Chilchli Cave

The Chilchlihöhli (also called Chilchlihöhli ) is a cave above Erlenbach in the Simmental in the Bernese Oberland in Switzerland .

geography

The cave is 1810 meters above sea level. M. in the Stockhorn area and has a covered floor area of 60 square meters. The cave space is around 160 cubic meters. It is located on the Schnurenloch hiking route in the Simmental .

Prehistory, history

Stone age

People visited the Chilchli Cave as early as the Paleolithic . In their thirty years of research, Albert and David Andrist, together with Walter Flükiger, found various teeing devices in the years after 1925. They assigned the resting places Chilchlihöhle, Ranggiloch (1845 meters above sea level) and Schnurenloch (1230 meters above sea level) to the Paleolithic , the Paleolithic, which dates back more than 10,000 years. Excavations in the slope below the cave, on the cave forecourt and in the cave floor yielded numerous bone fragments from various animal species. 21 finds made of stone suitable for tools bore traces of human work.

Refuge for Anabaptists

Peter Thöne (n) von Reutigen , one of the ancestors of the Thöne (n) family, hid in the Chilchli cave . He was persecuted as a so-called Anabaptist after the Reformation and wanted by the Bern government to be expelled from the country. Many Anabaptists fled to the Palatinate in Germany , the Netherlands and America .

literature

David Andrist, Walter Flükiger, Albert Andrist: The Simmental during the Stone Age. Publishing house Stämpfli & Cie, Bern 1964.
Ernst Zbären: Simmenthal. Ott Verlag, Thun, ISBN 3-7225-6873-0 , p. 45.

Web links

Jean-Marie Le Tensorer : Paleolithic. Middle Paleolithic. The question of the Alpine Moustérien. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland . March 16, 2017. Retrieved March 27, 2018 .
Anne-Marie Dubler : Erlenbach in the Simmental. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland . October 24, 2005 , accessed March 27, 2018 .

46.679392 7.519671Coordinates: 46 ° 40 '45.8 " N , 7 ° 31' 10.8" E ; CH1903: 606200 / 169800