I’m a bit of an “arm chair” archaeologist, which means that I don’t really know a lot about ancient history but I always find it fascinating when something comes up in the news. The reason I’m talking about this now is that a new site in Germany has found evidence that there were major battles in the Bronze Age – something that hadn’t been proven before.
The site contains a number of skills with fractures which seems to indicate a battle between two different tribes. This is made even more compelling by the fact that nearly all the skulls belong to men, although there are some which belong to women too which is interesting. There is also an upper arm bone which is an arrow head in it and a thigh which appears to have happened when the person fell from a horse.
Other things that were found include two wooden clubs – exactly the kind of weapons that you’d imagine these sorts of people would use – along with various other weapons. Although there has been evidence of people fighting in this time period before, this is the first time anyone has discovered evidence that there was large scale violence between different groups of people.
Even though this is obviously an exciting find, I don’t find it particaulrly surprising. It seems obvious to me that there would be large scale battles, although it’s great that scientists have found some proof.