Tollense Battle Revealed: A Bronze Age Massacre of Merchants & Traders
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- čas přidán 2. 06. 2024
- The Battle of the Tollense Valley was once thought to be Europe’s oldest known battle. But now it is thought it may have been a massacre. Not a clash of organised armies, but a brutal assault on innocent traders and merchants carrying their wares down one of the ancient trade routes of Northern Europe. As always - there's more to this than meets the eye ... let's see if we can dig a bit deeper!
00:00 - Introduction
03:20 - How the Tollense Valley site was discovered
05:43 - Some context
07:12 - First anomaly
07:51 - The remains in the river
09:20 - Material goods
11:46 - Ancient trade routes
13:50 - More evidence
15:29 - Number crunching
18:04 - There weren’t warriors
20:20 - Nor were there warhorses
21:49 - Envisioning the scenario
29:34 - Wrap-up and goodbyes
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Gentlemen, you should ask a polemologist about this reinterpretation. Caravan attacks are associated with larger conflicts (see the career of Muhammad) and massacre is at the top of the conflict escalation spectrum, not the bottom. The only difference between a caravan and an army that you will find in archaeology is the number of armed men related to the pack animals. FWIW full grown horses were still a bit early for real mounted warfare and likely pack animals. Swords were recovered at the site (“Connected Histories: The Dynamics of Bronze Age Interaction & Trade 1500-1100 BC,” Kristiansen and Suchowska-Ducke 2015) and they were still status symbols associated with leadership of a platoon section-sized element (Wileman 2015). It is not surprising to find worn wealth. Men expected to risk their lives will want payment first. For most of human history, most armies were also accompanied by women and children. Trade and war are not opposite activities, as seen in the Viking example. I find the reinterpretation unpersuasive.
Brilliant. Thank you. M.
Sensible comment. It seems very difficult to discern an army from a caravan after looting (and decay of whatever wooden remains such as wagons or boats could have been present). The weapons were loot too.
Well said.
I read there were victims on both sides, and scientists could determine that they came from different places. So i guess that they were relatively equal in strength and not one side far more powerful than the others like robbers against peaceful traders.
There were slaves in the caravan. They came to trade for slaves. I bet it was a rescue mission.
Peaceful Traders set upon a Bronze Age Biker Gang is dangerously close to putting a contemporary spin on a historical context. The "traders" might have been a band of slavers (the martial skeletons) or a war band ripe with booty or the context of The Seven Samurai, communities of people rising up to defeat the bandits. The lack of swords is interesting but could be most any dropped swords were picked up and the few truly lost or damaged not likely found. All that can be safely construed is a large more martial band set upon a large less martial band. It is unwise to take sides or declare who was more likely good and who more likely bad.
They came for slaves.
Also swords aren't battlefield weapons. They are prestige weapons mostly used to showcase power and wealth.
Was it a single event?
@@andywomack3414 I think it likely was.
@@nowthenzen Given some thought, if it was a series of events at the same location there would likely be evidence of that, perhaps from deposition stratigraphy, and would have been noted.
The revised interpretation seems to have its own problems and inconsistencies. For example, the fact that the isotope analysis shows that the slain people came from a wide area is arguably more consistent with an army than it is with a large 'wandering caravan'. Merchants from different places have historically usually travelled with compatriots, rather than strangers, and usually with the goal of returning richer than they left, rather than wandering aimlessly far from home. Travelling in large groups might afford some protection against attack, but it would also drive up local food prices at the places they visited and make the whole enterprise less profitable.
On the other hand, it's actually common for armies to be formed of alliances of different groups, called together for the specific purpose of waging war against others. Any glance at the earliest surviving literature describing warfare includes tales of kings summoning allies and vassals to their service from across wide areas (e.g. the various peoples from around the Aegean who are supposed to have participated in the Trojan War), or of mercenaries fighting battles for pay far from their homelands (e.g. Xenophon and the Ten Thousand). The literary tradition of armies gathered from diverse peoples is probably the main reason Tolkien adopted the trope, and although it's exaggerated, there's solid historical evidence of similar events occurring, e.g. The Crusades, Xerxes' invasion of Greece. The presence of the high-quality bronze goods could as easily be the result of war booty seized through raiding, or a treasury for buying supplies or paying mercenaries. Likewise, juvenile horses could easily also be war booty- livestock raiding was an absolutely crucial objective of warfare in many cultures for thousands of years (e.g. The Tain Bo Cuailnge aka the 'Cattle Raid of Cooley').
Historically a lot of the bloodiest parts of battles happened during routs. When defeated soldiers were fleeing for their lives they could be easily slaughtered by pursuing enemies, particularly when cavalry was involved (as appears to be the case at Tollense). Women and children were known to follow armies until relatively recently in history, a phenomenon known as 'camp followers'. They could sometimes be targeted in the event of a defeat, e.g. the Parliamentarian victors at the Battle of Naseby massacred a large group of Welsh women who had been accompanying the Royalist army in the mistaken belief that they were Irish. Swords were valuable items, not everybody could afford them. There's evidence of clubs being used to inflict many of the injuries on the dead and they were found at the site, so they may have been the more common close-combat weapons of the time. Also, being valuable, swords would presumably have been picked up by the victors when they were found, so absence of evidence can't be taken as evidence of absence.
A slaughter of raiders fleeing after a defeat seems just as consistent with the evidence as a massacre of innocent merchants, if not more so. The new perspective is interesting, but it seems far from conclusive.
Yep I agree
I think one of the reasons why they could be from different places is that the people doing the carrying were war slaves, and some long distance marriages weren't out of the question either. Also, armies on the move need baggage trains also so it might have been something like that. Caravan theory is nice, but I don't think it's the whole picture still nor is the army theory.
They were slave traders.
It was an expedition to acquire slaves.
Is it really one big massacre? Sounds like a place where a bunch of outlaws laid in wait killing successive groups of travelers over several years - throwing their bodies in the river and waiting for the next lot.
Surely the correct explanation rests heavily on how you define a "battle". A pirate attack on a treasure ship is in reality a "battle", but the purpose is most decidedly plunder. An attack to acquire land, resources and slaves etc is also a battle, but is more "political" and will leave less obvious traces. The confirmation of the presence of dead women and children and saleable livestock, certainly makes this aggression look much more like a well organised bandit raid.
The instance of female and child remains always raises questions. Yes, it is evidence that this is probably a merchant or habitually-traveling-as-a-whole-lifestyle group. However, I wonder about the specific females found. What was their age range? Because women have a 'market value' beyond simple labor as slaves - who were the women killed? How many more females might there have been if stealing them for use or re-sale was part of the equation? This estimate might be affected by an examination of the children as well. Were the dead children marketable age/condition for sale? If they were, perhaps they were not interested in re-selling/selling persons at all. This is not just about the fate of the survivors, it is about the motive/organization/life-style of the killers.
Even into the 18th century armies had followers, non combatants either attached to the army or following the army for trade, such as prostitutes, cooks, etc. Manny of these would be women with children.
Most tribal armies had their families on waggons with them. They acted as a support unit for the fighters.
Look at watling street to see what happens when an army tries to retreat, but the carts and waggons of their families hinder them.
I think, the dead women and children were the families of the defeated side, killed in the chaotic massacre when they all tried to run over the narrow bridge at once.
If the battle was fought at the bridge from the beginning, we would see more dead from bohemia, but the battle must have been fought on flat ground and the natives got defeated by the men from bohemia. They tried to flee and were killed at the river. If the defenders were on their own side of the bridge, they could have retreated when battle got ill, while the attackers could not follow as they had to cross the bridge first.
Great installment. I love it when you return to the same sites with new information.
One is also reminded of the great immigrant treks through the interior of the United States, where they needed armed escorts from the US Cavalry to get through hostile territories.
The circling of wagons would have been helpful, alas the river meandered offering interrupted lines of communications. As a useful metric on the logistics, we can make a comparison with the Burke and Wills expedition of August 1860. They set out to cross south to north through the interior of Australia. Albeit on a smaller scale they took 18 men 24 Camels and 21 tons of supplies, as It was their intention to be self sufficient. It all ended badly and one can read about it elsewhere.
The knights Templar where also armed escorts for pilgrims.
Nah, they were in the slave trade, and the locals said no more.
But swords are expensive, and dropped would not wash down a river with a floating body. And if all dropped by a crossing would have been worth fishing out at the time.
Bodies of Viking rader groups in UK often find they come from wide areas not just one district, Not unknown in Northern tribes that men would travel to join a distant warlord. No army could ever move without camp followers, An army needs financing and that was often by collecting booty into Napoleonic times.
Still fits battle for me.
And in addition it is known that traders follow armies, it is good for business, fortunes were made in the American civil war for instance doing just that.
And later into the 18th and 19th century by Britain. Apparently our British Museum is stuffed with the stuff.
@@helenamcginty4920 There is not an army in history that did not take stuff, for instance more money was being sent into America just after the second world war than was being sent out to pay the army.
I think it's possible, but the arguments here are not terribly convincing to me. If a caravan had been attacked by raiders, why would they have left so many valuable objects? The presence of women and children is still easily explicable if we consider this to have been a battle - women and children very often die in wars. The fact that some of the men had injuries which might suggest they were warriors in fact supports the conclusion that this was indeed a battle - the explanation that these were 'caravan guards' is simply being employed to fit a presupposition that there was a caravan in the first place, for which there isn't any hard evidence.
It does not make sense that women and children would be there. But it also does not make sense that bronze trade goods were left.
@@StaalBurgher0 I think it does make sense actually. Armies throughout history have frequently made use of civilian baggage trains, which have often employed women, and which have sometimes included children, right up to the 19th century. Nomadic invasions (such as those which took place during the later history of the Roman Empire) included the entire civilian community of a nation or tribe - women, children, the elderly, etc.
In fact I would venture to argue that the presence of remains of women and children make it *more* likely that this was a battle. There's not much reason for a caravan of merchants to take women and children with them. Typically they would be left behind to look after a travelling merchant's home while he was away.
@@patavinity1262 fair enough
@@StaalBurgher0women and children followed armies for thousands of years. It’s only recently, since around 1880 that civilians stopped.
If one group was a bunch of warrior nomads. They’d have all their women and children. If a tribal group was migrating, their warriors would have their entire families with them.
Good one guys :) as always the more we learn the more things change and new questions arise :) very interesting and intriguing as always :)
Interesting and entreteining as always! Thancks!
I wonder how many people were taken away to be slaves.
I bet they came for slaves. It was a mission to stop the slavery.
why?
Fascinating, thank you.
I'm here for the news about old stuff. 🤩
Fascinating!
Very interesting! It does make the battle idea not so likely. Still, if we look back through history what we could see as military actions were more often than not aimed at "soft" target. Most soldiers want to stack the odds in their favour before commiting to battle. And more often than not, they want loot. So while not a battle it could still be seen as an example of calculated warfare. If you are going to attack a 140+ strong caravan that is also escorted by professional warriors you do not want to take any chances. It is still a risky operation. Also, even if many of the traders are not warriors, I think it is not necessarily the case that they did not know how to defend themselves in some way. So the attacker would still have to take them into account.
Since it was not just about staging a swift hit and run ambush but most likely a determined effort to defeat the caravan totally and taking their goods, preferably without taking to many losses themselves, the attacking force was probably sizeable. At least equal in number or at least say double the amount of potential fighters in the caravan.
So the attack was most likely prepared and planned. The attacking force would have taken up position well before the caravan came into range. Most likely they would have had scouts out to keep an eye on the caravans progress without altering the caravan. The site might have been selected due to the fact that caravans usually went that way, since the terrain restricts movement. And as the caravan was crossing the causeway they had almost no way of getting away. A perfect place for an ambush.
The fact that it was a perfect place should however have been obvious to many of the members of the caravan. So either the attacker counted on them being prepared by bringing in an overwhelming force or they had taken great precautions not to alert the caravan and maybe even having some turncoats in the caravan saying everything was nice and shiny.
A caravan might have expected that brigands would try an get at their goods. But maybe they underestimated the threat or this was indeed and exceptional even, like the massacre at Sandby borg. Someone had planned and prepared and sent in professionals.
A "caravan" of 140+ is no caravan anymore, it is a threat for any local community.
A commercial caravan with so many people make no sense in my opinion.
I am puzzled. This river currently meanders through flat lands. What was its course in the bronze age? Also was the area wooded? Forrested? Or were river margins marshy scrub?
Where would an attacking force hide?
Now there is a wide flood plain.
humm. Really enjoy your bringing this to my attention - I sure think we have a lot of speculation on this find(s). Thanks!
140 or more corpses? Perhaps this was a group of bandits that worked the same river crossing over a number of years. Perhaps it wasn't a single incident. Also, why do we assume it was a caravan? Why would they not be travelling by boat?
Interesting point. Mugging of small travelling groups over time stripping the valuables and throwing the bodies in the river to dispose of them fits the evidence. But there were valuables found among the bones which might weaken the argument. Also, no coins found which supports the mugging argument. Also explains the different origins of the victims. I might add that this site is near Viking territory, maybe this is what they did before they discovered boats.
The suggestion is that the bronze goods also found were trade goods. Large numbers of traders wouldn't have travelled by river in not terribly big boats. They probably came overland along one of the trade routes.
@@andrewwelsh6638did they have coins in the bronze age? I think not. Barter was the way to go.
@@helenamcginty4920 - Except that the amber trade routes (the ones relevant here) did follow the rivers all they could (and the same was true all the way to modern times: barges are faster, especially without proper roads, and load a lot). This is a lesser river but surely the location fits a place where boats would load/unload to the land leg of the route.
@@helenamcginty4920there were no coins till the 8th century bc.
Thank you.
Great. A fascinating discussion. I find it interesting that I suspect people's favourite history periods influence their interpretations possibly.
Thanks for that update - seems a much more practical and likely narrative than the greatest battle of the ages. Opportunistic thugs have always been lurking in the shadows and I guess things were no different back then.
They came for slaves and the locals were having none of it.
Good evening from the beautiful SF Bay Area. How interesting, I knew nothing of this event. Thanks.
Curiously, if you read the Iliad and the Odyssey, it is solidly an Urnfield Culture setting. That culture did not reach Greece or Anatolia (contacts perhaps but no more) The Tellense Valley was Urnfield at the time of both the event under discussion and the Trojan War.
This battle allegedly took place in the 13th century BC. Right around the Mediterranean Bronze Age collapse. Connected? Did the whole world collapse?
Yay, here are the flirtatious Prehistory Guys 😊
The German "J" btw is pronounced like an English "Y", as in yard, if you don't mind me telling you so.
Don't mind at all. It's all a learning curve 😊 M.
How many of these sites have been found & mislabelled ? It will be interesting to keep watching for more reassessments. ( sorry spelling)
Fascinating stuff!, thank you. I wonder if there had been some sort of trade dispute/double-dealing going on that led to the massacre? Lets face it, business is business and when deals go awry, people get seriously hurt.
They took the wrong slaves.
Kinda sad how nothing ever changes isn’t it?
I visited Tollensetal last year. Had a great time walking around and exploring. I’ve read about the massacre hypothesis, and I really hope it’s wrong as that’s a lot less cool 😅
Could the lack of weapons among the dead be attributed to the victors recovering swords etc at the end of the battle, as these would have been very valuable items?
You'd think that whoever attacked the caravan would have taken everything valuable.
They probably did. As I said, the bodies in the river would have been less easy to take from. Same goes for the possibility of being scavenged. M.
Imagine the bodies fell into the river. All the commotion has the water muddy, bodies mashed into mud....
Maybe running away people start tossing stuff to run faster....
This was not on a concrete freeway with manicured lawns around it.
@@ThePrehistoryGuys ... remembering that historically living people are 'valuables'. Slavery has a long, widespread and multi-faceted history.
@@stripeytawney822 But the swords being larger were not that difficult to retrieve. It figures.
Whether this was a Massacre of traders or an actual battle, the point remains that a large enough group to Massacre them functioned as a whole. It still m implies one side was organized. Another possibility is that a group migrating into the area were opposed by those already living there. The fact that valuable materials were found would indicate that theft was not very organized, which would be strange if raiders were ambushing a trade caravan. So what actually happened no one can actually be known.
One thing that really sticks out to me is the military planning and tactics that went into this, it indicates one of two things happening to me.
That the attacking force was smaller, though better armed, hence the attack in a confined space. The caravan may have been better defended than the number of recovered weapons show. Swords for example would have been a prized spoil of war. The absence of swords is not evidence of absence of swords, some of those attacking must have died too.
Secondly, the caravan realising they couldn't outrun the attacking force made a stand at a choke point, thereby negating the superiority of said attacking force.
Food for thought gentlemen, and makes me wonder what lies under my feet as I trample over Dartmoor.
But they failed to pick up the gold - possibly just as valuable as the swords.
@@alangknowles There could have been a lot more gold and what's left is the spillage in the confusion of fighting.
Later battle sites when armour was way more metal used, have been hard to pinpoint as valuables get removed, only items in mud banks or the river itself, are left.
The locals didn't like these slavers.
That almost no swords have been found could be because the winner took them.
I like your comparison to ships. If they were passing through scattered settlements along a known trade route, wouldn't the likeliest concentration of force necessary to take them out come from another, rival merchant caravan using the same route and turning pirate?
Are we sure it was a single "ambush"? Might it instead have been a series of raids/ambush over a year or two or more, with the bodies building up in number over a relatively brief time?
It seems, given some of the artifacts found on site, that if robbery was the motive, then the booty taken was less than the whole lot.
no wagons: wagons were not really popular for freight until there were good roads in the XVIIIth century :)
most freight went on barges on rivers or on the back of animals even very recently
We don't know. The location fits a place where land and riverine legs of a trade route would merge, or close to it. Land legs on beasts alone would limit the amount ported a lot but then of course human porters (and not just beasts of burden and wagons) were a thing until very recently. Maybe most of those massacred were actually porters? Else where are the corpses of the beasts of burden?
@@LuisAldamizbut we are talking bronze age here. Not the heyday of the great silk road routes. Mind you I've no idea how many traders were in those caravans either. 😅
@@helenamcginty4920 - I never mentioned silk and I was actually thinking of something very Bronze Age-ish: the amber routes (which are in fact even older, from the Copper Age even). Not sure if Northern Europe exported other stuff like furs or whatever but the merchandise that archaeologists mostly relate to that area from the Netherlands to Poland is amber, which even today is gathered in the beaches of that region.
In any case long distance trading was a thing in Europe since what is usually called the Chalcolithic (in Britain sometimes called Late Neolithic) which (much as Neolithic is not really defined by polished stone or even pottery anymore but by farming/herding) is commonly not defined by the presence of copper and other soft metals (gold, silver) metallurgy but by greater levels of social and economic complexity rather, which actually manifest often as long distance trade routes: since the trade of honey-colored flintstone cores from Grand Pressigny to the amber and ivory routes that converge from various directions in Southern Iberia since c. 3000 BCE, including the thriving trade of the Bell Beaker period, some of whose characteristic artifacts, the gold spirals found in many burials, were probably "cash": people probably went around with that (either as jewelry or in a purse) and cut off small pieces as needed with one of those copper knives (or even the teeth maybe in some cases). For safety they surely traveled in groups, armed with bow and arrow, and belonged to a extensive "cultural" network that in the Bell Beaker period spanned all Western Europe from Moravia to the Ocean, from Denmark to North Italy, trascending the ethnic divide between Vasconics and Indoeuropeans at the Rhine (but only had fortified towns that we know in South Portugal and Almería, the first Western civilizations, Bell Beaker culture as such probably originated in Iberia anyhow).
In the Bronze Age such long distance trade continued, first in parameters similar to Bell Beaker era but in the Late Bronze Age, roughly from the date of this battle (c. 1300 BCE) there was the expansion of Urnfield culture (Celto-Italics approx.), from what is now South and Central Germany, Austria, Czechia, German Switzerland, etc. What I once called "the peace of a thousand years" was over and I do wonder how this battle and massacre (both surely) fits in that context. The location fits with a proto-Germanic ethno-culural context but the Celto-Italics (or some related group of Urnfield culture) were close by anyhow, so I suspect that these two ethnicities were the ones involved, although it could also be intestine conflict of the Germanics only.
The variety of trade and the great distances that goods covered during that period, and what appears to be a caravan of merchants of widespread origin--tends to bring to mind the period of the Hanseatic League and the great merchant fairs.
Was this an earlier period with similar conditions?
@@helenamcginty4920 the Bronze Age saw trade routes linking Egypt with Ireland which saw consistent traffic over centuries :) ... I know of those because like 30 years ago I had to do a term paper on Egyptian glass beads finds in Europe and most finds were strung in a line going from Egypt to Southern Italy and Sicily to Southern France to Brittany to England, Cornwall and ended in Ireland. The Bronze Age had its own "silk routes", like the one bringing tin from Afghanistan to the Mediterranean sea. I don't see why there would not be one linking the Baltic Sea to Italy or Britain or some other place. ... Maybe they did not have tin or copper to export but they did have furs and amber, and furs were a hot commodity up to the XIX century.
Weather was significantly warmer than now during the earlier Holocene (barring a few dips here and there), don't know about the bronze age but during the late Neolithic population density was high, not as high as now but definitely comparable with medieval times (when it was colder :-) ), there is a study in Nature from a few years ago (palinology) showing large parts of Czechia were very likely deforested, with forests being replaced with coppiced or pollarded plantations, and the rest cultivated. In the East (Cucuteni-Tripolie area for example) outside of the mountains the habitation density was high, with a village of a few hundred people every 4-5 kilometers, and on the Don they had a couple of very very large cities (possibly 40k people).
The "stick and stone" technology during the Neolithic and Bronze age was not that primitive, it was almost as effective as metal technology from later only tools or weapons needed maintenance more often, and stick-and-stone tools were produced and used until iron became very cheap like 200 years ago. When the Spanish conquistadors met the copper-age Aztecs they were first severely trounced, and only won by finding lots and lots of copper-age allies locally who were tired of being culled yearly for the sake of Aztec rituals. Mexico would have ended the same as India with the new masters being assimilated or replaced had it not been for the cocoliztli epidemic, before that the Spanish were in charge only because they were the compromise option and the local factions trusted them more than they trusted each other.
I have slept all the way through it.. Trying again with coffee this time :)
how didnt all the ads wake u XDDDD
@@catansfr3532 adblockers :D
There seems to have been an awful lot of material goods left behind, if indeed this was a case of a raid on a merchant caravan. Were all these valuable items left behind found in the river channel, rather than in the graves? I’d also be interested to know if the bodies of those buried were left with their adornments on them, as I didn’t quite catch that but if it was mentioned in the podcast.
No expert here but I just wonder about a couple of things. The quantity of valuable objects that were not taken away by the robbers seems rather high, also is it certain that this is the remains of a single attack ? Bodies are scattered over a very wide area and bodies are from multiple areas. Could it be that this was simply a favoured area of ambush on a popular trading route by a particular raiding band ? I would expect over just a shortish period because I suspect a particularly dangerous area would soon be avoided (or only crossed with a very heavily armed guard.) making it less attractive for bandit bands
1. Depending on the accuracy of the dating, it's possible this wasn't one event, but a very dangerous pass where highwaymen robbed travelers regularly over many years.
2. Why there, where no cities were? (a) Fewer witnesses, (b) if you attack someone crossing a bridge/narrow pass they have nowhere to go.
3. Why no signs scavenging? The bodies were probably dumped in the river to hide them. And maybe weighted down.
4. The metal spirals were probably owned by a traveling craftsman. Thicker ones could've had multiple uses, but thin ones might have been for soldering jewelry. Solder is still sold in rolls today.
Would those attacked run into the river to escape?
Rather than a caravan, this could be an actual market place. People from all the diverse areas to the South came together to trade, but were attacked by a local army.
Was the Tollense event singular? Could these remains be the result of a series of events over a number of years?
Gosh, we Germans massacred people before we even became Germans. We are so..... German.
Seriously, this is fascinating. Thank you so much.
Interesting that so many bodies are found in the river and not robbed. It gives me the impression the violence was not necessarily for material wealth, but rather a conflict over the trespassing of cultural boundaries. If it was well planned and executed, given the location itself as a perfect place of ambush along with the evidence of the number bodies, why would so much material wealth be lost to the river? Unless it may not have been the main cause for the premeditated slaughter. I get the feeling that the attacking force had the means and numbers to just halt the caravan and rob it while not risking casualties on its own side. So, why risk their own unless of course they had been offended or afraid in some way? Just an idea.
Swords then were phenomenally valuable - they would all be picked up if they were present.
They left metals including gold. Also valuable.
The approach of such a large body would have been known days ahead of them. The bridge was a choke point. A small group of armed men could stop the caravan there, while their comrades ambushed from concealment behind the caravan. Trapped against the river, there was nowhere to retreat, and they were driven right into it.
Did anyone analyze where the horses came from?
Not having all the data, would it be possible that the remains were deposited over a short period of time, say months? If a band of thieves were to ambush small groups as they traversed the crossing, could this explain the finds?
If a migrating tribe were attacked the non-warrior/civilian class of the tribe would be interpreted as a group of merchants/traders since that merchant class was integrated with the baggage train. This might still be a battle and the bodies we know about might simply represent a late stage of the battle where the warriors had been killed and the enemy now fell upon the unguarded civilians. The main body of the warrior class may have been at a nearby location where they had been deployed to guard the crossing for the civilians.
Well even in a lost battle swords, being very expensive would more likely be policed up and carried off by the winner.
Great video but what about the "winners" taking anything and everything of value off the battlefield, if it was a battle including weapons, as is widely attested in later history. In regard of civilians being found at rhe scene this again does not rule out a battle, later cultures took civilians to watch battles on occasion, an example would be the celts(using the term generally). Horses were not used as cavalry in the bronze age at least not in any numbers but they were used as a food source, so potentially one for the trade not battlefield theory
So a flint arrow could penetrate bone! How was it projected?
Swords have always been, as far as I know, specialty weapons for professional leader class fighters. It takes a lot of work to make, and lots of training time to be proficient. Farmers, traders, etc would not have the time. Spears are easier to make, easier to use, especially in shield-wall formations.
A sword would be far too valuable to leave behind. They'd be booty for whomever bested its owner.
Any possibility these merchants and traders also dealt in the slave trade ???
But where were they going? Were they just going to set up seaside and wait for shoppers? There is a chance that there are the remains of a gardia a bit farther up the causeway.
Even if the attackers were warriors and only a few warriors accompanied the Karasvane, some of the attackers will still have been killed. Where are the bodies? Have any bodies been found that come from the Tollense-area?
What surprises me: As far as I know, there is no legend about this event, although it was certainly a raid with fabulous booty that was told for generations to come.
Great knees Rupert 😅
A commercial carawan with so many people? Even today with our high population density it would be rather implausible to consider a commercial track to have so many participants.
Spiral ingots are easy enough. All you do is drill a hole in a log and pour molten metal in. I do much the same to recast solder scraps. Instead of splitting a log, I clamp 2 pieces of lumber together, same difference tho. Then wrap around anything. Snip mine down and throw them in a box, I don't have to carry them with me.
An early smelting furnace exits into whatever is clever also, you could just draw lines in the earth and fill the troughs. I could tell in person how they were made if the tarnish doesn't soften distinguishing marks to much or they had a secondary "machining" operation.
I am both interested and curious about what happened at Tollense. If there was a massacre of people gathered at a trading post, how is it that almost all the skeletal parts found are from young men? The fact that only a small part of the supposed battlefield has been excavated may be the reason why most of them were found near the watercourse. This is absolutely not questioning, just interested and curious
Because traders and merchants weren't women?
has any thought been given to possibility of an army baggage train and its loot
We tend to overestimate the distance between the Adria and the Amber-Coast. It's only 32 days on foot. That is nothing. Given the amount of Amber and bronze that was traded these caravans must have happened more often. And as it happens, occasionally some traders fall on the bad side of some local power, disagreeing on prices, lodgings or tribute. These people messed with somebody powerful who could and would, and did not care on what his neighbours down the line would think about him interrupting their supply chain. And there must have been a chance of other caravans passing unmolested, or there would be much more and longer conflict in the region. The caravan being the starting-point or the climax of a period of conflicts among the locals.
If there is no signs of further warfare in the region, it was a personal matter of some local warlords and the caravanleaders. If there is a personal insult involved it is more likely that there are also made religious vows, that prevent the plundering of the goods, wowing the posessions of the insultors to the gods. And at least in the Aunjetice-culture there seem to have been military vows and ritual deposits of weapons between a 'warlord' and his warriors. Meaning it was a 'honour-driven' culture. It was less about the belongings of the caravan. Ths was nasty and personal, otherwise one would'nt kill young horses, women and children. And the suffered insult must have been in a way, that the people down the line saw the point, and did not war on the one that killed 'their' tradingpartners.
I earlier said that a migrating group that included farmers, who were used to hard labor would also account for for people had carried heavy materials or done heavy labor.
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I think gold spirals made from materials of value were used as currency and not just decorative
Slave rebellion, the first Spartacus.
It's a bit unclear at 7:25 if you are actually claiming that no swords = clearly no warriors, or are just reporting previous interpretations. Because throughout most of early history warriors and foot soldiers were equipped with spears or polearms as their primary war weapon. Horseman usually used lances. Swords were usually reserved for high status individuals. In other words not every warrior had a sword.
145 individuals, probably just part of all the dead. So many people sounds more like an army than an trading party. Mercenaries could come from many areas. Armies often bring families and they bring a "war chest" of valuables. This could be the remains of the looted defeated army's baggage train.
this was a time of great movement. just think, a very rich caravan heading to a new destination. what causes people to move is famine or plague. but if you had a raiding army on a peasant caravan, they would take the all the goods; wagons, food, useful people, all tin, bronze, gold, wood and etc... but the use of stone arrow head, showed that they were a remant of unsophisticated people that lived off the land, or a group of refugees from famine. they might have been afraid of water, the people of the caravan ran to the water to escape them got stuck in the mud and were used as target practice. the horses are the confusing part, at that time a horse was the ultimate prize. why were not taken? add in the sticks, could be walking sticks for the elderly. if on land, the amount of wild animals is a limited bunch due to huma population, so if there were a thousand bodies the animals would have stuffed themselves for several days. i have noticed that bodies of birds, squirrels and so forth, after a few days are left to the worms. so animals have a cut off point of eating rotten flesh, probably because the flesh is full of worms
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Very interesting. I guess I didn't know much about the original story but a massacre does make sense given a closer look at the evidence. A couple of things stand out to me and perhaps it has already been discussed. I am curious if genetic analysis would provide more clues regarding the origins or mixes of the people involved? Bronze age means different things at different times for different people in different regions. Clearly there were cultures with wide spread trading networks all across Europe by that time. Perhaps people got pick up along the way and made a lives of it. But what struck me was the people being attacked carried bronze age items while weapons used against them showed signs of Neolithic? Somehow this reminds of a "Little Bighorn" sort of event. Perhaps there were still remnants of Neolithic type populations that struck out at the changing times? Don't know if that is true but it could make a good story.
Slave traders. They came with slaves to get more slaves. They were not welcome.
Gypsy's & Vagabonds, disturbing establishment.
Too many almost infinite number of undeterminable factors in play to ever really answer all the questions that can be brought up. Ultimately a fun and yes interesting game trying to imagine who and what happened but that’s about all. But a good example how a large dose of humility is required in this field.
It occurs to me that a "crossing" is a perfect ambush point. But... according to the new theory... why were valuables left behind if theft was the motivation?
Interesting how this massacre took place during the general bronze age collapse in the Eastern Mediterranean. What was the climate doing in that part of the world at the time?
10:48 Could it have been a caravan of families immigrating? Certainly if relocating for a new long-term home, these people would have brought with them their valuables and goods. This would also account for the number of individuals, women and children.
One interesting point is that this caravan massacre event in North Europe coincides with the Bronze Age Collapse in the Eastern Mediterranean. Perhaps the rampaging barbarian hordes were not only sailing across the sea to attack civilization but also spreading overland in the European mainland.
I would note that mayhaps those were not rampaging barbarian hordes but remains of kingdoms with a high organization and structure.
I always thought it was a battle for control of the river to take goods down to Greece between 2 peoples, im guessing they had some defensive weapons for the journey. The battle is on the onset of the collapse of the bronze age so did the climate make all previous allegiances null and void and people thought they had safe passage but they where led into a trap. What is also interesting is the size of people along the trade routes, you can draw a line from the Balkans all the way up into Scandinavia and these are some really tall people that make most people seem small. Not so much here in Yorkshire im 6'1 and i often feel small walking around the supermarket but these people and their marriage alliances has probably sown the seeds to make these people really big...
Greece? The trade routes (amber routes would be relevant here surely) may at times reached as far as Greece but it was not a primary destination at such an old time (1300 BCE, time of Urnfield culture expansion, roughly Celto-Italics, which also expanded northwards but not directly as far as Mecklemburg). These Celto-Italics would have trade routes but Greece was only one of the ultimate destinations: Italy, SE France, broadly the Danube-Balcanic area and even the Black Sea coasts were also destinations of the amber trade by land-river routes, while a marine route reached to Iberia.
Otherwise not in disagreement, except that more direct evidence would be needed to back up your claim of "tall people". Notice that the tallest people in Europe nowadays are the Dutch and they used to be rather short just some centuries ago (and they're not the only people who have changed average height, possibly because of improved nutrition).
@@LuisAldamizyour point about height is a good one. I live in Andalucia and todays young people are as tall as the average in the UK where im from. But their parents and especially grandparents are far shorter. They lived through the privations of the civil war and collective punishments for years after.
@@helenamcginty4920 - And a lot more before that, Andalusia has been essentially a colony since Roman times (except for the Cordoba Muslim period, when it was its own thing -- earlier one has to go to Tartessos, really to find a self-ruled and prosperous Andalusia). If you read for example Miguel Hernández' poem "El Niño Yuntero" (the yoker boy), which is pre-fascism, you probably can understand some of that. Even today Andalusia is basically latifundia: a rich country owned by too few people.
Anyway, a more remarkable case was that of Galicia, which used to have the shortest people of all Spain and a few decades later had the tallest ones in the younger generation.
I must also say that in my little incursions on this issue at European level I found Brits are generally not taller than Spaniards, especially the women are in the short range at European level (Britain is not a country of tall people at all, unlike Scandinavia, the Netherlands and Germany, at least by the available online statistics. It's not a strict north-south pattern in any case: the shortest Europeans are (from memory) Bulgarians, Finnish, French and Hungarians, while the tallest ones also include Serbo-Croats, with most Mediterranean countries being quite average anyhow.
It was a slave mission.
Given the diversity of ppl in the main group and its central position in germany,could it have been the market place i.e. people came from miles around to meet and trade. I could see the raiders attacking a market and ppl being herded into the river and cornered by the steep bank to the west of the river. The wagons could have been bogged down and too difficult to recover.
The bronze and tin spirals look like they have been wound around some perishable material, the tin spirals look like they could be used for fasteners or similar.
I'm not convinced that 'we now know what this was/wasn't'. The lack of swords does not make the slain group 'traders' at all, swords are prize posessions to be looted.
Plus we still do not know who were the victors, or if the other group wasn't among the slain as well. I mean, the 'locals vs strangers' must remain an asumption.
A caaravan is p[osible but it's still 'an image in your head', this is interpretation as much as the 'two armies colliding' is interpretation.
Imagine the bandits that followed Mansa Musa on his hajj..
It was a battle, they were the losers who were dumped in the river. swords etc were taken away by the victors. Archaeologists need to change their minds about their biggest finds so that they can write new books and do new tours with a story they havent told before.
4:14 What kind of force would be necessary to sink an arrowhead that deep into flesh and bone?!
No particularly great force or weapon would be required. People made very very good bows back then just as they did later. So an average bow of the time period would easily do the job. Even an atlatl could do the same.
A caravan would be expected to pay for right of way. A jealous competing power might raid the caravan to force traversal through their own territory. Might explain why loot was left behind.
The other people, who didn't go into the river, might have been taken as slaves.
Maybe it was simply small groups of travelers who came across some trolls when they wanted to cross the river? that could be why they were from all over.
Ohh! What big mikes you both have.
I listened to your original one, and also twice through this and I have to say I am not hearing anything compelling to decide the question of "massacre" vs. "battle"; nor do I hear any compelling distinction between these terms. In North American history a massacre usually means the side that writes the histories lost (for once) and a battle means that they won. Otherwise there's not much difference, even when we have "all" the facts. (We never really do.) Perhaps the king's concubine made off with all the household wealth, harem, children and slaves and they were run down by the king's guard? Or it was a tax collector raid? Those are as plausible as the explanations being offered. It's a battle because numbers of people died violently. Calling anyone here "traders" or the event a "massacre" is chest-deep in conjecture. But I still like your show.
Maybe they weren't a merchant caravan but instead a migrating tribal group that was attacked by the local inhabitants? They might have had trade goods just because they had craftsmen who carried their raw materials with them before producing finished products?
This battle I have never heard of, but gives credence to my theory of the collapse of the Bronze age. It was a peasant up rising of all the bronze age countries. It was a steam roll effect. The farmers and the herdsman's that rose up against the elites and the educated. The peasants killed everything right down the scribes. And that is why the written word was lost. The peasants hated everything society represented. And remember the Greeks called it the age of Hero's. And Hero's are ordinary men doing great things. The sea people were a Sea of People from all corners of the peasants. The only reason Egypt survived was the Niles delta and that sea going vessels have a deeper draft and got stuck in the mud. Plus the delta gave the Egyptians places to ambush the army of peasants. Wouldn't surprise me if you found man made rock obstructions in the Nile delta. But even the Egyptians lost control of large areas of land like the lower Egypt in that peasant uprising. Proving that a well paid army can't stand up to angry peasants. The big battle between the haves and the have nots. Sound famillure to today?
Are you a Russian/Chinese propagandist? Lol I have to ask, bc this is a common comment when we find something fascinating in history. "It must have been bc of Capitalists!"
@@brianwilliams1281 Nope it all is using common logic. First evidence writing stopped after this. Who had writing, the rich and powerful with education. So obviously the rich and powerful educated were wiped out. Who ever the sea people were they even hated the scribes. And killed them too. This battle was between someone who really hated merchant, who were the educated and had scribes. And they were Massacred, that takes a lot of anger not to take any slaves. Homer called this time the age of hero's, now hero's are individuals, not organized armies. So these hero's had to the unorganized masses, ones who stood out in the may lay of battle. So to me the answer is it was like a big Frech Revolution and anyone connected with the establishment died. That is the only answer that fits, but if you got something better/ Please enlighten me. But to has to fit all the criteria and the out come.
@@brianwilliams1281Then you have to also look at the different uniforms of the sea people. That means it is people who have joined together as one with one common enemy. They have identified 9 different uniforms in reliefs from Egypt. Now since there were no known "civilizations" that could mount that big of an army to lay sedge to a fortress, remember there were no sedge engine at the time like catapults and massive wooden structure that could be rolled up against the walls to get over them. It was just man power at that time that forced the collapse of the cities. Who else would have that unlimited man power so angry to sacrifice themselves getting over that wall but farmers, miners and other peasants. As they moved from one country to another more angry peasants joined them and took armor from the soldier of the army of their country. No this had to be a LARGE group of people with a common goal that weren't educated and really hated the establishment. But if that hurts your feeling about the down side of capitalism, I don't give a dam. And no I'm an American.
That is the only people that could have done this. No group of people in the eastern Mediterranean was even close to mount such a big army. Remember this an age before sedge engines. So it was all done with man power and that would take a lot of people. As they conquered each civilization their armies grew with new peasants. They also didn't inhabit those cities they destroyed those cities. A foreign army would have inhabited, only real anger would destroy those cities. And yes I'm an American and if my theory upsets your capitalism, I don't give a dam. And in the end the ball is in your court. And yes I believe we are heading that way again.
@@brianwilliams1281Oh and by the way how the H did the sea people get to Babylonia since there are no connection to the Mediterranean's sea? Did they row across the sand? Do you see how stupid your answer is?
No swords were found and therefore it cannot be a battle?
Why? Isnt it rather plausible to assume that something valueable like a sword was looted by the victorious side?
This has brought to mind the Old English poem. The Battle of Maldon. Where an Anglo Saxon earl played fair (silly man) and let the invading Vikings cross the causeway from the river island to the shore to do battle instead of picking them off as they were on the narrow causeway.
Result Norway 1 England 0.
That club looks more like a croquet mallet than a hockey stick.
I doubt they were used for leisure pastime participatetion in this instance
@@chrissheppard3023 I agree, but the analogy was morphological rather than functional.
Were the remains found just those of people who ended up in the river, while the other remains were recovered or otherwise deposed off? Were all the human remains of local people those of likely bandits - no women or children among them?
So because the horses were juveniles, you think the horse bones belonged to horses that were meant to be traded?
But why were they killed? Why would robbers attack a caravan and kill the valuable young horses instead of stealing them?
Little details like absence of swords? Really? Thats your argument? You never heard about warriors fighting with other weapons? For example: spearmen? Swords in particular were very rare throughout all history. Even in high middle ages they were not common and here we are talking about time when swords were only "recently" invented.
A caravan of merchants is not that different from an army's baggage train.
The swords were taķen away by the victors, even I can get that.