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[ Okay, if you not an anthro nut like me (or at least interested in human make up history psychology - 'know thyself' , or archaeology , etc .) may as well not read this . ] A little known culture and practice . The Cucuteni-Trypillian culture had the largest settlements in history up to their time. This was a widespread and long-lasting tradition in what is now Southeastern and Eastern Europe, lasting from as early as 6500 BCE (the beginning of the Neolithic) to as late as 2000 BCE (the end of the Chalcolithic and the beginning of the Bronze Age). There is a consensus in the study of Neolithic and Eneolithic Europe that the majority of burned houses were intentionally set alight. Although the reasons behind why house burning was practiced are still debated, the evidence seems to support that it occurred in such a way as to indicate it was highly unlikely to have been as a result of accidental cause. If these regularly occurring burnings, in which the entire settlement is destroyed, were deliberate, then there has still been a debate about why this happened. Cucuteni-Trypillian settlements were completely burned every 75–80 years . There is evidence that every single settlement in this culture probably practiced house burning. No real explanation has been offered, various theories all seem to have holes in them. The remains show food and goods were present in the burnings, bu no human remains. It seems deliberate as the remains are vitrified clay - like baked pottery. Experiments did not get the same results, unless they packed the remade houses with hay and wood up against the walls to get the reqiured temperature for vitrification ; Recreation of a Cucuteni-Trypillian house burning; note the amount of extra fuel (straw and wood) added to the outside of the clay walls to increase the temperature needed for ceramic vitrification. Only one idea seems to hold up ; Symbolic end of house: Some scholars have theorized that the buildings were burned ritually, regularly and deliberately in order to mark the end of the "life" of the house. The terms "Domicide" and "Domithanasia" have been coined to refer to this practice. Using this theory, objects belonging to the house (including food, containers, and ritual objects) could possibly have been viewed as sharing the same "spirit" as the house structure itself. In destroying the house, it would then also be necessary to destroy all of the various elements that made up the house, which would explain why these kinds of items have been found buried in the rubble of burned houses. The physical act of destroying the entire settlement by intentionally burning it to the ground would have required an organized joint-community effort, involving stacking huge amounts of fuel around the walls of the structures, and then torching the entire settlement. Such a systematic act of destruction would leave behind the kind of evidence that is to be found in the archeological sites . https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burned_house_horizon