It all started, as so often in archeology, with a chance discovery: a human humerus bone protruding from the bank of the Tollense River, in northeastern Germany. The bone had something embedded in it: a flint arrowhead that had penetrated deep , about eight inches. It was found one day in 1996 by Ronald Borgwardt, an amateur archaeologist, while exploring the area with his father. They were so surprised by the find that they decided to undertake more excavations along a mile of the river bed. In the following years they unearthed more remains, among them, a perforated skull and a kind of large club or truncheon that could well have caused such a wound. The 73 cm device was similar to a baseball bat and was made of strong and elastic ash wood. All evidence pointed to a brutal episode taking place there. Later, Borgwardt would find a second fractured skull.
In 2008, the Tollense basin became the subject of a systematic study and various campaigns led by professional researchers followed. In them, a multitude of clustered human bones have appeared that belong to about 130 individuals , the vast majority of them young, between twenty and thirty years old. These show signs of different types of attacks, in a higher proportion than that observed in bones found in ancient burials. For experts, this suggests that most of the deaths took place during combat. In an article published in Antiquity magazine, the archaeologist Detlef Jantzen, responsible for the excavation, and his collaborators interpret the remains as “ the remains of a violent shock, whose victims were thrown into the river or abandoned in shallow waters and swampy areas. on both sides of it ”.
The archers were decisive
Today it is known that, protected by sediments, thousands of bones of hundreds of fallen soldiers have remained hidden for millennia in the bed of the Tollense and on its humid banks, near the Baltic Sea, just over a hundred kilometers north of Berlin. Among them have appeared the bones of five horses and different weapons and utensils. Thus, more than two dozen bronze and flint arrowheads have been found. Examination of the injuries seems to confirm that these projectiles were of great importance in the course of the battle . In fact, they were the cause of the wounds of many of the fighters who ended up at the bottom of the river.
Jantzen and other scientists suspect that such a massive battle could have taken place in that remote place as, as has been believed until now, only the Greek, Hittite or Egyptian armies were capable of engaging at that time, thousands of kilometers to the south. In that combat, in which the archers played a key role, professional warriors participated, many from outside those lands and all of them anonymous. Their names or affiliation are not known; not even the factions they fought on or the tribe they belonged to, much less who their lord or king was. It will probably never be known.
The event occurred between 1250 and 1200 BC. C., when nobody dominated writing in the region. It could be said that this area of the world was still mired in prehistory . There are no records or documents that refer to this or other events or that shed light on the archaeological discoveries. However, what is clear is that the area was not as backward in the Bronze Age as it might seem.
War professionals
The work has been concentrated in an alluvial surface enormously rich in vestiges. In just twelve square meters, twenty skulls and another 1,458 bones accumulated . The physiological study of the wounds they present shows that a large number of blows, cuts and injuries are concentrated in the same place on the bone, which denotes the anger typical of an armed struggle. This circumstance has been observed in many of the ribs found, in which there are very close cuts that converge on the same point, as produced by a series of persistent stabbings carried out in the victim’s chest. Other injuries were caused by arrows hitting their targets from behind – a bronze tip has been found on the back of a skull – so all indications are that the losers were mercilessly harassed while fleeing. The small horses also received arrows.
German archaeologists scanned the bones using computed tomography, a visualization technique that allows three-dimensional images to be generated. Thus, they were able to appreciate the shape that the lacerations must have had and compare them with the make of the weapons found at the site itself. Remarkable coincidences have been observed, such as the profile of the bronze arrowheads with diamond-shaped lesions that present some remains.
The same analyzes have also revealed important details about the lives of some warriors. It is clear that many died as a result of their injuries, but some bones have the characteristic marks left by those that have been healed long ago. The conclusion, according to experts, is that some of the combatants were used to fighting, and their bodies kept the scars that such a profession would leave over the years.
This shows that in Tollense, not two riverside tribes, antagonized by any territorial circumstance, faced each other, but war professionals hardened in a thousand battles. If to all this we add the estimates on the number of soldiers that, according to archaeologists, participated in the war, we can draw the robot portrait of an unprecedented fight.
Nordic natives and foreigners from the south
At the moment, only 450 square meters have been systematically excavated, between 3% and 10% of the surface that, in the opinion of the researchers, could hide more remains. They estimate that, if fully analyzed, the remains of about 750 people could appear. Some studies indicate that, in general, in this type of clashes 20% of the warriors perished. If so, between 3,000 and 4,000 of them could have gathered on the banks of Tollense. But what got them there is a mystery.
The area was occupied by small scattered communities, something that clashes with the presence of two large armed contingents, with a level of organization and a hierarchical structure that does not fit at all with the vision that is usually had of northern Europe in the Age of the Bronze. Civilization, at that time, was an almost exclusive heritage of the cultures that prospered in the Middle East, Egypt and India, and had not spread to such a northern part of the planet, with a cold climate, little sunlight and little desirable to be inhabited. In general, there is a tendency to think that its inhabitants were farmers and gatherers with little knowledge, but recent findings place us before a much more complex and structured Nordic world.
The time that historians know as the Final Bronze Age was marked by great political and social instability, at least in the Mediterranean. Thus, towards 1250 a. C. took place the Trojan War, in which the Mycenaean Greeks destroyed this strategic and rich mercantile enclave in western Anatolia. At that time, also the enigmatic Peoples of the Sea, coming from various Mediterranean islands, devastated the lands of the Hittites, who lived east of the Trojans; the kingdom of Ugarit, in northern Syria; and finally Egypt, where they were stopped by the armies of Pharaoh Ramses III.
The Tollense River episode could be counted among the great shocks of the moment . In fact, in none of those battlefields has it been possible to recover remains so directly related to what happened as it has happened in Germany. The memory of their significance is due, above all, to the narratives that have come down from them, such as Homer’s Iliad , or to some testimonies, in the case of the requests for help that the monarchs of Ugarit sent to their Hittite counterparts. On the contrary, what we lack in Tollense is written testimony.
One of the clues investigators are following is that many of the fighters appear to have been born far from the valley. The isotopic analysis of some of the teeth, which allows us to know the diet followed by those to whom they belonged, does not correspond to what would be expected from a Nordic man. Specifically, they show a significant consumption of millet, a cereal that was not common in the area – wheat and barley were more common – but in other more southern ones. Other findings support the possible presence of southern warriors , such as bronze pins from Silesia, in present-day Poland, some four hundred kilometers away.
Valuable salt deposits
Could some warlike people have invaded the region from the south? And in that case, what could it be due to? Maybe it was related to a change in the weather. Dendrochronological studies, which extract data from the growth rings of trees, reflect that in the 13th century BC. C. there was a marked decrease in temperatures and an increase in humidity. But why or who was cited there are questions for which there is still no answer. Obviously there must have been a very important reason; perhaps the control of the salt deposits in the area.
In 2013, a geomagnetic study of the terrain showed that there had been a kind of bridge or overpass that allowed the Tollense to be crossed at that point. Excavations have revealed that it was built some five hundred years before the battle, so it must have been a strategic, well-known and valuable site . In fact, some parts of the bridge were raised or restored around the years when the fighting took place. Today, archaeologists think that one of the groups tried to cross it and that another tried to stop them. The fight spread along the banks of the river, leaving a trail of corpses that, before being left to their own devices in the waters, were looted and stripped of their belongings, such as gold earrings, tin rings or fibulae. with which the clothes were lit. Once plundered, they were left at the mercy of the current until they ended up resting in the marshy river bed. Tens of centuries have passed until its remains have come to light again, but its discovery could force a rewriting of history .
Pictures: S. Sauer / DFG project Tollensetal / Fred Ruchhöft / LAKD-MV
