'Before man was, war waited for him'

[svalbard]

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/03/slaughter-bridge-uncovering-colossal-bronze-age-battle

Another interesting article that is making us rethink the organisational capacties of European Bronze Age society for waging war.

 

[Narkalui]

My question regarding this: are there no ancient Germanic legends regarding this battle? Surely such a huge event would have been remembered in song for centuries afterwards...

 

[svalbard]

I doubt we will ever know. But who knows maybe there was a warleader called Thor/Donar or Woden/Odinor Balor at this battle and their names lived on in folklore. There is a book to be written on this by someone.

 

[Narkalui]

I'll wait for the non-fiction book first...

 

[sknox]

Most of the monarchs of medieval Europe were related to each other, and there wasn't much point fighting over territory that their kids might come to own through marriage anyway.

It's not germane to the OP, but I wanted to make this correction: it's not true that most monarchs of medieval Europe were related to each other, at least not for much of the Middle Ages. There are increasing numbers of ties the later you get. The real heyday of intermarriage is the early modern period (1500-1800). Given the number and ferocity of the wars in those three centuries, I'd have to say that degrees of relation doesn't seem to have had much of a moderating effect.

 

[svalbard]

Slaughter at the bridge: uncovering a colossal Bronze Age battle

Another interesting article that is making us rethink the organisational capacties of European Bronze Age society for waging war.

Archaeologists unearth a Bronze Age warrior’s personal toolkit

The find sheds light on where the combatants in the Bronze Age battle came from.

arstechnica.com

Bumping this thread as another article on the Tollense battle came across my feed. The more I read on this it is starting to look like a Southern European excursion into the North. Are we dealing with some long forgotten kingdom in Europe flexing it's muscles?

 

[Venusian Broon]

Archaeologists unearth a Bronze Age warrior’s personal toolkit

The find sheds light on where the combatants in the Bronze Age battle came from.

arstechnica.com

Bumping this thread as another article on the Tollense battle came across my feed. The more I read on this it is starting to look like a Southern European excursion into the North. Are we dealing with some long forgotten kingdom in Europe flexing it's muscles?

Ooh, they mention that old chestnet 'the Bronze age collapse' at the end as a possibility.

Here's my initial 'grasp at anything' hypothesis. We know that there are trade links with the Baltic and Northern Europe with the Mediterranean, as we've found Baltic amber etc. widely in the South. (Perhaps also fur and other goods could have been sent down). So perhaps certain clans/tribes/peoples of North Europe grew wealthy on this trade with those in the South.

The Bronze age collapse occurs, perhaps kick-started by climatic change in Northern Europe (I believe I have seen this as a potential contributor). Then when the civilised South dissappears, there is no more spectacular wealth through trade. Wealth instead through plunder and violence. Perhaps some hire mercenacies to come from the South to help them tap into those riches? Or bands of men doing a 'reverse Viking' searching out fabled riches in the North?