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Along a river in northern Germany, thousands of men lined up for a pitched battle. Some had come great distances, determined to seize or hold this modest waterway. They went at it mercilessly, leaving hundreds dead, many shot in the back while fleeing. Victory was decisive.
World War II? Perhaps the Napoleonic Wars? The 30 Years’ War?
Actually, you won’t find this battle in any history book. It happened around 1250 B.C., roughly the era of the Trojan War and the biblical war of Deborah. The weapons and tactics were similar to those famous conflicts, the numbers mobilized equally impressive.
But in illiterate Northern Europe, no one chronicled the German battle in song and saga, with heroes’ names echoing down the centuries, and no one knew of the event until very recently.
Twenty years ago, an amateur archaeologist found an arm bone poking out of the bank of the River Tollense, an arrow point in one end. Since then the accumulated bones and weapons reveal violent death on an astonishing scale. As described in 2011 in the journal Antiquity, archaeologists used a range of techniques to study the excavation: forensics, X-rays, CT scans, 3-D reconstruction, metal detectors, geomagnetic surveys and mathematical models originally developed to predict stresses on aircraft parts.
Scientific archaeology at its best revealed human nature at its worst. With only 3% to 10% of the likely battlefield unearthed, researchers have found at least 130 dead, almost all men in their 20s. Tooth composition and genes show that they came from distant parts of Europe. A wooden causeway of about 400 feet across the valley may have had strategic significance.
Healed fractures show that these were warriors hardened in battle. Some appear to have been nobles on horseback, wearing heavy armor, which only the well-trained can wear while fighting. All this typified the Bronze Age, when warfare increased. Stone arrow and spear points among the bronze ones show that this was a transitional time.
Now let us jump back in time an additional 7,000 years and fly 4,000 miles to Nataruk, Kenya, west of Lake Turkana, another scene of armed strife. No bronze here—we are squarely in the Stone Age—but there are still important parallels, as reported in January in the journal Nature by M. Mirazón Lahr and colleagues.