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hubie [soylentnews.org] writes:

Little is known of Northern Europe during the Bronze Age and is generally thought as much more primitive, particularly as compared to the civilizations in the Near East and Greece at the time. It took 1000 years for bronze technology to migrate to the region from the Near East. Despite tales depicting great battles as told in Greece and Egypt, there was never any substantial archaeological evidence to support these stories. Evidence uncovered in a dig site north of Berlin has changed that view [sciencemag.org].

Before the 1990s, “for a long time we didn’t really believe in war in prehistory,” DAI’s Hansen says. The grave goods were explained as prestige objects or symbols of power rather than actual weapons. “Most people thought ancient society was peaceful, and that Bronze Age males were concerned with trading and so on,” says Helle Vandkilde, an archaeologist at Aarhus University in Denmark. “Very few talked about warfare.”

Uncovered at the site are skeletons from hundreds of bodies, many showing signs of severe trauma such as embedded arrow heads, fractures, and stab wounds. A lot of the bones were found in dense caches suggesting mass dumping of corpses, and others had apparently sunk into the marsh and were well protected from looters and scavengers. With less than 10% of the area excavated, they estimate that thousands of participants were involved in the battle. These numbers and the types of weapons found suggest that these were not farmer-soldiers who fought part time, but rather organized professional militias.

Tollense looks like a first step toward a way of life that is with us still. From the scale and brutality of the battle to the presence of a warrior class wielding sophisticated weapons, the events of that long-ago day are linked to more familiar and recent conflicts. “It could be the first evidence of a turning point in social organization and warfare in Europe,” Vandkilde says.

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