When the hospital was being built on Malá hora, the diggers turned up the remains of a village of the basin's first farmers — scrapers, small stone axes and decorated pots of the Linear Pottery culture, roughly 5700 to 5000 BC. People never really left afterwards. There are Copper Age and Bronze Age finds, hillforts built on the ridges, and the river terraces at Jahodníky where the Lusatian culture settled. The Turiec is a closed basin with a mountain range on each side, good water and grass, and one usable way through it to the north — which is why every period leaves something behind here. None of this is Martin yet; it is the reason a town here would later be worth founding.Keď sa na Malej hore stavala nemocnica, robotníci vykopali zvyšky osady prvých roľníkov v kotline — škrabadlá, kamenné sekerky a zdobenú keramiku kultúry s lineárnou keramikou, teda zhruba z rokov 5700 až 5000 pred Kristom. Ľudia odtiaľto potom už neodišli. Máme nálezy z eneolitu i doby bronzovej, hradiská na hrebeňoch a riečne terasy v Jahodníkoch, kde sa usadil ľud lužickej kultúry. Turiec je uzavretá kotlina, z oboch strán ohradená pohorím, s vodou a pašou a s jedinou schodnou cestou na sever — preto tu po sebe každá doba niečo zanechá. Martin to ešte nie je; je to však dôvod, prečo sa tu neskôr oplatilo mesto založiť.
