 Permanent settlement, though, only goes back to sometime in the 9th to 11th centuries, according to Christmann, and then beginning on the Lauter’s left bank (Kaulbach), although this had already been the site of Saint Michael’s Chapel ("Michaelskapelle"), a meeting point for worshippers from all the places with names ending in "—weiler" up and down the river.From the left bank, the settlement spread out into farms laid out on the parts of the riverside flats over on the right bank that were not threatened by flooding.Professor Christmann himself found in his own home village, Kaulbach, the oldest signs yet of human habitation from the New Stone Age on the hill still known today as "Staane Mann" (dialectal German for “Stone Man”; it would be "Steinerner Mann" in Standard High German) in the form of three great remnant pieces of a menhir with an estimated age of between 3,000 and 4,000 years.