Angela
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I saw this on the Dienekes blogspot about a recent Science article:
Slaughter at the bridge: Uncovering a colossal Bronze Age battle
http://www.dienekes.blogspot.com/2016/03/bronze-age-war-in-northern-germany.html
"About 3200 years ago, two armies clashed at a river crossing near the Baltic Sea. 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. 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.
...
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. 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. The artifacts all were radiocarbon-dated to about 1250 B.C.E., suggesting they stemmed from a single episode during Europe’s Bronze Age.
...
Northern Europe in the Bronze Age was long dismissed as a backwater, overshadowed by more sophisticated civilizations in the Near East and Greece. Bronze itself, created in the Near East around 3200 B.C.E., took 1000 years to arrive here. But Tollense’s scale suggests more organization—and more violence—than once thought. “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. 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. "
"Ancient DNA could potentially reveal much more: When compared to other Bronze Age samples from around Europe at this time, it could point to the homelands of the warriors as well as such traits as eye and hair color. Genetic analysis is just beginning, but so far it supports the notion of far-flung origins. DNA from teeth suggests some warriors are related to modern southern Europeans and others to people living in modern-day Poland and Scandinavia. “This is not a bunch of local idiots,” says University of Mainz geneticist Joachim Burger. “It’s a highly diverse population.”
My first thought was that perhaps this was a battle between remnants of the MN culture groups and newer more steppe like groups, but wouldn't this be too late for this to be true? The steppe people had moved across Europe long before this. Plus, this is the Baltic region, where Neolithic groups didn't get much traction. Wouldn't the people who remained from the prior culture be predominantly WHG like? It's possible, of course, we'll have to wait and see if there's any way to assign the bronze wielding warriors to a certain autosomal profile.
The other possibility is that this is somehow related to the contact between this area and the Mycenaeans that we see reflected in the archaeology. This is right around the time of the Trojan War if I'm not mistaken.
A stray thought occurred to me. I may be totally off base, and I don't have the time to do much checking right now, but don't some of the experiments show a possible influx of CHG into northern Europe aside from what would have come with the Yamnaya related people? I also think that Urnfield was slightly more CHG wasn't it? Wasn't there J2 among them as well? Like I said, this may be totally off, but I thought I'd mention it.
There's a whole text on the subject of such contacts, but there's no free access to it:
http://www2.ulg.ac.be/archgrec/aegaeum27.html
The papers cited here are also interesting:
http://dienekes.blogspot.com/2013/05/links-between-mycenaeans-and-scandinavia.html
If someone has specific knowledge of the culture in that area at that time, in particular the level of sophistication of their bronze working, that would be really helpful to get a handle on it.
Slaughter at the bridge: Uncovering a colossal Bronze Age battle
http://www.dienekes.blogspot.com/2016/03/bronze-age-war-in-northern-germany.html
"About 3200 years ago, two armies clashed at a river crossing near the Baltic Sea. 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. 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.
...
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. 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. The artifacts all were radiocarbon-dated to about 1250 B.C.E., suggesting they stemmed from a single episode during Europe’s Bronze Age.
...
Northern Europe in the Bronze Age was long dismissed as a backwater, overshadowed by more sophisticated civilizations in the Near East and Greece. Bronze itself, created in the Near East around 3200 B.C.E., took 1000 years to arrive here. But Tollense’s scale suggests more organization—and more violence—than once thought. “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. 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. "
"Ancient DNA could potentially reveal much more: When compared to other Bronze Age samples from around Europe at this time, it could point to the homelands of the warriors as well as such traits as eye and hair color. Genetic analysis is just beginning, but so far it supports the notion of far-flung origins. DNA from teeth suggests some warriors are related to modern southern Europeans and others to people living in modern-day Poland and Scandinavia. “This is not a bunch of local idiots,” says University of Mainz geneticist Joachim Burger. “It’s a highly diverse population.”
My first thought was that perhaps this was a battle between remnants of the MN culture groups and newer more steppe like groups, but wouldn't this be too late for this to be true? The steppe people had moved across Europe long before this. Plus, this is the Baltic region, where Neolithic groups didn't get much traction. Wouldn't the people who remained from the prior culture be predominantly WHG like? It's possible, of course, we'll have to wait and see if there's any way to assign the bronze wielding warriors to a certain autosomal profile.
The other possibility is that this is somehow related to the contact between this area and the Mycenaeans that we see reflected in the archaeology. This is right around the time of the Trojan War if I'm not mistaken.
A stray thought occurred to me. I may be totally off base, and I don't have the time to do much checking right now, but don't some of the experiments show a possible influx of CHG into northern Europe aside from what would have come with the Yamnaya related people? I also think that Urnfield was slightly more CHG wasn't it? Wasn't there J2 among them as well? Like I said, this may be totally off, but I thought I'd mention it.
There's a whole text on the subject of such contacts, but there's no free access to it:
http://www2.ulg.ac.be/archgrec/aegaeum27.html
The papers cited here are also interesting:
http://dienekes.blogspot.com/2013/05/links-between-mycenaeans-and-scandinavia.html
If someone has specific knowledge of the culture in that area at that time, in particular the level of sophistication of their bronze working, that would be really helpful to get a handle on it.