6,000-year-old temple with sacrificial altars discovered in Ukraine

I find the culture itself interesting. There's a wikipedia page for the Trypillians: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cucuteni-Trypillian_culture

These were the biggest cities in Europe at the time, and I tend to believe the altars were altars, because they also burned down their own cities every three or four generations.

Out of genuine curiosity/confusion, could someone explain how something like this gets "discovered?" It's a two story building that's 66 feet tall according to the article. Is it something that locals have seen but never cared about? Or have people just not been walking around that immediate area for the past several thousand years?

Perhaps because I'm from a super dense urban metro area, I don't fully appreciate how stuff like this works. I'd love to know!

How do they know it wasn't just a community kitchen?

Several people have been commenting on how the archaeologists "know" that the raised structures were altars. Well, they don't. Not for sure, anyway. Here is an excerpt from a paper describing the find:

"Three different interpretations have been proposed: as ‘altars’, as ‘hearths’ and as ‘platforms’ [...]. The notion of ‘altars’ presupposes some ritual function and would be supported by differential concentrations of figurines, or other so-called ritual objects. However, there is no such concentration of ritual finds. The expected evidence to support the notion of ‘hearths’ would be the identification of burnt fired clay fragments, allied to concentrations of charcoal and/or ash close to the features. The absence of burning near these features diminishes the likelihood that they were ‘hearths’. Nonetheless, short-term, low-temperature fires in the middle of a raised seating area for ritual participants may well have left few traces of ash or charcoal. The term ‘raised area’ is a more neutral term, indicating a proper concern with a feature that is raised from the ground-surface of the me- ga-structure, on which people could have sat or ritual objects could have been placed for short-term performances - objects which were then removed to other contexts [...]"

Once again, the popular press slightly twists science to present a "more interesting read"...

(Source: http://www.jna.uni-kiel.de/index.php/jna/article/view/110)

Better links:

http://www.archaeology.org/news/2650-141023-ukraine-trypilli...

http://www.jna.uni-kiel.de/index.php/jna/article/view/110

What if it was just a slaughterhouse?

> Sacrificial altars

I fail to see how this is news worthy. No sacrificial alters would be news worthy.