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Fractured human remains found on a German river bank could provide the first compelling evidence of a major Bronze Age battle.Archaeological excavations of the Tollense Valley in northern Germany unearthed fractured skulls, wooden clubs and horse remains dating from around 1200 BC. The injuries to the skulls suggest face-to-face combat in a battle perhaps fought between warring tribes, say the researchers. > The archaeologists also found remains of two wooden clubs, one the shape of a baseball bat and made of ash, the second the shape of a croquet mallet and made of sloe wood. Dr Harald Lubke of the...

"Our evidence shows definitively that the population decline in this period cannot have been caused by climate change," says Ian Armit, Professor of Archaeology at the University of Bradford, and lead author of the study. Graeme Swindles, Associate Professor of Earth System Dynamics at the University of Leeds, added, "We found clear evidence for a rapid change in climate to much wetter conditions, which we were able to precisely pinpoint to 750BC using statistical methods." According to Professor Armit, social and economic stress is more likely to be the cause of the sudden and widespread fall in numbers. Communities producing...

Conventional estimates for the collapse of the Aegean civilization may be incorrect by up to a century, according to new radiocarbon analyses. While historical chronologies traditionally place the end of the Greek Bronze Age at around 1025 BCE, this latest research suggests a date 70 to 100 years earlier. Archaeologists from the University of Birmingham selected 60 samples of animal bones, plant remains and building timbers, excavated at Assiros in northern Greece, to be radiocarbon dated and correlated with 95.4% accuracy using Bayesian statistical methodology at the University of Oxford and the Akademie der Wissenschaften Heidelberg, Germany. 'Until very recently...

Outside the Greek mainland and Aegean Island a possible representation of Achaean warriors equipped with boar tusks helmets is from an Egyptian papyrus fragments from Tell el-Amarna, home of Amenhotep III's son, dated around 1350 BC (*2). In this papyrus some warriors are depicted with conical pale-yellow helmets which remaind in general design the typical Aegean boar tusks helmet. This identification is strengthened by the find of a piece of boar’s tusk, with perforations for attaching it to a leather frame, during excavations at Qantir, the site of the Ramesside capital Pi-ramesse in the eastern delta. It appears likely that...

More than 3,200 years ago, life was abuzz in and around what is now this modern-day Israeli metropolis on the shimmering Mediterranean shore. To the north lay the mighty Hittite empire; to the south, Egypt was thriving under the reign of the great Pharaoh Ramses II. Cyprus was a copper emporium. Greece basked in the opulence of its elite Mycenaean culture, and Ugarit was a bustling port city on the Syrian coast. In the land of Canaan, city states like Hazor and Megiddo flourished under Egyptian hegemony. Vibrant trade along the coast of the eastern Mediterranean connected it all. Yet...

Forget old conspiracy theories about snake bites and fatal poisons. Egyptian King Ramesses III died after a brutal throat slashing, a new study says. The study provides the latest twist in a mystery that has long perplexed researchers. Did a venomous viper take him out? Poison? An assassination plot in a reign tainted by war? And if it were the latter, who did it? Researches say he died at the hands of a killer in a plot planned by one of his wives and a son who wanted to succeed him....

Whereas the Sea People event constitutes a major turning point in ancient world history, attested by both written and archaeological (e.g. Ugarit, Enkomi, Kition, Byblos) evidence, our knowledge of when these waves of destructions occurred rests on translation of cuneiform tablets preceding the invasions (terminus ante quem) and on Ramses III's reign (terminus post quem). Here, we report the first absolute chronology of the invasion from a rare, well-preserved Sea People destruction layer (Fig. 2) from a Levantine harbour town of the Ugarit kingdom. The destruction layer contains remains of conflicts (bronze arrowheads scattered around the town, fallen walls, burnt...

Modern methods are slowly helping us build a history of the Heroic Age. The exploits of the Sea Peoples are perhaps not as distinctly preserved in the Greek tradition as those of the Achaeans who sacked Troy, probably sometime during the 1180s BC, with the nostos of Odysseus recently dated to 1,178BC. The lack of distinct information may be, in part, due to the fact that the Sea Peoples were active mostly away from the Aegean, and in lands where Greek colonization did not occur centuries later, and hence were cut off from the Aegean world. The memory of the...

Early Bronze Age battle site found on German river bank 22 May 11 02:38 ET ? By Neil Bowdler Science reporter, BBC News Fractured human remains found on a German river bank could provide the first compelling evidence of a major Bronze Age battle. Archaeological excavations of the Tollense Valley in northern Germany unearthed fractured skulls, wooden clubs and horse remains dating from around 1200 BC. The injuries to the skulls suggest face-to-face combat in a battle perhaps fought between warring tribes, say the researchers. The paper, published in the journal Antiquity, is based primarily on an investigation begun in...

A 3,200-year-old round bronze tablet with a carved face of a woman, found at the El-ahwat excavation site near Katzir in central Israel, is part of a linchpin that held the wheel of a battle chariot in place. This was revealed by scientist Oren Cohen of the Zinman Institute of Archaeology at the University of Haifa. “Such an identification reinforces the claim that a high-ranking Egyptian or local ruler was based at this location, and is likely to support the theory that the site is Harosheth Haggoyim, the home town of Sisera, as mentioned in Judges 4-5,” says Prof. Zertal....

“The Catastrophe” - Part 1: What the End of Bronze-Age Civilization Means for Modern TimesFrom the desk of Thomas F. Bertonneau on Tue, 2009-09-15 09:20 Introduction to Part I: Modern people assume the immunity of their situation to major disturbance or – even more unthinkable – to terminal wreckage. The continuance of a society or culture depends, in part, on that very assumption because without it no one would complete his daily round. A man cannot enthusiastically arise from bed as the sun comes up and set about the day’s errands believing that all undertakings will issue vainly because the...

THE SEA PEOPLES All at once, they were on the move, scattered in war. They laid their hands upon the lands to the very circuit of the earth, their hearts confident and trusting; Our plans will succeed... " (Ramesses III). The name "Peoples of the Sea" comes directly from the Egyptian records, describing the Sea Peoples' exploits. As their collective name tells us, they were tribes who had developed a life style almost totally dependent upon the sea. They perfected boats, sailing and navigational techniques for fishing offshore as well as long distance travel and explored much of the Atlantic...

Sometime after 1200 BCE, civilization collapsed, and a dark age prevailed. The Late Bronze Age collapse of societies throughout the Levant, the Near East and the Mediterranean some 3,200 years ago has been a mystery. Powerful, advanced civilizations disappeared, seemingly overnight. Now an archaeologist believes he has figured out what lay behind the cataclysm. The trigger seems to have been the invasion of ancient Egypt in 1177 BCE by marauding peoples known simply as the “Sea Peoples,” as recorded in the Medinet Habu wall relief at Ramses III' tomb. The relief depicts a sea battle (and also carts full of...

According to the Greek historian Herodotus, Cambyses II, the oldest son of Cyrus the Great, sent his army to destroy the Oracle of Amun at Siwa Oasis. 50,000 warriors entered the Egypt’s western desert near Luxor. Somewhere in the middle of the desert the army was overwhelmed by a sandstorm and destroyed. Although many scientists regard the story as a myth, amateur as well as professional archaeologists have searched for the remains of the Persian soldiers for many decades. Prof Kaper never believed this story. “Some expect to find an entire army, fully equipped. However, experience has long shown that...

2,500 years ago, an army of 50,000 men left an oasis in western Egypt and were never heard from again. Now, archaeologists think they may have uncovered the missing troops, who were probably killed in a sandstorm. ...the team decided to investigate Bedouin stories about thousands of white bones that would have emerged decades ago during particular wind conditions in a nearby area. Indeed, they found a mass grave with hundreds of bleached bones and skulls. "We learned that the remains had been exposed by tomb robbers and that a beautiful sword which was found among the bones was sold...

The legend of the lost Persian army has survived over two and a half millennia - despite a blatant lack of hard evidence. But now two Italian experts believe they have found its remains. Twin brothers Angelo and Alfredo Castiglioni uncovered hundreds of human bones, weapons and jewelery in the Sahara desert, west Egypt, that they believe belonged to the 50,000-strong army.

Herodotus wrote of a 50,000-man strong army that set out on foot into the Egyptian desert in 525 B.C. and was never heard from again ... until today.A pair of Italian archaeologists have uncovered bronze weapons, a silver bracelet, an earring and hundreds of human bones in the vast desolate wilderness of the Sahara desert. Twin brothers Angelo and Alfredo Castiglioni are hopeful that they've finally found the lost army of Persian King Cambyses II. According to the Greek historian Herodotus, Cambyses II and his armied were buried by a cataclysmic sandstorm in 525 B.C. He wrote, "a wind...

INSPIRED by the legend of a Persian king and his lost army, Stefano Miglietti, an Italian adventurer, completed a 340-mile hike through the most isolated and arid part of the western Sahara yesterday. The route that Signor Miglietti followed through the so-called Great Sand Sea — from the Farafra oasis in southern Egypt to the Siwa oasis in the north — has always been considered impossible for a man carrying his own food and water. According to legend, Cambyses II, the Persian king, foolishly tried to take the same route in 523 BC, setting off with a 50,000-strong army. Herodotus,...

"The Persians set forth from [an] oasis across the sand," Herodotus wrote. "As they were at their midday meal, a wind arose from the south, strong and deadly, bringing with it vast columns of whirling sand, which entirely covered up the troops and caused them wholly to disappear." Recently, however, human remains, daggers, metal arrowheads, and other objects likely associated with just such an army were accidentally discovered by a group of geologists working in the northwestern desert. Now a multidisciplinary team of archaeologists, geologists, and surveyors has been dispatched to determine whether this remote site is the graveyard...

Feb. 12, 2004 — Tourists traversing Egypt's desert may solve a mystery that has puzzled archaeologists for centuries: what happened to the 50,000-man Persian army of King Cambyses. Set up by tourist operator Aqua Sun Desert, the Cambyses project will comb the desert sands using four-wheel-drive vehicles packed with paying tourists eager to find the remains of the lost army swallowed in a sandstorm in 524 B.C., according to the account of the ancient Greek historian Herodotus. "The project is approved by the Ministry of Tourism after the agreement of Ministry of Antiquities. Any evidence will have to be reported...