ong before Amsterdam, Venice and the Kingdom of Paeonia, but sometime after Fred and Wilma Flintstone of Bedrock, a small prehistoric tribe near Fiavè, in the Trentino area of northern Italy, drove lengthy wooden piles down into Lago Carera, a glacial basin, and constructed one of mankind's very first above-water communities.

Funny, I came to the Trentino for a modern-day spa treatment, but, in between my two-a-day water therapies, I ended up visiting an archeological dig and then being lectured about the Stone and Bronze Ages at Il Museo delle Palafitte di Fiavè (Pile Dwellings Museum of Fiavè – MPF).

They don't call this part of Europe "old as mud" for nothing, as evidenced by the remains of those 7-9m long wooden stilts – driven into the soft underbelly of the lake millennia ago – peering back at me just above the surface of the now glacial basin-turned-peat bog.

Looking around at this little speck on the prehistoric map, wondering what life was like right here on this very spot some 6,000 or so years ago, really got my Vespa running. I needed to do some digging of my own and get to the bottom of this story about life on prehistoric stilts.

Arriving at MPF, I flash my press credentials, fill out a form and the pleasant administrator, Elena Brocchetti, waives the small €3.50-entry fee, provides me with all the literature I can carry, and immediately hands me off to Signor Angelo Parisi.

Angelo tells me straight away that, "I'm not an archeologist, but I am very, very passionate about the museum." And it showed, as he served as my guide for the afternoon and led the way on a private, in-depth, VIP tour of the brand new, three-story, state-of-the-art facility that occupies the old Casa Carli in the center of Fiave.'

The museum, devoted entirely to those ancient "holes in the ground making history," is laid out to illustrate – via plenty of interactive audio-visual screens, colorful static displays, glass cases filled with precious artifacts, and various mock-ups – the seven stages of the three prehistoric communities that lived around the glacial basin between the late Neolithic Age and the recent Bronze Age.

The Lake Carera finds are part of an overall 111 locations of prehistoric pile dwellings around the Alps fully recognized by UNESCO and designated as World Heritage sites.

The informative walk around with the very knowledgeable Angelo, who, as a young student, assisted the discovery efforts at the archeological dig during the 1970s, shows the various construction types used to build the settlements, and demonstrates quite clearly how these ancient Alpine tribes went about their daily lives, survived and thrived.

The museum's collection of objects and artifacts, dating back to nearly 4,000 B.C., is one of the most impressive of its kind: pottery, jewelry in bronze, Baltic amber and even gold; tableware and kitchen utensils; and, a variety of farming and working tools, like hammers, sickles, drills, axe handles and ploughs. Perishables are also on display, and include food: ears of corn, cherries, hazelnuts, apples and pears.

On the third floor, and the last stage of the tour, visitors can experience "A day in a pile dwelling." It's a complete model recreation of a day in the life of a community on stilts some 3,400 years ago.

After thanking my personal guide and the administrator for their gracious hospitality, I took a stroll around the museum's park-like grounds with the impressive bird house sculpture out back and the angled, symbolic palafitte (stilts) that front the museum's entryway.

The day trip now complete, I give Il Museo delle Palafitte di Fiavè and the archeological site at Lago Carera "two thumbs" way up; or, in the words of Fred Flintstone: Yabba-dabba-doo!

For complete information on the museum and the archeological dig, as well as a host of other scenic gems tucked away in the Brenta Dolomites, just visit the Tourism Office of the Trentino.

Join me again next time when I follow my doctor's orders and remove the lens to capture a medieval lakeside village that has withstood the test of time: Canale di Tenno.

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Skiing the Dolomites; Traveling in Northern Italy; The Little Village Atop the Hill; Piovene Rocchette; Sutri: A Canterbury Trail