Archaeologists Discover Southern Army Fought ‘Europe’s Oldest Battle’

Archaeologists have analyzed bronze and flint arrowheads from the 13th century BC from the Tollense Valley in northeastern Germany, uncovering the first evidence of a major interregional conflict in Europe. The Tollense Valley in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania is well known for being the site of a major conflict around 1250 BC.

The quantity of human remains found (over 150 individuals) suggests that over 2,000 people were involved, an unprecedented number for the Nordic Bronze Age. The site, first hypothesized in 2011, is considered an ancient battlefield. Today, it is often referred to as “the oldest known battlefield in Europe”, as no other conflict of this magnitude has been discovered before it.

However, very little is known about the men who fought and died in Tollense more than 3,000 years ago. Who took part in the battle and where did they come from? To answer these questions, a team of researchers from several German institutions compared bronze and flint arrowheads found in the valley with more than 4,000 contemporary examples from all over Europe.

Their results are published in the journal Antiquity.

“Arrowheads are a kind of smoking gun,” says Leif Inselmann, lead author of the study, who collected more than 4,700 arrowheads from Central Europe for his master’s thesis at the University of Göttingen. “Just like the murder weapon in a detective novel, they give us a clue about the culprit, the fighters in the Battle of the Tollense Valley and their origins.”

The majority of the arrowheads are of types that are occasionally found in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, suggesting that most Tollense fighters were relatively local. However, other types such as arrowheads with straight or rhombic bases, one-sided barbs, or pointed tangs instead of sockets are better known from a more southern region that encompasses present-day Bavaria and Moravia.

These types of arrowheads have not been found in burials in the Tollense region, indicating that local populations did not simply acquire the arrowheads through trade with the south and use them themselves in combat.

This suggests that at least some of the people fighting at Tollense were not native to the region, implying that southern warriors, or perhaps even a southern army, were involved in the conflict.

At several contemporary sites in southern Germany, large quantities of bronze arrowheads have also been discovered, suggesting that the 13th century BC was a period in European prehistory that saw a general increase in armed conflict. Importantly, this is also the first example of interregional conflict in Europe, implying that this period corresponds to an increased scale and professionalization of organized violence.

“The Tollense Valley conflict dates back to a time of major changes,” concludes Inselmann, now a professor at the Freie Universität Berlin. “It raises questions about the organization of such violent conflicts. Were Bronze Age warriors organized as a tribal coalition, as escorts or mercenaries of a charismatic leader, a kind of ‘warlord’, or even the army of an ancient kingdom?”