Amelinghausen

Amelinghausen is a municipality in the district of Lüneburg in Lower Saxony, Germany. It is also the seat of the collective municipality of Amelinghausen.GeographyThe municipality lies in the middle of the Lüneburg Heath Nature Park. East of Amelinghausen the upper reaches of the River Lopau are impounded to form the Lopausee, a lake that is used by tourists.Municipal divisionsThe villages in the municipality are: Amelinghausen Dehnsen EtzenHistoryThe village of Amelinghausen was first mentioned in the records on 22 May 1293. The beginnings of settlement began, however, in the New Stone Age. The first people in this region were migrant hunters and gatherers around 15,000 B. C. They followed reindeer herds coming from the west, for which this area, the present-day Lüneburg Heath, offered a new habitat thanks to its more moderate climate (having hitherto being the Ice Age).Thousands of years later, about 3,700 B. C., the first humans settled here. The first settlers of the region established themselves on the banks of the River Luhe. As a result of communication with the folk to the south they had already acquired a knowledge of farming. Surviving grave sites are witnesses to the permanent settlement of the present-day Lüneburg Heath from the New Bronze AGe (1100–800 B. C.), through the Early Iron Age (600–800 B. C.) and the Pre-Roman Iron Age (600 B. C. – birth of Christ), into the Migration Period (2nd–6th century A. D.).