‘Europe’s Oldest Battlefield’ Just Got a Stranger With New Evidence of Aliens Involved

Northeast Germany’s Tollense Valley hosts what is known as the world’s oldest battlefield: an archaeological site with the remains of about 150 people, dating from the 13th century BCE.

Now, analysis of the arrowheads found at the site reveals that the weapons were not produced locally, indicating that the conflict involved people from elsewhere in Europe. The team’s research was published today on Age.

“Missiles are a kind of ‘smoking gun’,” said the study’s lead author, Leif Inselmann, researcher at Frie Universtät Berlin and lead author of the study, in the study. Age release. “Like a mysterious murder weapon, they give us a clue about the criminal, the fighters of the Tollense Valley and where they came from.”

The site was first proposed as a battlefield in 2011, although the parties involved in the conflict remain unclear. According to the release, based on the number of human remains left at the site, some researchers estimate that more than 2,000 people were involved in the battle itself. Now, the latest team has determined that at least some of the soldiers were not local to northern Germany.

Inselmann collected nearly 5,000 arrows from all over Central Europe and found that different types were present on the battlefield. The arrows were of flint and bronze; while flint arrows were typical from the area, bronze arrows were a combination of local and non-local types. Most arrowheads are found in the Tollense area, but others—namely those with straight or rhombic bases—are often associated with regions farther south, such as Bavaria and Moravia.

Foreign arrows were not found in cemeteries in the Tollense area, indicating that arrows from another area did not simply reach the region through trade. The barbs, it seems, were brought to Tollense for the purpose of confrontation. One set of remains at the site makes that clear: a human skull cap, pierced with a bronze arrowhead.

“The Tollense Valley conflict begins at a time of great change,” Inselmann said. “This raises questions about the organization of violent conflicts of this nature. Were the warriors of the Bronze Age organized as a confederation of tribes, nobles or soldiers of a charismatic leader ‒ a type of “warlord” ‒, or an army of an ancient empire?”

Although the arrows do not specify the parties involved in the conflict, they show that the great violence (for the time) involved groups from a wider range than previously known. As the team noted in their paper, no helmets and breastplates have been seen since the archaeological excavations of this site, so further excavations may be necessary to reveal more about the ancient battles in Tollense, the remains of many of which remain. place.