the archipelago, neither the town of Lipari nor the modern villages existed. There were no roads, harbors, stone houses or organized systems of communication.
There were small groups of people.
Families.
Villages.
Rough boats.
Fields.
Hearths.
Stone tools.
And a sea that was both a barrier and a road.
Where did the first inhabitants come from?
Archaeologists believe that the first Neolithic peoples of the Aeolians were linked to groups coming from Sicily.
So this was not the sudden appearance of a population completely cut off from the rest of the Mediterranean.
The people who reached the Aeolians were part of a wider world, marked by migrations, trade and the gradual spread of farming and new techniques.
The Aeolian Archaeological Park describes the first Neolithic peoples as groups coming from Sicily, drawn above all by the chance to exploit the obsidian found on Lipari.
This is essential for understanding the birth of Aeolian civilization.
The first inhabitants did not come simply because they were looking for a place to live.
They also came because the archipelago offered something precious.
And that something was black, shiny and sharp.
It was obsidian.
Obsidian, the black treasure of the Aeolians
Today a fragment of volcanic glass may look like just another stone.
To a Neolithic man, though, it could be a resource of enormous value.
Obsidian is a natural glass formed when lava cools rapidly. When it is broken, it can produce extremely sharp edges.
That is why it was used to make blades, points, scrapers and other tools.
Before metals became widespread, having a raw material like obsidian meant having access to a very important technology.
Lipari had large deposits of this material.
So the islanders learned not only to use obsidian, but also to work it and bring it into a much wider trading network.
The Aeolian Archaeological Park considers obsidian one of the archipelago’s main economic resources for more than two thousand years.
This lets us picture a fascinating side of the lives of the first inhabitants.
They were not simply farmers living on a remote island.
They were also producers of a raw material in demand elsewhere.
And to transport it, they had to cross the sea.
The sea as a road
For us, the sea separates.
For the ancient inhabitants of the Aeolians, the sea could instead connect.
Of course, crossing the Mediterranean in a small boat without modern navigation instruments must have been extremely risky.
And yet people did it.
The presence of Lipari obsidian in faraway lands shows that there were trade networks able to link the archipelago with other parts of the Mediterranean.
This means the first Aeolians had enough seafaring knowledge to make sea crossings.
They knew the coasts.
They watched the wind.
They recognized the currents.
They used the sun and the stars.
They learned to find their way.
They probably also knew the natural signs that made it possible to predict changes in the weather.
It is fascinating to think that, long before the great Mediterranean civilizations were born, small boats were crossing the waters between Lipari and Sicily.
Lipari, the heart of the first human presence
Of all the islands in the archipelago, Lipari plays a key role in the history of Aeolian prehistory.
The Castle of Lipari, today one of the most important places on the island, stands on a volcanic rock overlooking the sea.
Its position was especially well suited to human settlement.
The rock was easy to defend and made it possible to control the land and the sea.
Archaeological excavations have shown that the area was inhabited since prehistoric times and that, over the centuries, several villages were built one on top of the other.
According to the Aeolian Archaeological Park, the rock preserves the layered remains of four important Bronze Age villages, spanning roughly from 1700 to 900 BC.
But the history of the settlement goes back even further.
Archaeological research makes it possible to follow a cultural sequence that begins in the Middle Neolithic.
It is as if the Castle were a huge book of stone.
Each layer tells of a generation.
Each fragment of pottery tells of a habit.
Each tool tells of a job.
Each dwelling tells of a way of life.
How did the first Aeolians live?
Imagining the daily lives of these peoples means letting go completely of the image of the tourist Aeolians we know today.
There were no hotels.
There were no restaurants.
There were no bars.
There were no modern harbors.
Life was probably governed by daylight, the seasons, the availability of water and the need to find food.
The inhabitants lived in simple structures.
They farmed the land.
They raised animals.
They gathered fruit and wild plants.
They fished.
They worked stone.
They made pottery.
And above all, they worked obsidian.
The community must have been organized so that the group could survive.
Men and women must have carried out different and complementary tasks.
Children grew up learning very early the skills needed for daily life.
A boy had to learn to recognize a good stone.
A girl had to know which plants could be used.
Adults had to know how to farm, fish, build, cook and sail.
Knowledge was not written down.
It passed from one generation to the next through experience.
The first pottery
Among the most important traces left by the first inhabitants are fragments of pottery.
Pottery allows archaeologists to identify cultures, contacts and changes.
On Lipari, pottery has been found that is linked to the Neolithic cultures of Sicily.
The Luigi Bernabò Brea Archaeological Museum documents, for example, the presence of the Castellaro Vecchio culture, associated with the island’s first Neolithic settlements, and later of pottery in the Stentinello, Serra d’Alto and Diana styles.
Behind these seemingly cold archaeological names there are people.
People who shaped clay with their hands.
People who decorated their vessels.
People who used jars to store food and water.
People who made objects meant to be used every day.
A simple shard of pottery can tell us much more than it seems.
It can tell us that a certain people had reached the island.
It can point to contacts with other regions.
It can suggest cultural exchanges.
It can even help archaeologists reconstruct the routes followed by the ancient inhabitants.
Salina, another very ancient chapter
The story of the first inhabitants is not just about Lipari.
Salina, too, holds important traces of Aeolian prehistory.
The Neolithic site of Rinicedda, near Rinella, is listed by the Archaeological Park as one of the oldest known human settlements in the Aeolians, together with the Castellaro site on Lipari, and dates back to the middle of the 6th millennium BC.
Much later, during the Bronze Age, the village of Portella also grew up on Salina.
Here many huts have been found dating to around 1500–1300 BC, when the Milazzese culture was widespread in the Aeolians.
The village of Portella is especially interesting because it lets us picture in concrete terms the life of a prehistoric community.
Archaeologists have identified 25 huts, mostly oval or round, built using the volcanic rock.
Inside they found hearths, work surfaces, shelves, containers and tools.
They also found large containers used to store water.
This detail reveals a basic need for anyone living on an island. Water was a precious resource and had to be collected and stored with care.
Filicudi and the Capo Graziano culture
Filicudi, too, holds a special place in the prehistory of the Aeolians.
The headland of Capo Graziano gave its name to one of the main Bronze Age cultures of the archipelago.
The village of Capo Graziano is one of the most important traces of human presence on the island during the 2nd millennium BC.
The archaeological museum of Filicudi holds finds from the villages of Capo Graziano and Filo Braccio and lets you follow a significant part of the island’s history.
The name Capo Graziano has therefore become famous in the world of archaeology because it identifies a cultural phase that matters not only for Filicudi, but for the entire archipelago.
The Archaeological Park also records on Filicudi a settlement belonging to the Capo Graziano facies, dated roughly between 2300 and 1700 BC.
Panarea and the village of Punta Milazzese
Panarea, known today mainly for its elegant atmosphere and summer tourism, also holds an extraordinary trace of the past.
At Punta Milazzese, in the southern part of the island, stood a Middle Bronze Age village, dating roughly from 1500 to 1300 BC.
The position was especially easy to defend.
The headland was a kind of natural fortress.
But the village also had a role in managing water.
Archaeologists found small channels and large containers used to collect and store rainwater.
Once again, behind a simple archaeological structure lies a very practical problem.
How do you live on a small island?
How do you make sure a community has enough water?
How do you store resources?
How do you protect yourself?
How do you communicate with the other islands?
These are questions the people of the Aeolians had to face thousands of years ago.
Stromboli, living in front of the volcano
Of all the islands, Stromboli is perhaps the one that best shows the relationship between people and the volcano.
The volcano is always there.
Even today Stromboli regularly shows its activity.
For prehistoric people, it must have been even more impressive.
Let’s imagine a night thousands of years ago.
A small village overlooking the sea.
The darkness.
The rumble of the volcano.
The red glow of the lava.
The sky full of stars.
The black sea.
The inhabitants must have known the mountain’s behavior perfectly.
The volcano was both a threat and a permanent part of the landscape.
Archaeological studies have identified Bronze Age settlements on Stromboli with a long occupation, documented by radiocarbon dates between about 2290 and 1475 BC.
This shows that human presence on the island was not occasional.
People learned to live next to the volcano.
The birth of a trade network
Over the centuries the Aeolians became more and more important.
Obsidian had helped create the first connections.
Later, other resources came into play, and above all the islands’ location.
The islands lay along routes linking Sicily with southern Italy and the eastern Mediterranean.
During the Bronze Age, ties with the Aegean world became especially important.
The Luigi Bernabò Brea Archaeological Museum points out that during the 2nd millennium BC Lipari built close trade ties with the Aegean world and once again became a key hub on the routes to the metal-rich areas of Italy and northwestern Europe.
This is a crucial step.
The Aeolians were no longer just a group of villages.
They had become part of a network that was international by the standards of the time.
The peoples of the Bronze Age
Between the 3rd and 2nd millennia BC the archipelago went through major changes.
One of the best-known cultures is that of Capo Graziano.
Later came the Milazzese culture, named after the headland of Punta Milazzese on Panarea.
According to the Archaeological Museum of Lipari, the Milazzese culture shows strong similarities with the Thapsos culture of Sicily, which suggests the arrival, or the strong influence, of peoples from Sicily.
This shows once again how dynamic the Aeolian world was.
There was no single people that stayed unchanged for thousands of years.
There were arrivals.
Departures.
Exchanges.
Conflicts.
Contacts.
Assimilation.
New technologies.
New ways of building.
New pottery styles.
New trade relations.
The Aeolians were a human laboratory.
The Aeolians and myth
Much later, when the Greeks entered the Aeolian world, the archipelago became part of mythology.
The name Aeolian is linked to Aeolus, the mythical lord of the winds.
According to the tradition handed down from antiquity, Aeolus had his kingdom right here.
It is important, though, to tell legend apart from history.
The Aeolians of mythology cannot simply be identified with a single archaeological people.
The Aeolian world was much more complex.
The real history of the islands is made up of many peoples and cultures that followed and met one another over thousands of years.
Myth, however, preserves an interesting memory.
It shows how the Greek world saw these islands as a place deeply tied to the sea, the winds and seafaring.
The Aeolians before the Greeks
Before the Greek colonization of Lipara, then, there was already a very long history.
When the Greeks arrived, they did not find a land without a past.
They found lands that had been inhabited for thousands of years.
They found abandoned villages.
Farmed fields.
Paths.
Mineral resources.
Sea routes.
Traditions.
And above all, a wealth of knowledge built up over time.
The future Greek city of Lipara would therefore rise on land that already had a very deep human history.
The continuity and change of settlements are especially clear on Lipari, where the excavations at the Castle have revealed an archaeological sequence from the Neolithic to later periods.
The mystery of daily life
Perhaps the most fascinating part of Aeolian prehistory lies in its seemingly simplest aspects.
How did they sleep?
How did they prepare food?
How did they raise their children?
How did they face a storm?
How did they decide when to set out in a boat?
How did they interpret an eruption?
What did they think when they looked at the sky?
What did the elders tell during evenings by the fire?
Archaeology can answer these questions only in part.
It can show us objects.
It can reconstruct buildings.
It can date villages.
It can identify materials.
But it cannot directly give us back the emotions of the men and women who lived on these islands.
And that is exactly what makes prehistory so fascinating.
Among the remains of a village thousands of years old, we don’t just see stones.
We can imagine a community.
A mother preparing food.
A man working obsidian.
A child watching the sea.
A group of fishermen coming back to the beach.
An old man telling what he has seen in his lifetime.
And, before them all, the volcano.
Women in prehistoric society
When we talk about the first inhabitants of the Aeolians, it is important to remember that they were not only men.
Communities were made up of families.
Women played a key role in economic and social life.
Even if archaeological evidence does not always allow us to reconstruct exactly how tasks were divided, we know that the survival of farming and island communities required an enormous amount of daily work.
Preparing food, processing crops, making pottery, gathering plants, looking after children, keeping the fire going and taking part in community life were all essential activities.
The story of the first Aeolians, then, is not only the story of sailors and warriors.
It is also the story of mothers, daughters, grandmothers and children.
It is the story of entire communities.
A life shaped by water
One of the most important elements of life on the islands was, of course, water.
Today we turn on a tap and immediately have drinking water.
For the prehistoric inhabitants of the Aeolians, things were completely different.
You had to know where the springs were.
You had to collect rainwater.
You had to store it.
The village of Portella on Salina is an extraordinary example of this need, with its large containers and water-collection systems.
On Panarea, too, structures linked to collecting water have been found.
This helps us understand how advanced, in its simplicity, the organization of prehistoric communities was.
They had no modern technology.
But they knew their environment perfectly.
They knew how to make use of it.
A civilization built on the ability to adapt
Perhaps this is the most important trait of the first inhabitants of the Aeolians, their ability to adapt.
Living on a volcanic island meant accepting harsh conditions.
The soil was not always easy to farm.
Water could be scarce.
Eruptions could change the land.
Storms could cut off all connections.
The sea could be dangerous.
And yet the communities managed to settle.
They built villages.
They organized production.
They created trade relations.
They exploited obsidian.
They sailed.
They moved from one island to another.
They came into contact with faraway peoples.
It is this ability to adapt that partly explains the extraordinary length of human presence in the archipelago.
From village to Mediterranean crossroads
Over thousands of years, then, the Aeolians went from small Neolithic settlements to a place more and more caught up in the great movements of the Mediterranean.
Obsidian was one of the first great resources.
Then came new products, new trade and new peoples.
The islands became a point of reference for anyone crossing the central Mediterranean.
Archaeology shows this continuity through an exceptional number of finds.
The work of Luigi Bernabò Brea and Madeleine Cavalier was essential in piecing this story together. Their excavations made it possible to reconstruct a cultural sequence running from the Neolithic to historical times.
Today the Archaeological Museum of Lipari holds an essential part of this memory.
Walking in the footsteps of the first inhabitants today
When a modern visitor arrives in the Aeolians, they can look at the islands with different eyes.
On Lipari, climbing up to the Castle, you are not just reaching a viewpoint.
You are entering one of the most important places in Mediterranean prehistory.
On Salina, near Rinella or visiting the Portella area, you can remember that on that same land men and women lived thousands of years ago.
On Panarea, Punta Milazzese is not just one of the most spectacular spots on the island. It is also the site of an ancient Bronze Age village.
On Filicudi, Capo Graziano tells of a key phase in the history of the archipelago.
On Stromboli, watching the volcano, you can imagine the awe of prehistoric people before that mountain of fire.
This way, a trip to the Aeolians changes completely.
It is no longer just a beach vacation.
It becomes a journey through time.
Before they were touristic, the Aeolians were human
Today millions of images portray the Aeolians as a Mediterranean paradise.
But before photographs, films, sailboats and white houses, there were other images.
The ones etched in the memory of the first communities.
The fire of the volcano.
The sea.
The moon.
The stars.
The mountains.
The wind.
The fields.
The small dwellings.
The boats pulling away from the shore.
And the return.
Even then, the Aeolians were a world in motion.
The first inhabitants came from the sea and learned to turn the archipelago’s resources into tools for living and for trade.
Lipari obsidian traveled far.
Pottery told of the arrival of new cultures.
The villages of Salina, Filicudi, Panarea and Stromboli showed that people had learned to live in different environments.
The islands, though separated by water, were united by sea routes.
A story that goes on
Perhaps the most surprising thing is that the story that began thousands of years ago has never really stopped.
After the Neolithic came the age of metals.
Then the Bronze Age.
Then the Greeks.
The Romans.
The medieval peoples.
The sailors.
The farmers.
The fishermen.
And finally the modern world.
Every age left something behind.
Today’s Aeolians are the result of this very long layering.
When you stroll through Lipari, when you look at the houses of Salina, when you sail past Filicudi, when you see Stromboli smoking on the horizon or when you reach Panarea, beneath the surface of the present lies a much older story.
It is the story of the first people who decided to stay.
Conclusion, the first voyage to the Aeolians
Imagining the first inhabitant of the Aeolians means imagining a man or a woman who, thousands of years ago, arrived in front of a volcanic coast.
Perhaps they had crossed the sea.
Perhaps they had set out from Sicily.
Perhaps they had followed others.
We don’t know exactly what their personal story was.
But we do know that their presence would open a story destined to last thousands of years.
Before them rose the volcanic mountains of Lipari.
There was the sea.
There were the other islands.
There were unknown resources still waiting to be used.
Among them, above all, obsidian.
That first man could not know that his community would help give rise to one of the most important archaeological sequences in the Mediterranean.
He could not know that thousands of years later archaeologists from all over the world would study the remains of his home.
He could not know that the place where he had built his house would become one of the most important archaeological sites in Sicily.
He probably knew only what he could see.
The sea.
The land.
The fire.
The wind.
His family.
The village.
And the need to survive.
This is exactly where the story of the Aeolians begins.
Not with great kings.
Not with empires.
Not with wars.
But with ordinary men and women who had the courage to cross the sea and build a life on islands born of fire.
And perhaps this is the most beautiful way to look at the archipelago today.
When a sailboat slips between Lipari and Vulcano, when the wind fills the sails and Stromboli appears on the horizon, beneath that sea there is more than a landscape.
There is a very ancient road.
The same road traveled, in very different ways, by the first inhabitants of the Aeolians.
Men and women who turned a volcanic archipelago into an inhabited land, connected to the rest of the Mediterranean and still holding, even today, the traces of one of the most fascinating stories of European prehistory.
The Aeolians, then, are not just seven islands.
They are seven chapters of a story that began thousands of years ago.
And every time the sea opens up before the bow of a boat, it almost feels possible to imagine that first voyage.
The voyage of someone who, long before us, watched those mountains rise from the sea and decided to stay.
The main dates and archaeological references in this article are based on sources from the Archaeological Park of the Aeolian Islands, the Luigi Bernabò Brea Regional Archaeological Museum and specialized archaeological publications.