The article claims something I found surprising -- that the written word was not common near Germany until about 1000 AD.
Slaughter at the bridge: Uncovering a colossal Bronze Age battle (2016)
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Re: Slaughter at the bridge: Uncovering a colossal Bronze Age battle (2016)
#12Lindybeige did a great and relatively short video on this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoYj4BZdB1w
Re: Slaughter at the bridge: Uncovering a colossal Bronze Age battle (2016)
#13> Before the 1990s, “for a long time we didn’t really believe in war in prehistory,” DAI’s Hansen says. The grave goods were explained as prestige objects or symbols of power rather than actual weapons. “Most people thought ancient society was peaceful, and that Bronze Age males were concerned with trading and so on,” Is that really true (that "we" didn't believe in war in prehistory)? It seems like a case of taking…
Yeah, sounds like p-hacking.
Still, supporting a proper army is a massive economic undertaking, so it seems likely that army sizes (and battle sizes) started relatively small and grew over time. Maybe this new finding actually does suggest that scale-up happened earlier than most previous legitimate estimates.
My money's on p-hacking though.
Re: Slaughter at the bridge: Uncovering a colossal Bronze Age battle (2016)
#14> Before the 1990s, “for a long time we didn’t really believe in war in prehistory,” DAI’s Hansen says. The grave goods were explained as prestige objects or symbols of power rather than actual weapons. “Most people thought ancient society was peaceful, and that Bronze Age males were concerned with trading and so on,” Is that really true (that "we" didn't believe in war in prehistory)? It seems like a case of taking…
It may be more the level of organization. Warfare was common but thought to be more on the family/clan scale.
Re: Slaughter at the bridge: Uncovering a colossal Bronze Age battle (2016)
#15Same battle as in this recent article https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/09/warrior-skeletons-re...
Re: Slaughter at the bridge: Uncovering a colossal Bronze Age battle (2016)
#16> Before the 1990s, “for a long time we didn’t really believe in war in prehistory,” DAI’s Hansen says. The grave goods were explained as prestige objects or symbols of power rather than actual weapons. “Most people thought ancient society was peaceful, and that Bronze Age males were concerned with trading and so on,” Is that really true (that "we" didn't believe in war in prehistory)? It seems like a case of taking…
It may be more the level of organization. Warfare was common but thought to be more on the family/clan scale.
This is my understanding. Most of what I've read suggests that there was lots of "tribal raiding" going on, but "warfare" pretty much by definition requires larger polities such as city states or nations which are thought to be a more recent development.
Re: Slaughter at the bridge: Uncovering a colossal Bronze Age battle (2016)
#17> Before the 1990s, “for a long time we didn’t really believe in war in prehistory,” DAI’s Hansen says. The grave goods were explained as prestige objects or symbols of power rather than actual weapons. “Most people thought ancient society was peaceful, and that Bronze Age males were concerned with trading and so on,” Is that really true (that "we" didn't believe in war in prehistory)? It seems like a case of taking…
It may be more the level of organization. Warfare was common but thought to be more on the family/clan scale.
I don't know about Germany, but the UK is full of ancient fortifications - from earthworks that would enclose a few huts to huge ruined stone fortresses. Almost all of these get very little attention.
Re: Slaughter at the bridge: Uncovering a colossal Bronze Age battle (2016)
#18> Before the 1990s, “for a long time we didn’t really believe in war in prehistory,” DAI’s Hansen says. The grave goods were explained as prestige objects or symbols of power rather than actual weapons. “Most people thought ancient society was peaceful, and that Bronze Age males were concerned with trading and so on,” Is that really true (that "we" didn't believe in war in prehistory)? It seems like a case of taking…
I was surprised when I first read about that theory (that pre-historic people were largely free of warfare) and it seems really unintuitive, but I also kind of get why it may have been easy to paint that picture even with some science. It’s nice to see us trudging forward and making sure to correct our records :)
I think this is where I first ran into the concept: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2015/08/archaeologists-uncov...
Re: Slaughter at the bridge: Uncovering a colossal Bronze Age battle (2016)
#19The article claims something I found surprising -- that the written word was not common near Germany until about 1000 AD.
That's true for nearly all of nonRoman Europe.
Re: Slaughter at the bridge: Uncovering a colossal Bronze Age battle (2016)
#20The article claims something I found surprising -- that the written word was not common near Germany until about 1000 AD.
They weren't called the Dark Ages for nothin'.