Jan Bartek - AncientPages.com - Europe has a long history of wars, and sometimes it's unclear why the battles were fought.
Archaeologists have uncovered a significant number of artifacts indicating that Europe's oldest known battle occurred approximately 3,000 years ago in the Tollense Valley, located in north-east Germany. Despite this discovery, the identities and motivations of those involved remain largely unknown. The Tollense Valley, situated in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, is recognized as the site of a major interregional conflict dating back to around 1250 B.C. The finding of over 150 human remains suggests participation by more than 2,000 individuals—a scale unprecedented for the Nordic Bronze Age.
Tollense Valley. Credit: Botaurus stellaris - Public Domain
The identities and origins of those who fought at Tollense over three millennia ago are still shrouded in mystery.
To shed light on these questions, researchers from various German institutions conducted a comparative analysis of bronze and flint arrowheads found at the site with more than 4,000 contemporary examples from across Europe. Their findings indicate that most arrowheads resemble types occasionally found in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, implying that many combatants were likely local to the area.
However, some arrowhead types—such as those with straight or rhombic bases or featuring unilateral barbs or pointed tangs instead of sockets—are more commonly associated with regions further south including modern-day Bavaria and Moravia.
"The arrowheads are a kind of 'smoking gun,'" says lead author of the research, Leif Inselmann, who collected more than 4,700 arrowheads from Central Europe for his M.A. thesis at Göttingen University. "Just like the murder weapon in a mystery, they give us a clue about the culprit, the fighters of the Tollense Valley battle and where they came from."
The absence of these specific arrowheads in burials from the Tollense region suggests that local inhabitants did not merely acquire them through trade with southern regions for their own use in battle. This evidence implies that some combatants at Tollense were likely non-local, indicating the involvement of southern warriors or possibly even a southern army in the conflict.
Bronze and flint arrowheads from Tollense Valley, sorted by types. Credit: Leif Inselmann
Furthermore, numerous bronze arrowheads discovered at several contemporary sites in southern Germany suggest that an overall escalation in armed conflict across European prehistory marked the thirteenth century BC. Notably, this period represents the earliest recorded instance of interregional conflict within Europe, suggesting a corresponding increase in both the scale and professionalization of organized violence during this time.
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"The Tollense Valley conflict dates to a time of major changes," concludes Inselmann, now at the Freie Universität Berlin. "This raises questions about the organization of such violent conflicts. Were the Bronze Age warriors organized as a tribal coalition, the retinue or mercenaries of a charismatic leader—a kind of 'warlord,' or even the army of an early kingdom?"
The study was published in the journal Antiquity
Written by Jan Bartek - AncientPages.com Staff Writer
