Europe's first battlefield? - Tollense valley 1300 BCE

Prologue 2/2 - Europe's first battlefield?
In the second part of our prologue we cover a large scale battle which took place in the Tollense Valley in Germany around the year 1300 BCE. Before this ancient battlefield got discovered, it was never assumed that during this time period within the dense woodlands of Northern Europe the inhabitants living here where capable of being this organized.
In this video we cover two different scenarios of how this battle could have taken place. The first one is the banding together of smaller tribes on both sides that fought an all-out major battle for influence within the local area. The second (more likely) scenario is that of a large invading army consisting of different tribes that decided to work together focusing on removing other large tribes from the local region as the invaders pushed for the expansion of their territory.
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[@lebowskiduderino89]

I love the way some people in the comment section become "experts" after watching a few videos about a certain subject. Then they proceed to tell the person who made the video how wrong they are. It's very funny. The truth is, we have no idea what happened here. We never will. What happened at this place is lost forever to time. We can make educated guesses, but nothing more. Thanks for the videos. Good job.

[@oOEFESOo]

so Germany not only started the First World War, but also the World’s First War

[@BattleHistories]

Well to be fair not in the World. That honor goes towards the middle Eastern area.

[@seananglim5962]

Germany didn't start the first world war either

[@freefall9832]

​@seananglim5962 they happily jumped in

[@_communists_]

Germany did NOT start ww1 the Serbs and austrian empire did

[@BattleHistories]

Interested in seeing more of the same? Episode one of our two part prologue covers one of the earliest battles in Europe roughly 7000 years ago. You can find it in the prologue play-list: kzbin.info/www/bejne/mJ6beGOvhbeSodU

[@BattleHistories]

(Updated) A 100 subscribers! Happy to have reached this milestone! It is now upwards and onwards as the next stop is a community of 500 so I can start informing those who are interested about upcoming videos and maps, sharing the process of the next stories to be told. If you like this content feel free to sub and stick around ;)

[@elgatto3133]

Such a shame there's no stories from back then. It's fascinating they had battles this huge way back then.

[@BattleHistories]

Very true. We can only speculate about what really went down.

[@hakanliljeberg790]

@@BattleHistories It's called in the Edda, Aesir Vanir war...

[@SuiuS1]

I would expect the oldest battlefield in Europe to be in Greece due to the Myceneans being the first organized European civilization we know of,so this buffles me, especially due to the fact that it's in Germany, a region which was a backwater compared to France and Italy for example. History is indeed full of surprises.

[@BattleHistories]

Well in the end it will always be difficult to really determine due to lack of evidence. Who knows if they will uncover another battlefield which predates this one. In that case I will have to make a new one 😉

[@ReplyToMeIfUrRetarded]

To be fair, the g*rms are very b*rbarous and fierce, so its expected

[@robbylava]

Another brilliant video, I'm loving your presentation style mate.

[@BattleHistories]

Glad you like them!

[@williamtruitt3346]

Excellent video love your channel. Thank you.

[@BattleHistories]

Glad you enjoy it! Hope you will enjoy future content as well!

[@lulubelle0bresil]

fascinating! thank you!

[@BattleHistories]

You're very welcome. Hope you enjoy the rest of the content and future content as well 😉

[@Jabranalibabry]

Awesome, bro, keep it up! Love seeing new channels

[@BattleHistories]

Thanks a lot! Working hard on new content so hope you'll enjoy that too 😉

[@Jabranalibabry]

@@BattleHistories 👊 looking forward to it, bro

[@xixi1x34]

Wonderful work

[@BattleHistories]

Thank you!

[@Kampfwageneer]

This is awesome

[@BattleHistories]

Thank you very much! Glad you liked it. We only just started so there will be more to come!

[@Kampfwageneer]

@@BattleHistories groovy! 🤘🏻

[@jelkel25]

I'd guess bronze and other items of value had something to do with the disagreement here. If the economy changes drastically so does a lot of other things. OK, there was trading of pottery and workable stone before this but bronze was a game changer that had three hard to get components, including the knowledge of how to make it. I bet it was not cheap. You would have to up your economic game or lag behind both economically and battle tech wise. A causeway can be charged to use making the owners wealthy and the surrounding tribes poor. Maybe they went too far or the other tribe needed to cross the causeway to expand? Maybe the other tribe just wanted the tolls? Maybe an already existing raiding culture was taken to the next level? Who knows.

[@BattleHistories]

Exactly! It's very interesting to speculate on this particular battle. It's for now one of the key elements of my videos. As I like to try and work as much as possible in chronological order through the battlefields of Europe. At least that's the goal for now. That brings a lot of these mostly "unknown" battles that have very little information available. The fun side is that it also leaves some room for my animations as I can come up with some movements myself. Your comment really nails it as to what I want to achieve with these videos. The questioning you do afterwards as to what and how and why this has happend. Thank you!

[@noahtylerpritchett2682]

I've always assumed the interpretation was that Nordic Bronze Age proto-germanic tribes fighting proto-balto-slavic

[@BattleHistories]

It is something I have read later on as well. But because of so much uncertainty about this time period I tried to keep it a bit vague. I don't want to state things that are completely wrong ;)

[@thorspoczta4436]

Celtic-Slavic clash.

[@jbtacticus]

Great video, subscribed :) You say that it is speculated the some of the warriors rode on horseback. Is there any evidence that they actually rode the horse instead of a chariot pulled by horses, which would be much more common in this era?

[@BattleHistories]

What I have found during my research was that they identified multiple remains of horses but no specific mention was made about chariots. This created the assumption that they rode on horseback. I must add though that recently I watched another video covering this battle which was posted after I finished mine and that gave some new perspective too. I guess these things are still ever evolving regarding available data!

[@jbtacticus]

@@BattleHistories Interesting, thanks :).

[@Ian-yf7uf]

The only evidence that the horses were in use were bone horse bits (mouth pieces often used in horse riding and chariots pulling).

[@hakanliljeberg790]

@Dan Davis History Look at Vitlycke, Tanum, you will soon find the right picture, the river represented with a dotted line to the right, one against two depicting the strength of forces.. Also carved are an archer, spearmen with pouches(slingstones?). That ackurately depicts weapons used in the battle. Described is also a warclub, which I first thought was a plough, but it closely depicts a typical warclub. Read the War between Vanes and Asagods from the Edda. It described a last stand fortress, peace, a wedding as a peaceceremony, exchange of hostages. Hönir from strangers is found useless, in anger the vanes behead him. All this is amazingly described. A hat is also carved. A golden hat? To show that the foreigners "came from a culture where they have golden hats"? It is a great scene of at least 200 m2..

[@bratovitpierwszy2617]

where can I read more about it?

[@branilavvasic9727]

I doubt that they could ride horses into battle this early. Maybe they used Chariots like in the middle east since horses could not support weight of a man back in the day.

[@Ian-yf7uf]

Perhaps. Horse riding and chariots were developed in Europe. Horse bits are found from Slovakia, through Ukraine all the way back to 3000 BC. I think it's conceivable that they were using a proto chariot or could ride horses in a limited way.

[@WestlehSeyweld]

There is no consensus on when horse riding was fully established, both in combat and for transport.

[@BattleHistories]

It might have been that I didn't address it properly in my video but it should have given the impression that this is thought of having been a possibility due to the amount of horses corpses and the pattern of which they where found across the battlefield. However, its not to be thought of as a fact. It could be that chariots is another option but from what I read about this battle it wasn't mentioned that they found any evidence of this. Then again it might have all but disappeared over the years. Who knows... that does go with looking into these types of battles though. One thing is certain and that is that we will never know for certain how these events played out so many years ago.

[@Baylonfrisbee]

it was proba ambush they found that the winner had fewer numbers than the losers and that it was bronze on stone the idea that they would be dumb enough to fight bronze in battle line is ingnorant

[@BattleHistories]

Yes, you are correct. It was also thought that they had found the remains of women and children on the battlefield that belonged to the losing side, which indicates that it was more of an ambush. It was the second time that I made these kinds of animations, so I agree it looks more like two battle lines. However, I tried to create some kind of chaos around the bridge. But I agree it could have been presented a little bit better.

[@thePyiott]

Do you think it's possible the "invaders" were Nordic Bronze age traders traveling by boat? Could the locals be raiders equipped with stone age weapons trying desperately to get hold of bronze?

[@BattleHistories]

It's very much a possibility. Others in the comments have suggested possible sides that participated in this battle. However as very little is known I decided to keep this vague. I worked with the information available and I guess all we can say is that it is highly likely the locals never really faced danger before or at least hadn't for a long time such that their weapons where outdated. The invaders where organised and probably had more experience in war. So probably from their raiding lifestyle they also obtained these new type of weapons easier. But this is still a lot of guessing on our part though.

[@Glockler]

was DNA testing done on the recovered skeletons?

[@BattleHistories]

As far as I am aware they know it was at least two different populations that fought during this battle. So they did genetic tests as far as I could see during my research. But to be fair I searched mostly about the battle itself.

[@Glockler]

@@BattleHistories what populations were they from?

[@amshaegar7170]

Watch the Dan Davis video on the Tollense valley battle, he goes into much more detail on the different possible scenarios and the diffent finds and what they could mean and there is a section for the DNA testing too.

[@thePyiott]

@@Glockler I can't find the source but someone stated in a video one of the populations was from the Nordic bronze age culture. If so I think it's likely they came by boat possibly a trading convoy, and the locals were raiders, trying to get get hold of the bronze

[@Artur-vh3nk]

Such a distinction in today's understanding is not easy. From Eurogenes blog: "We have 20 samples. - 8 of them are outside of the modern Slavic range. - 8 of them outside the modern Germanic range. - 17 of them are in the section of Slavic-Germanic and the parts of both that are close to the other. These are just as Germanic as Slavic. (And strictly speaking possibly neither.)" "Admittedly, these Welzin_BA samples are preliminary low quality versions, but I can assure you, people who don't harbor significant Slavic ancestry never cluster in this part of the plot. The only other ancient samples that cluster in the Slavic zone are, as expected, an early Slav from Bohemia and, interestingly, a Bronze Age individual from what is now Hungary. But we've already seen strong genetic, and indeed genealogical, links between another Hungarian Bronze Age genome and present-day Slavs (see figure 3 here). So what's going on? Did the proto-Slavs come into existence during the Bronze Age, as opposed to the more generally accepted early Medieval Period? And did they expand from what is now Hungary? Or did they migrate there from the Baltic region?"

[@hakanliljeberg790]

It was mainly between northern europeans worshipping vanes(Njord-Nerthuz, Frej-Frauja) and italic people, maybe forcing proto-slavs to join them, devoted to gods called Aisar(like etruscans). A war of food and resources? Italics driven from their homes by Santorini? The proto-germanics were victorious ackording The battle between Aesir and Vanes...! #Tollense

[@mateuszjankowski3357]

the local Slavic peoples (Polabians and Lusitians with the support from Bohemian warriors) fights in this battle against the Nordic-Germanic peoples

[@BattleHistories]

Could it be that you refer to a battle in the same place but at a later time? Those peoples you mention seem to be present in a later period in history much more closer to the Roman area. As far as I could find during our research there isn't much known about either side that fought during this battle. It was even not really known untill this battlefield was discoverd that as far back as 1.300 BCE large scale battles where fought in Europe.

[@lubatv1]

@@BattleHistories there is a new method of historical analysis: genetic. If battle was between r1a and r1b genetic markers, we can than speculate that is was proto-slavic vs pro-germanic/celtic fight. You shoul as local research teams if thy conducted such research.

[@BattleHistories]

Thanks for your additional info. Thats a very good point you're making. For now regarding these videos I'm going with the general available info. But I must say I have already seen videos on the Tollense battle posted after the moment I was done creating this one and they already gave me new insights as well. Although history has already happened. The way we interpret what happened is sometimes still a changing thing. Partly also because of new technologies as you mentioned.

[@ericwafer1947]

Slavs didn’t exist for another 1200 years. But nice attempt at propaganda.

[@RTWPimpmachine]

@@BattleHistories I wouldn't bother listening to what he stated lol. Its purely pseudoscientific. Saying that "R1b vs R1a" would indicate a war between "proto-Germanic" and "proto-Slavs" is moronic.

[@darksaurian6410]

they committed suicide