13. 6. 2011 The oldest battle site from the Bronze Age

Ten years ago, archaeologists discovered a hundred skeletons in the Tollense valley in northern Germany, suggesting a brutal battle between warring tribes. The pierced skulls and broken bones apparently lay on the oldest battlefield ever found. It dates back to the Bronze Age.

Bones were broken, skulls were fractured and one of the skeletons had an arrowhead embedded in it. Then divers found weapons in the local riverbed. Among them was a wooden stick resembling a baseball bat. Another looked like a croquet mallet, which is played on a grass field, using a mallet to push balls through the wickets to a target pin.

That the archaeologists stumbled upon a battlefield is suggested by the fact that they found no fragments of pottery that are found in ordinary graves. Eight skeletons had broken bones, one even had a fractured femur. This probably means that the warrior in question fell from his horse.

Harald Lubke, the head of research, commented on the discovery at the time. He himself was convinced that they had enough evidence that they had indeed found a Bronze Age battlefield. But none are as brutal in terms of the number of bodies and weapons found," Lubke recalled.

Judging by the extent of the injuries, blunt weapons were indeed used in the fighting. Archaeologists say most of the victims were dead almost "immediately". They found no signs of healing.

"We also have evidence of the use of sharp weapons, but not that much. The fighting was just mainly with clubs," Lubke said. "They all died quite quickly and we didn't even find any classic graves, they just died on the spot," the head of the research added.

There could have been many more victims. Some of the bodies probably ended up in the river and the current washed them away to an unknown destination. "There are bound to be many more remains, but they are hard to find. We'll try to find out exactly where the crash broke out. We think it was somewhere further up the river. If we explore that, we might find more bodies of fallen fighters and find out more information about the conflict," Lubke said at the time.

Archaeologists published the news of the discovery of the Bronze Age battlefield in the prestigious journal Antiquity...

Sources: www.dailymail.co.uk