Ancient Germany's Metal Traders

....May 11, 2011, Mario Küssner looked on as a bulldozer shaved a layer of soil a few inches deep from a roadside field near the eastern German village of Dermsdorf. Küssner, a staff archaeologist for the state of Thuringia, was brought in before the scheduled construction of a highway on-ramp would begin... the bulldozer uncovered something even more surprising -- a handful of dull green ax heads lying in the soil... careful work revealed a clay jar standing a foot-and-a-half tall packed with 100 bronze ax heads dating to the Bronze Age -- more than 3,000 years ago. The ax heads would have represented a tremendous amount of wealth at a time when bronze was in high demand for weapons and tools...

...Before uncovering the ax heads, the only things the team had turned up were post molds -- dark stains in the soil that show where wooden posts had once been planted as a frame for a house. With the discovery of the axes, Küssner and his team began taking a harder look at the surrounding area. Soon they found more post molds, dozens of them, enough to trace where the walls of a structure 35 feet wide and nearly 150 feet long had been. Based on the width of the walls and the spacing of the posts, Küssner estimates that the roof's peak would have been nearly 30 feet above the ground. Inside the walls, a double row of posts ran the length of the building, creating a central chamber. Altogether, the structure covered 5,000 square feet, making it the biggest Bronze Age structure discovered north of the Alps. The ax heads were buried at the southern end of the house, where the front door might once have been.

Weapon hoards dating to around 3,000 years ago, such as bronze ax heads uncovered by a bulldozer near the German town of Dermsdorf, have been discovered throughout Central Europe. The hoards indicate that the metal trade was a major source of wealth and power in the area during the Bronze Age. (Courtesy Thuringian State Office for Heritage Management and Archaeology)

Might’ve been an 5000 sq ft Krupp ax factory with the remaining ax heads in inventory stored away in something akin to a ‘gun safe.’

Pretty unusual for that many carefully stored tools/arms to be left and forgotten I’d say unless they had somehow lost value.

For example, did buggy-whip makers eventually abandon their last inventory in a empty warehouse when Ford started cranking out Model As & Ts. and they went out of business.

On the other hand, maybe a cataclysmic event occurred like a raid by another tribe and the hidden cache was never found.

Finds like this drive me crazy because I start wondering, “What were these guys thinking at this particular time in their culture?”

Romans and Barbarians
by Derek Williams
In fact the German heartland appears to have lain in the southern Baltic and north coastal areas of today's Germany. However, in the late 2nd century BC the Germans began to move southwards into the Rhineland and Belgium, setting in motion events which would shake Roman confidence and fuel her longstanding fear of the morthern peoples. Two tribes migrated from Jutland, 'driven from their lands by a great flood-tide.'(p 70) [ footnote: Strabo, Geography, 7.2.1 ]

Geography, 7.2.1
by Strabo
II. As for the Cimbri, some things that are told about them are incorrect and others are extremely improbable. For instance, one could not accept such a reason for their having become a wandering and piratical folk as this--that while they were dwelling on a Peninsula they were driven out of their habitations by a great flood-tide; for in fact they still hold the country which they held in earlier times; and they sent as a present to Augustus the most sacred kettle in their country, with a plea for his friendship and for an amnesty of their earlier offences, and when their petition was granted they set sail for home; and it is ridiculous to suppose that they departed from their homes because they were incensed on account of a phenomenon that is natural and eternal, occurring twice every day. And the assertion that an excessive flood-tide once occurred looks like a fabrication, for when the ocean is affected in this way it is subject to increases and diminutions, but these are regulated and periodical.

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