Federseemuseum Bad Buchau and Pfahlbaumuseum Unteruhldingen

More than 900 sites containing settlements of this kind have been discovered across the Alpine and pre-Alpine regions. Of these, 111 form the UNESCO World Heritage Site known as the Prehistoric Pile Dwellings around the Alps, including 15 in Baden-Württemberg. What makes them so remarkable is their location beside peatlands and lakes, where oxygen-depleted layers of peat and silt preserved entire worlds like a time capsule. They contain not only artefacts made from stone or metal, but also organic materials: house posts, flax fibres for clothing, fishing nets, dugout canoes, grain, Stone Age chewing gum and even the remains of a fish soup that simmered over an open fire around 5,000 years ago.

Federseemoor, a wetland surrounding Lake Federsee, and Lake Constance are home to some of the best-known archaeological sites. The museums in Bad Buchau and Unteruhldingen offer a vivid window into this past. They have brought the submerged villages back to light. At Federseemoor alone, more than 20 settlements and over 50 dugout canoes—the means of transport at the time—have already been discovered. These finds have enabled the houses to be reconstructed, making life in that period tangible. And that is precisely what the Family Activity Trail is all about. Equipped with a map and a research backpack available from the ticket desk, visitors can discover what everyday life was like at 14 activity stations. Two of the items inside are the Stone Age equivalent of a Swiss Army knife and a piece of leather. Along the way, there are hands-on challenges and riddles to solve. For example, how did people cook soup over a fire before they had pots made from clay or metal?

Grain was the most important staple food in the Stone Age. But it not only had to be grown—it also had to be ground. Visitors can discover just how arduous this was at the Early Neolithic settlement of Taubried. With grain and an hourglass from the research backpack, they have three minutes to grind the grain as finely as possible on a saddle quern. They also learn that a Stone Age home was packed to the rafters—with the whole family, an oven, a hearth, household objects, weapons, sleeping areas and stores of harvested crops.

A short detour through the Late Neolithic leads to the domesticated livestock of the time. Goats and sheep provided milk, while cattle mainly served as four-legged tractors, as our ancestors were lactose-intolerant. Olga the plastic goat patiently lets visitors try their hand at milking her.

The Bronze Age brought fundamental changes. People began to trade, importing glass beads from Italy, amber from the Baltic, salt from Hallstatt and horses from the Russian steppe—the SUVs of the upper classes, so to speak. For the first time, there was wealth worth protecting, whether with locks and keys or swords. Tin from England and copper from the Eastern Alps made it possible to cast metal. Bronze smiths were the prehistoric equivalent of Silicon Valley, producing tools, jewellery and weapons of unprecedented quality.

Children crowd around a wardrobe to dress up in Stone and Bronze Age fashions: linen shirts, leather leggings, bast-fibre cloaks and fur hats. There is just enough time for a quick selfie in front of the mirror before they move on to the final station. Here, they wet-sieve a soil sample to uncover the final letter of a code that unlocks a surprise … At weekends, museum visitors can also try spear-throwing and paddle a dugout canoe across the pond.