![]() The flint arrowhead embedded in this upper arm bone first alerted archaeologists to the ancient violence in the Tollense Valley. ![]() "When it comes to the Bronze Age, we've been missing a smoking gun, where we have a battlefield and dead people and weapons all together," says University College Dublin (UCD) archaeologist Barry Molloy. There's little disagreement now that Tollense is something special. ![]() The well-preserved bones and artifacts add detail to this picture of Bronze Age sophistication, pointing to the existence of a trained warrior class and suggesting that people from across Europe joined the bloody fray. "We had considered scenarios of raids, with small groups of young men killing and stealing food, but to imagine such a big battle with thousands of people is very surprising," says Svend Hansen, head of the German Archaeological Institute's (DAI's) Eurasia Department in Berlin. But Tollense's scale suggests more organization-and more violence-than once thought. Bronze itself, created in the Near East around 3200 B.C.E., took 1000 years to arrive here. Northern Europe in the Bronze Age was long dismissed as a backwater, overshadowed by more sophisticated civilizations in the Near East and Greece. "There's nothing to compare it to." It may even be the earliest direct evidence-with weapons and warriors together-of a battle this size anywhere in the ancient world. "If our hypothesis is correct that all of the finds belong to the same event, we're dealing with a conflict of a scale hitherto completely unknown north of the Alps," says dig co-director Thomas Terberger, an archaeologist at the Lower Saxony State Service for Cultural Heritage in Hannover. Bones from hundreds more may remain unexcavated, and thousands of others may have fought but survived. They have also found bones in extraordinary numbers: the remains of at least five horses and more than 100 men. Along a 3-kilometer stretch of the Tollense River, archaeologists from the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Department of Historic Preservation (MVDHP) and the University of Greifswald (UG) have unearthed wooden clubs, bronze spearheads, and flint and bronze arrowheads. Now, after a series of excavations between 20, researchers have begun to understand the battle and its startling implications for Bronze Age society. The artifacts all were radiocarbon-dated to about 1250 B.C.E., suggesting they stemmed from a single episode during Europe's Bronze Age. A flint arrowhead was firmly embedded in one end of the bone, prompting archaeologists to dig a small test excavation that yielded more bones, a bashed-in skull, and a 73-centimeter club resembling a baseball bat. In 1996, an amateur archaeologist found a single upper arm bone sticking out of the steep riverbank-the first clue that the Tollense Valley, about 120 kilometers north of Berlin, concealed a gruesome secret. Within centuries, the entire battle was forgotten. Some bodies were stripped of their valuables and left bobbing in shallow ponds others sank to the bottom, protected from plundering by a meter or two of water. When the fighting was through, hundreds lay dead, littering the swampy valley. Not everyone stood their ground in the melee: Some warriors broke and ran, and were struck down from behind.Īuthor Andrew Curry discusses his story on a major Bronze Age battle on this podcast interview Horses belonging to high-ranking warriors crumpled into the muck, fatally speared. Bronze- and flint-tipped arrows were loosed at close range, piercing skulls and lodging deep into the bones of young men. Struggling to find solid footing on the banks of the Tollense River, a narrow ribbon of water that flows through the marshes of northern Germany toward the Baltic Sea, the armies fought hand-to-hand, maiming and killing with war clubs, spears, swords, and knives. Thousands of warriors came together in a brutal struggle, perhaps fought on a single day, using weapons crafted from wood, flint, and bronze, a metal that was then the height of military technology. The confrontation can't be found in any history books-the written word didn't become common in these parts for another 2000 years-but this was no skirmish between local clans. About 3200 years ago, two armies clashed at a river crossing near the Baltic Sea.
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