The more things change...
“Possibility.” “It is thought that...” “Is believed to be.”
Well. Another write-up that’s nothing more than conjecture. Anthropology strikes again.
White people
When we were Comanches
AG Barr expects indictments any day.
1800 “merchants” traveling as a group? I’m not buying that story.
Like the American Indians of old attacking a wagon train?
The poor merchants were probably behind on their taxes to the local robber baron.
The more archaeologists “re-imagine” their works, the harder it gets to take them seriously.
Couldn’t have been warriors because doesn’t match imaginary image of warriors. Got it.
Had to be merchants because some of the skeletons showed signs of having had to carry heavy loads. Got it.
Warriors traveled in bands with their own slaves and other type persons playing the support and logistics role all throughout known history.
But that can’t be the case in this pre-history dig.
Interesting subject, horribly written article.
Barbarian
Lives
Matter
The archaeologist concluded it was a gathering of merchants because some of them showed skeletal evidence of a lifetime of carrying burdens.
Doesn’t seem sufficient. Isotope or molecular evidence that they were not native?
They could have been builders, local slaves, litter bearers, miners.
1400 people would be a large town for Germany back then.
Large gatherings back then could have been religious primarily, trade second.
Maybe it was a raid on a village, a sacrifice, or a mass punishment.
Probably 2 long-distance trading caravans with their attendant security details just ‘bumped into’ one another. Or more likely 1 ambushed the other at the river crossing.
The bodies of the dead were stripped of all metals, so guessing that they were trading in Tin or Copper — the component metals of Bronze. Tin deposits are pretty rare and so the metal ore usually comes from great distances.
Another interesting bit: the combatants were asymmetrically armed with one side using flint arrow heads while the others used bronze.
As a German American, I demand reparations!
Right in the middle of the bronze age - they were likely transporting copper and tin ingots. Copper was possibly from Upper Peninsula of Michigan and 99% pure (today’s copper is 2-4%) somebody mined over 231,000 tons out during 3,000BC-1,000BC - not the locals (that would be 4620 rail ore cars at 50 tons each). None of it has been accounted for.
Copper was more valuable than gold as weapons (and more) were made from it. So if those robbers heard about the merchants cargo of copper and tin ingots their was lots of incentive to take it and to make sure no one lived to squeal. For the merchants safety was in numbers, but they just didn’t have the numbers to fend off the likely thousands in the attacking band of robbers.