Mysteries of History: The Lost Kingdom that Dominated Bronze Age Europe I Battle at Tollense Valley
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- Опубліковано 16 лис 2022
- SOURCES:
Connected Histories: The Dynamics of Bronze Age Interaction & Trade, Kristiansen & Suchowska-Duke
Collapse or Continuity? Environment & Development of Bronze Age Uman Landscapes, Kneisel et al
Princes, Armies, & Sanctuaries,: The emergence of complex authority in the Central German Unetice Culture, Meller
Armies in the Bronze Age? Meller
The Börnhock Burial Mound & the Political Economy of an Unetice Ruler, Risch et al
Slaughter at the Bridge: Uncovering a Colossal Bronze Age Battle, Curry
The Birth of a New World: Barrows, Warriors, and Metallurgists, Makarowicz
Alright so obviously there is a slight mishap around 17:30. I had a different excuse as a kid but as an adult I usually blame everything on sleep deprivation and lack of caffeine so let’s go with that
There are a number of your videos in which you repeat something once, but this is the first I've noticed where you repeat something twice. Doesn't detract from the video, perhaps a meme could be started about it.
@@domakent hey I’m all for memes. I’m actually planning a video on using them as source material funnily enough
Probably Russian hackers.
Same excuse archer @18:20 used to explain lack of pants
Sound quality has VASTLY improved! Grats!
I love bronze age study.
It's like the prequel to the world, our hidden history, the untold stories of the whys.
Thing is, for the Chinese the Bronze Age is still very relevant to this day. Many of the traits and customs of Chinese society originated in the Bronze Age, so the study of the early Metal Ages helps us to understand not just our ancestors but our parents and grandparents too.
@@meilinchan7314 not just Chinese, certain beliefs and customs of sinitic peoples tracing from the bronze age are present in neighbouring cultures as well (not that it should surprise anyone)
The same can be said about the "judeosphere" (europe, Mediterranean world etc) due to egyptian and various mesopotamian cultures influencing the semitic peoples beliefs and rites (at least some historians of religion claim so, even Christian ones, comparative studies ain't exactly popular though and they're often accused of jumping to conclusions without sufficient evidence so there's that).
@@Sk0lzky don't call it that
@@LolLol-gd7ly The fact that he even chose to call it that made me cringe away from correcting his wrongness. That is a special kind of dumb that can't be fixed.
Yeah i guess we will have to wait for the current gen archeologists to die off to finally get new perspectives
I went to Tollense River for fishing very often. Some fishermen joke that chances for „catching“ Bronze Age relicts there is higher than catching fishes 😆
I realize English likely isn't your first language and not trying to be rude, but you don't pluralize fish. It's just "catching fish". 👍
That would be quite an exciting “catch!”
@@dillonhillierthank you 😀
@@MausTheGerman np
@@dillonhillierwholesome and constructive grammar correction, an internet first
Later on in history, Germanic tribes were known to bring wagons filled with their women and children to watch the battle. It would motivate warriors. This could possibly be the earliest known example of that.
Celtics did the Same
@@guillermocioli2292 indeed! Good call!
The same was true of the First Battle of Bull Run in the American Civil War. That battle was also basically the end of that. I have wondered if the legends of shieldmaidens, valkyries and what not were not women of the tribe shouting and singing encouragement to the warriors of the tribe, analogous to modern cheerleaders at sporting events.
celts did that too.
@@kylestephens4133 the location of bull run (manassas) was near to washington city. anyway, it must have been a weird thing to do, go watch a deadly battle.
Its so distant in time and culture that it doesnt even seem like a high fantasy setting, but rather the hazy ancient past of a high fantasy setting. Its such a shame we'll never know the specifics about this battle, the names, the leaders, the polities...it seems like an epic story thats been totally lost. It makes me wonder if this period was remembered at all in oral history and legends.
Maybe it’s worth looking into oral traditions and legends.
Also, never say never! We’re living in a golden age of historical discovery. Imagine telling someone 100 years ago that we can find structures under the ground without laying a trench, and we can tell where someone grew up based on strontium isotope analysis of their teeth, just to mention two relatively new technologies. Also, we know a good deal about the language and even the beliefs of the Yamnaya/Kurgan people because of linguistic reconstruction. We may yet find out a lot more about these amber traders in and around the Tollensee River valley 🙂
Fully agree. Such an interesting historical time. So far, so "unreal".
If you ever hear of one be sure to leave a comment so we can learn more, Bc I seriously doubt it. Their is a myth on how the celts in galatia got their and it was Bc a campaign of celts failed to stay unified after a volcanic erupted and killed the majority of translators and leaders so their unity collapsed and they attacked one another and the greeks. This story survives from only the Greek perspective as well. Celts and druids and germans also believed in oral tradition - so once the people had observed massive battles like Teutoburg forests why would they keep retelling the previous clan vs clan battle when they needed unity. Unfortunately there’s a lot of good reasons for it to have not survived for the benefit of their society.
The problem is that there doesn't seem to have been any major settlements at all in Northern or Western Europe prior to the Roman Invasions.
Hill forts with populations of a few hundred people don't leave oral histories or legends - They get wiped out by the next tribe over, who then get wiped out themselves 50 years later and so on and on and on.
You could not have made a video more targeted to me
Great! I hope you enjoy thsi
@@TheFallofRome Ewan, Mr. craft, I am fairly certain that anyone who looks forward to sitting down to thirty minutes of this probably feels the same way. I liked school sure but not enough to be excited for 1/3 of an average high school class length and even longer for college which is what this video equates to.
I agree this is great stuff. Thank you!!!
Why? Are you a reincarnated ancient soldier?
@@glasshalffull2930 I like to think so
Neolithic and bronze age Europe has been my obsession lately so I'm very happy to see my favorite history channel talking about something from that period.
More to come!
@@TheFallofRome eagerly awaiting them!
Mine, too. It’s a fascinating period that really spurs the imagination. For example, I’ve come across recent material about the Bronze Age Collapse that asks the question, “Collapse for whom?” Civilizations fell, but people kept living. The collapse might have benefited some peoples.
You might enjoy a recently released (Aug/22) historical novel by Gregory Michael Nixon set during the Bronze Age Collapse: *The Diomedeia: Diomedes, the Peoples of the Sea, and the Fall of the Hittite Empire*. Nothing dull in there !
@@douglaskingsman2565 looking forward to checking that out, thank you
I’m delighted how you always find new topics (to me at least) or fresh angles, instead of recycling Punic wars for 49593th time and such. This video will be a treat!
Same, I love how he branches out of just Rome and WW2 like so many channels (not throwing shade)
@@leemarshall348 I agree. I think it is because the swarms of "epic battle", "masculine history" (for lack of a better term) lovers are the main money making demographic for history channels on UA-cam unfortunately.
Look up " The unipolar madmen leading us to Hell " on Yt.
Insightful...................
I used to play in that "valley" my whole childhood long - the hills around are like 40 meters high - you can find shit ton of neolithic stone tools and old water snail shells everywhere
The ceremonial explanation does seem overused. I’m glad you addressed it in the video so well.
In any case, it is incumbent upon the archeologist to present proof for any such claim rather than simply suggest it as a possibility.
Yeah according to a lot of archaeological works if I lived in ancient times I would spend 23 hours a day either performing rituals, crafting ritual objects, or building ritual buildings. I mean these people must have had everything so incredibly streamlined that they didn't need to look for food, craft actual tools, or build houses to live or work in. They were able to devote themselves entirely to ritual and ceremony. Or maybe there needs to be people who have a more grounded real world mindset going into archaeology. Like people who have actually used tools before for non ceremonial purposes.
Counterpoint to the "everything is ceremonial" argument: most of our possessions today could also be described as ceremonial status objects, we just don't want to admit it because we need to think that we're more rational than humans were in the 13th century BC.
My buttplug is ceremonial
It's interesting that the statement about Copper and Tin at 6:40 that "control was fighting and dying over" is very much true today for Lithium and various rare-earth metals used in semiconductors.
Semiconductors don’t have to use rare earths. Silicon, aluminium and phosphorus are remarkably common…
Permanent magnets for motors are a different question (mostly because China has eliminated its competitors by price rigging).
@@allangibson8494 I mostly agree with allangibson8494. Rare Earths are not so rare as ubiquitous. What makes them scarce in the market is the difficulty in isolating/refining them since they are chemically similar to other elements. Currently, Chinese are most willing to extract them.
Lithium on the other hand has fewer concentrated deposits. Thus, we should invade Bolivia.
@@psikogeek Or Nevada…
Nah - not many wars over that - oil however…
fascinating to think how many such kingdoms could have existed and dissappeared without written trace to document them
I've been studying this as my time and workload permit, since the History Time channel did a piece on the Tollense Valley Battlefield 3 years ago. The implications of this site are absolutely profound.
excited to find this channel! the neolithic, chalcolithic, and bronze ages are by far the most fascinating eras of history to me, but they don't get a lot of coverage outside of dry academic sources or things about very specific areas/civilizations (egypt, for example). that era of time that's sort of the fuzzy border between prehistory and the beginning of recorded history is so mysterious and interesting.
You might enjoy a recently released (Aug/22) historical novel by Gregory Michael Nixon set during the Bronze Age Collapse: *The Diomedeia: Diomedes, the Peoples of the Sea, and the Fall of the Hittite Empire*. Nothing "dry academic" in there (though it is surprisingly true to history) !
There are other channels. Here are the ones I subscribe to: Crecganford. Dan Davis History. Fall of Civilizations. Stefan Milo. The Histocrat. ReligionForBreakfast. History Time.
@@maraanusuya survive the jive is another fun channel.
@@maraanusuya Dan Davis has been my favorite. Excellent narrator, material has a nice flow, no phony garbage. He will point out if something is known or just suspected. Doesn't waste time with academic mind numbing "its ceremonial" 'its religious".
I always learn something new here. I had heard of the Tollense Valley findings but had no idea there was a causeway in the area. Coupled with the intersecting trade routes that goes far to explain why that particular place became a battlefield. Thank you.
The simple reason why archaeology is more scant in Europe can be seen after the romans left England - the archaeological record disappears because they mostly used wood. Where areas are highly wooded, their buildings tended to perish.
Came back to add that fortified structures are always vulnerable to steppe people! The Mongols took full advantage of that and thought of them as pigs in a pen, reminds me of what may have happened to them.....
Very good - you should do a collab with Dan Davis. Your level of research and historical knowledge, combined with his story telling flair would be quiet something.
Oh that’s a good idea! I love that channel
@@TheFallofRome Yours is great too.
@@Boric78 thank you!
A more ambitious crossover than Marvel.
The "It's a Ritual" joke is a good example of what I like to call "The Three Stages of Understanding a Thing":
1. "If Archaeologists say it's a Ritual then it probably is one because Archaeologists know better.
2. "Haha, if Archaeologists say it's a Ritual then they don't know what it's for."
3. "If Archaeologists say it's a Ritual then it probably is one because there are good reasons to think so."
You just summarized about 30% of my online life in the 20 years I've been online. I'm not sure whether to be embarrassed or to think I'm normal. ^.^;
Nice. I have been up all night no sleep and I always watch this before sleep. I watch the full video and then my mind goes into the times for whatever reason. I sleep thinking I’m finally getting back home after the civil war and finally sleep in a comfortable bed. I am a marine so that might be a way I manage my ptsd. Thinking of war or moreover, the thought of coming back to normal life calms me. Kinda like going out to work all day and coming home.
respect brother
Well, for what it’s worth, I’m happy these seem to help! I myself am not military, though my family is. Thank you for your service
@@TheFallofRome You're the guy who is the only survivor from the war who records the story for posterity.
24:55 "...this really speaks albeit indirectly to an amazing feat." - or it just tells us that not only these people (from outside of battle area), but generally in ancient times people moved surprisingly long distances to join other tribes. In other words, these combatants' genetical home area may tell us technically nothing about scale of this battle (they could have been just immigrants, which happened to be there at right time to be recruitted for the battle).
This was a very interesting video. It feels different to the rest you've made, probably because of how current the information in it is. Less authoritive on the facts because of how little we know, but no less interesting, especially as it covers a period of history I love: Bronze age history. When talking to people who have only a passing interest in history, the bronze age can seem like a secret chapter that they are unaware of (except for maybe ancient Egypt). And that's fun it's own right but the period is fascinating regardless. Thanks for covering it.
Finally, you make a very good point about how wide Archeology is becoming nowadays. With many new techniques converging, old but accepted suppositions can be proved or disproved quite quickly. Dislodging ideas and making us rethink.
Oh absolutely! Archaeology, and by extension history, is really becoming a true interdisciplinary subject. I’m excited to see where it leads. Doing this video was a lot of fun, actually, probably because it’s outside my usually areas of focus
You might enjoy a recently released (Aug/22) historical novel by Gregory Michael Nixon set during the Bronze Age Collapse: *The Diomedeia: Diomedes, the Peoples of the Sea, and the Fall of the Hittite Empire*. Nothing dull in there !
This is absolutely fascinating. A large battle between forces that we know so little about and didn't even suspect would exist
This was insanely interesting, I don't have a single day in college but Archaeology was what i always wanted to get into as a young man. Thank you for this amazing and well informed video. The graphs were also very helpful and helped me make sense of how crazy these finds are.
*Now this was really an eyeopener!* Especially since I'm currently reading Eric H. Cline's
_1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed_ 📚
I think the sea peoples were people forced out by migrating central Europeans, who in turn moved into the "civilized world." There is something about the basque people rooted in the bronze age i think there is alot there.
The Tollense is in the coastlands of the Baltic Sea. This whole southern and eastern coast have amazingly good conditions for preserving bodies in the muddy ground. Not that surprising to find remains like this in this part of Europe rather than anywhere else.
Preservation bias certainly would play a factor in why we don't find anything similar from the period in the rest of Europe.
Vara is a word my people have and it has 3 meanings:
1. Bronze (what it is)
2. Force (what its for)
3. Power (what it gets you)
What language?
@@andybunn5780 Latviešu.
Thank you for making this video. I love seeing this topic being explored by as many of people possible
This has become one of my favorite channels. I usually binge PIE linguistic stuff or ANE Bronze Age paleoarchaeology. Now I’m adding ancient non-Mediterranean Europe to that list. How exciting! Thank you for making such interesting and well-crafted videos. Looking forward to seeing more ⚔️
This excellent. Thank you.
Fascinating video, thank you!!
Actually you can't "use" arsenic for bronze, instead it comes with the copper ore. The problem is, that aesenical bronze loses the arsenic when objects are melted for recycling via evaporation. You could neither get your hands on seperate arsenic, nor were you able to add it to copper, so it's only an early form of bronze that disappeared because it was dependant on the copper source and could not be artificially reproduced.
Fantastic video! This was such an amazing discovery that it will revolutionize our understanding of the area and the entire era as we study it more.
Yes! I’m going to be following this over the next couple years and doing more videos on the Bronze Age in europe
I discovered your videos today and they are incredibly detailed. You must put a lot of hard work into these productions. Well done.
This was so awesome! Thank you!
Amazing video, thank you!
Since one group was 'native' to the Tollense Valley and the other from further south, it's obvious that the southern group attacked the Tollense Valley residents. Possibly with the element of surprise. Generally when one group attacks another, plunder is the motivation and a willingness to kill to get it.
Small numbers of women and children among the dead would be consistent with the survivors being captured as slaves.
Though if the fighting went for days at a river crossing, they might also have covered the escape of the "civilians".
Southern group = Urnfield and following this Tollense war Naue 2 swords were transported to North Germany. Urnfield core was in Hungary/Slovakia, closest genetically to these warriors from modern people are Poles and Ukrainians but these Tollense warriors had higher WHG autosomal dna
Great work. It can be hard to find non sensationalized history here. Very fascinating stuff, i had never heard of these guys, and i have a degree in Classics lol. I look forward to seeing this research progress - hope we find many more cultures!
Given prehistoric and ancient "core periphery" relationships, I tend to think we focus on technology that we can recognize. Similarly we have difficulty computing the social energy placed into production of magical/religious goods. I'm merely of the undergraduate class who reads a prodigious amount so grab the salt shaker.
Interesting video production, thank you.
I always have my salt shaker on hand with UA-cam comments, but when someone advises me to use it I'm ironically inclinded to apply it more conservatively.
Your expertise is amazing. Definitely material and an individual for jre podcast.
Thank you for your content
I love your videos. so detailed, interesting, and correct
Absolutely fascinating.
Very informative video - nicely done.
You are officially my second favorite history channel on UA-cam. You should collaborate with Fall of Civilizations.
Thank you for another video! It's interesting to see how people organized themselves and lived with each other way back when agriculture was still relatively new and more concentrated civilization was just beginning. Thanks again!
God be with you out there everybody! ✝️ :)
That was the first video I have seen of yours, decent job. If I may suggest, on your maps especially on the minerals leave all of them up just do them in different colors, it would have been nice to have seen where the real power houses that had all the minerals were located.
Great video! Very informative
Excellent
Fascinating
Great educational video!! Separately, I would recommend adding some very light audio/music to the videos, to give them a sonic sheen.
Very interesting to me that this falls during the life of Abraham. Thanks!
Good stuff, new sub!
Interesting discussion, thanks.
Fantastic! Subbed 😊
I never could quite believe popular claims about the C-word, lol
It's really fascinating to see glimpses of these cultures so ancient. :)
Very detailed and watchable video. Really fascinated by the bronze age era of Europe and Asia plus elsewhere. Great effort.
This one of the best videos I've seen and got so much facts From! Thank you for your hard work!
I grew up with Conan the Barbarian. Been curious about this time period since.
Kinda crazy to think there is a very real chance some of my ancestors were involved in this (the number one result on my MDLP K11 Oracle is the Unetice Culture). Appreciate the video.
Given the way ancestry works, every person from that era who has any descendants is almost inescapably your ancestor.
@@Wick9876 R1a and R1b for the WIN. 😁😉
I’m R1b and I originate from the Unetice culture apparently
Always waiting for a new episode.
Just wonderful.
Interesting, informative and thought provoking.
Thanks a million. From the UK
♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥
weird to see how most bronwe age empires seem to have been in places without copper and tin while the rest of europe did have both closeby and were playing tribesman
That’s actually a common pattern through most of history. Many, many states develop in areas suitable to trade networks, not necessarily direct resource extraction
@@TheFallofRome Off topic, but the term "resource extraction" got me thinking about Imperial Japan in the 20th century and StrategyStuff's video about its grand strategy. I am curious if you have seen any of StrategyStuff's videos. I feel there is a similarity in terms of academic rigor, though strategy stuff seems to focus more on geopolitics and IR in a historical context.
Excellent! What a pleasant surprise to find it all based in real archeology & historical interpretation, not some fantastic pseudo-science speculations. Obviously there was a vast Bronze-Age culture spread all across Europe with certain common features (as elucidated by the narrator), but the eastern Mediterranean & Middle East Asian areas are much more celebrated because a) they were highly organized palatial cultures, and b) they kept written records.
Very good .
To put things into perspective, the great pyramid of Giza were built over 1000 years before all of this.
I've always had a suspicion that there were great societies lost to time in Europe ever since I spent a couple days hiking around the thousands of standing stones in carnac, but I've never learned much about them. Good video.
UA-cam:'YHVH DEUTSCHLAND' mit 'DEUTSCHE, RUSSEN, IREN, SCHOTTEN' 👋🇩🇪
Yeah, these societies are really under-communicated imo. When I studied at the university of Oslo I basically stumbled upon the rock carvings in the area dating back to the bronze age, I was so surprised. That period is basically not known here, in school they give the impression civilization in Scandinavia started with the viking age thousands of years later.
I learn so MUCH from channels like this!
For instance recently I've discovered that an "ILL CONCIEVED PRECONCEPTION" is just a well rendered "BAD IDEA"....
The graphics here are AMAZING
(This post was made in good humor....don't laugh, I take this seriously)
There were early Iron Age traditions that after Bronze Age battles the bodies were gathered and placed under a mound.
Fantastic video. Where are the info graphics from that you show between 09:00 and 11:50? They are absolutely gorgeous and if they are from a book, I need to buy it
It would be interesting to know if either of these warring cultures were connected to the "Sea People" who devastated the Mediterranean.
Can they draw ay DnA from the remains? Do the bronze artifacts match Mediterranean patterns?
Perhaps an analysis of the origins of the alloyed metals in the bronze objects might shed some light on their origins, although active trading would skew the results.
If, say copper from the Negev turned up in them, that could be a flag.
Sea peoples are believed to originate from various places in the Mediterranean (the Shekelesh from Sicily, the Sherden from Sardinia, the Peleset and perhaps the Denyen from Greece, the Lukka from Lycia, some think the Teresh were from Etruria), and I don't think we have "sea people DNA" to speak of, since we don't have archeological remains that we can with reasonable certainty match with sea peoples (you can't assume every corpse in Ugarit on the layer where it was destroyed with european origins were Sea people, most were probably traders who came decades earlier while we don't have any site related to sea peoples in Egypt).
As for the artifacts I don't know enough, but the issue is that the "sea peoples" were very diverse (Anatolian, Greek, Italian...) so it is very difficult to separate between what has been brought by trade and what has been brought by the invasion (an Anatolian weapon in the tomb of some high ranking egyptian general in the reign of Ramesisu III could as well be a Hittite gift or something his grandfather bought from an Ashshuwa merchant as a Lukka weapon seized after a battle).
I can't say much about southern european material culture but what I know is that it is very hard to link the sea peoples to it since they are only known from written sources, and the theories that are favoured by scholars today tend to defend that sea peoples were actually the same people as previous bronze age inhabitants of Greece, Italy and Anatolia. So there were probably myceneans and nuraghe people among them, thus once again it would be very hard to differenciate between artifacts brought through trade to northern Europe from Mycenean Greece before its fall from something that could have a direct link with the "sea people" phenomenum.
I think what could be more easy to study is if there was large scale societal collapse in Bronze Age Europe, to explain why there was such an increase in violent raids in the Mediterranean (and possibly link the migration that stems from it to classical Greek historiography about the dorian and phrygian invasions)
you know i'm so jaded by the pseudo historian 'mysteries' that I almost didn't check this out but the thumbnail looked worth it
saw sources listed in the description, the full title revealing it's not just some 'ooh spooky lost kingdom'
you've got a new avid watcher my friend! very pleased to have found this hope to watch a lot more soon! :)
And by "pseudo" historians I assume you mean the hacks in Academia. They're the most dogmatic cult of all.
@@chrisnewbury3793 Oh please, you conspiracy theorist. Bet you believe in ridiculous theories about Indo European migrations like out of India theory, that's the kind of pseudohistorical bull crap he's mentioning.
@@deiansalazar140 and I bet you're due for more boosters.
ITS HYPERBOREA
Perhaps, some connection with interglacial periods and the Vedic polar region allusion by the rishis
I like the horse being the correct size at 18:26
They say haplogroup E-v13 was spread along the Danube during the bronze age. What are your thoughts about them?
Best Tollense video I’ve seen, thanks. Lots of new info.
Thank you!
The only two significant tin sources were in Cornwall and Afghanistan. All others were much smaller deposits which might be used up within a single generation.
Some of your best work yet!!
Thanks Gavin!
Very informative and interesting. Never even heard about that lost kingdom.
There was a recent episode of the podcast Tides of History on this battle.
Tumulus burials are the same as Kurgans, mounds honoring mostly semi nomadic warriors who had horses and bronze weapons before indigenous Europeans who were there early in the Paleolithic and had ancestral community graves. They were likely the second or third wave of the warrior peoples.
Excellent vid. Excellently channel. Side note: you sound like the eagle from the muppets
There is always so much work to be done to analyze the data that has been excavated, or yet to be translated.
IMO the sea people are the same group that attacked Troy. Homer even describes the "sea people" attack on Egypt in the Odyssey - the story Odysseus in disguise tells the Swine herd.
This was fascinating, thank you Historian's Craft and patrons.
Is there any proof that scientists have even seen a neutron, let alone be able to count them?
Interesting Humor, I saw the three warriors inn the picture and they look in good shape. Then I was thinking that they had a life with out sugar in everything. The dental on these people are beautiful. And lets not forget the endless exercise just to stay alive.
on the topic of Bronze Age can you make a detail video on the Sea People where they came from, what they did and what happened to them where they went.
I’m already working on that. It should be out at some point in the next couple of weeks
Do we know more about the Western and Central Mediterranean in the Bronze Age now? Do we for example know if there was anything in Cadiz or Carthage before the Phoenicians?
@@TheFallofRome You must be reading every moment you aren't making these videos!
1:50 Varg Vikerness approved 👍
Should have had some BURZUM tunes rockin out in the background if this video.
I was half expecting to hear his ambient music that he created that he usually puts in his videos
So glad I found this channel 🎉
Very nice video on an interesting subject. I would not be surprised if that riverbed had wandered a bit in the last 3.5 thousand years. Though the finding of the causeway/bridge should help tie it down.
The Late Bronze Age was not exactly a "preferential era" to live in - to say the least. The harsh reality of one's existence was surpassed only by the magnitude/level of brutality to which they were exposed circa 1250-1150 BCE. Climate change must have been especially significant in continental Europe, where, I suspect, a vast number of people started moving toward the Mediterranean Sea, thereby compelling a growing number of displaced people to possibly trigger Corsican, Sardinian, and Sicilian peoples to move toward Mycenae, Crete, Cyprus, Egypt, and the Levant. Thanks for the upload.
Very well crafted video on a very interested if less studied subject, hope I get to see more in the future
Thank you! More Bronze Age stuff will be coming !
First time I'm catching one of your vids shortly after posting. I enjoy all your content greatly and hope your doing well! If you don't see this at least it helps the algorithm.
Thank you!
@@TheFallofRome Your videos transcend "content" and should be considered well-illustrated lectures!
Interesting to see that the wooden club was probably always among the repertoire of a warrior.
How can Sicily, Sardinia and Corsica stand up to mighty empires such as Egypt? Even the Hittites? Let alone the entire Mediterranean.
First time I've ever heard of this. Muy interesante. Love your content.
wonderful work - you may need an edit at 17:28 - but thanks for a very informative video
The use of the word "trade" can be misleading for Bronze Age and earlier societies. In many cases these exchanges were not interpreted as value for value but rather as exchange of gifts. The hierarchy of warrior leadership suggested for the Unetice culture could rather be loyalty ties established by gifts from the wealthier "king" to his immediate subordinates, who then made gifts to their subordinates. The bronze axes and other prestige artifacts would be symbols of the relationship between the patron and the client, as was preserved in early Iron Age societies including Rome. Indo-European languages have a core concept of this relationship in that the word which is the ancestor of English host and guest was the same word, implying a reciprocal dependency. There is no evidence in any pre-Roman culture of a "standing army" beyond the war-band of the patron, so I feel that is misleading terminology for the Bronze Age.
I am primarily taking that line of argumentation from Meller, the foremost archaeologist who works on the Unetice. Obviously we need more digging and work generally, but if you haven’t read his paper on why he thinks this is evidence of some sort of standing army, even if on a small scale, I’d recommend it. It put forth its thesis in a fairly convincing way, though I admit I am an outsider to the field
@@TheFallofRome in that era it sounds like you wouldn't be around long if you DIDN'T have a good gang of guys armed to the teeth being right around the corner. esp. if you had anything worth stealing!!! and you noted these units were often in the centre of grave areas?? THAT would keep the looting down a bit!
Yes, I don't know much about bronze Age Europe, but I know that even in the urbanized Middle East, significant standing armies were only introduced by Sargon of Akkad, the only professional soldiers before that were the rulers guard, the rest of the army was a citizen militia complemented with some hired highlanders and desert pastoralists. This would mean that the pre-urban Unetice culture would have to be extremely militaristic to sustain up to 80 standing soldiers at all time... We believe they were indo-european, and indo-europeans tended to be more militaristic than most but still... Even most germanic chieftains had not 80 huscarls around them.
Thus I think that the patron hypothesis is more likely, perhaps there was some kind of an equivalent of a longhouse with all local nobles having their gifted axe there, and where they regularly met. A local elite of warrior nobles serving the king is more believable to me than professional soldiers. It would still indicate a quite organized state that controlled the local area but not a professional army or administration (professionnal administrators in the Middle East were tied to large temple complexes, to which we have no equivalent in Bronze Age Europe). The large area controlled by the state would then explain the number of combatants at Tollense (imagine an alliance of serveral kings on each side). Thus we can maintain the accepted view of Bronze Age Europe while being capable of explaining Tollense. I really think the comparison with the Middle East which is better known is necessary to view what is likely and what is not.
I wish the map at 27:10 was a bit higher-res, as on the right side there's what appear to be irrigation ditches/earthworks, and perhaps a fort or mill-race at about 1000 X-axis and 1800 Y-axis. It would explain why there would be multiple fights that work towards the (fort?) as assuming the invaders were coming from the lower right (near the bridge) the defenders would need to sally to intercept them near the bridge, perhaps attacking their rear shortly after they crossed; in which case the invaders would thus have to fight through the garrison whether to progress up the valley, or even retreat home. A sporadic, and grinding operation, where the defenders aren't quite strong enough to destroy the invaders outright, yet also too strong to be left to their own devices in their rear, the choke-points of the river valley and bridge preventing the easy envelopment (and thus quick destruction) of either force.
It would be nice to know what those ditches are, Its possible that they aren't the same age as the battle site. If they are the same age though, that would be very interesting.