Mysteries of History: The Lost Kingdom that Dominated Bronze Age Europe I Battle at Tollense Valley 

There are a number of your videos in which you repeat something once, but this is the first I've noticed where you repeat something twice. Doesn't detract from the video, perhaps a meme could be started about it.

@@domakent hey I’m all for memes. I’m actually planning a video on using them as source material funnily enough

Probably Russian hackers.

Same excuse archer @18:20 used to explain lack of pants

Sound quality has VASTLY improved! Grats!

Thing is, for the Chinese the Bronze Age is still very relevant to this day. Many of the traits and customs of Chinese society originated in the Bronze Age, so the study of the early Metal Ages helps us to understand not just our ancestors but our parents and grandparents too.

@@meilinchan7314 not just Chinese, certain beliefs and customs of sinitic peoples tracing from the bronze age are present in neighbouring cultures as well (not that it should surprise anyone) The same can be said about the "judeosphere" (europe, Mediterranean world etc) due to egyptian and various mesopotamian cultures influencing the semitic peoples beliefs and rites (at least some historians of religion claim so, even Christian ones, comparative studies ain't exactly popular though and they're often accused of jumping to conclusions without sufficient evidence so there's that).

@@Sk0lzky don't call it that

@@LolLol-gd7ly The fact that he even chose to call it that made me cringe away from correcting his wrongness. That is a special kind of dumb that can't be fixed.

Yeah i guess we will have to wait for the current gen archeologists to die off to finally get new perspectives

I realize English likely isn't your first language and not trying to be rude, but you don't pluralize fish. It's just "catching fish". 👍

That would be quite an exciting “catch!”

@@dillonhillierthank you 😀

@@MausTheGerman np

@@dillonhillierwholesome and constructive grammar correction, an internet first

Celtics did the Same

@@guillermocioli2292 indeed! Good call!

The same was true of the First Battle of Bull Run in the American Civil War. That battle was also basically the end of that. I have wondered if the legends of shieldmaidens, valkyries and what not were not women of the tribe shouting and singing encouragement to the warriors of the tribe, analogous to modern cheerleaders at sporting events.

celts did that too.

@@kylestephens4133 the location of bull run (manassas) was near to washington city. anyway, it must have been a weird thing to do, go watch a deadly battle.

More to come!

@@TheFallofRome eagerly awaiting them!

Mine, too. It’s a fascinating period that really spurs the imagination. For example, I’ve come across recent material about the Bronze Age Collapse that asks the question, “Collapse for whom?” Civilizations fell, but people kept living. The collapse might have benefited some peoples.

You might enjoy a recently released (Aug/22) historical novel by Gregory Michael Nixon set during the Bronze Age Collapse: *The Diomedeia: Diomedes, the Peoples of the Sea, and the Fall of the Hittite Empire*. Nothing dull in there !

@@douglaskingsman2565 looking forward to checking that out, thank you

Maybe it’s worth looking into oral traditions and legends.

Also, never say never! We’re living in a golden age of historical discovery. Imagine telling someone 100 years ago that we can find structures under the ground without laying a trench, and we can tell where someone grew up based on strontium isotope analysis of their teeth, just to mention two relatively new technologies. Also, we know a good deal about the language and even the beliefs of the Yamnaya/Kurgan people because of linguistic reconstruction. We may yet find out a lot more about these amber traders in and around the Tollensee River valley 🙂

Fully agree. Such an interesting historical time. So far, so "unreal".

If you ever hear of one be sure to leave a comment so we can learn more, Bc I seriously doubt it. Their is a myth on how the celts in galatia got their and it was Bc a campaign of celts failed to stay unified after a volcanic erupted and killed the majority of translators and leaders so their unity collapsed and they attacked one another and the greeks. This story survives from only the Greek perspective as well. Celts and druids and germans also believed in oral tradition - so once the people had observed massive battles like Teutoburg forests why would they keep retelling the previous clan vs clan battle when they needed unity. Unfortunately there’s a lot of good reasons for it to have not survived for the benefit of their society.

The problem is that there doesn't seem to have been any major settlements at all in Northern or Western Europe prior to the Roman Invasions. Hill forts with populations of a few hundred people don't leave oral histories or legends - They get wiped out by the next tribe over, who then get wiped out themselves 50 years later and so on and on and on.

Same, I love how he branches out of just Rome and WW2 like so many channels (not throwing shade)

@@leemarshall348 I agree. I think it is because the swarms of "epic battle", "masculine history" (for lack of a better term) lovers are the main money making demographic for history channels on RU-vid unfortunately.

Look up " The unipolar madmen leading us to Hell " on Yt. Insightful...................

Great! I hope you enjoy thsi

@@TheFallofRome Ewan, Mr. craft, I am fairly certain that anyone who looks forward to sitting down to thirty minutes of this probably feels the same way. I liked school sure but not enough to be excited for 1/3 of an average high school class length and even longer for college which is what this video equates to.

I agree this is great stuff. Thank you!!!

Why? Are you a reincarnated ancient soldier?

​@@glasshalffull2930 I like to think so

Semiconductors don’t have to use rare earths. Silicon, aluminium and phosphorus are remarkably common… Permanent magnets for motors are a different question (mostly because China has eliminated its competitors by price rigging).

@@allangibson8494 I mostly agree with allangibson8494. Rare Earths are not so rare as ubiquitous. What makes them scarce in the market is the difficulty in isolating/refining them since they are chemically similar to other elements. Currently, Chinese are most willing to extract them. Lithium on the other hand has fewer concentrated deposits. Thus, we should invade Bolivia.

@@psikogeek Or Nevada…

Nah - not many wars over that - oil however…

You might enjoy a recently released (Aug/22) historical novel by Gregory Michael Nixon set during the Bronze Age Collapse: *The Diomedeia: Diomedes, the Peoples of the Sea, and the Fall of the Hittite Empire*. Nothing "dry academic" in there (though it is surprisingly true to history) !

There are other channels. Here are the ones I subscribe to: Crecganford. Dan Davis History. Fall of Civilizations. Stefan Milo. The Histocrat. ReligionForBreakfast. History Time.

@@maraanusuya survive the jive is another fun channel.

@@maraanusuya Dan Davis has been my favorite. Excellent narrator, material has a nice flow, no phony garbage. He will point out if something is known or just suspected. Doesn't waste time with academic mind numbing "its ceremonial" 'its religious".

Yeah according to a lot of archaeological works if I lived in ancient times I would spend 23 hours a day either performing rituals, crafting ritual objects, or building ritual buildings. I mean these people must have had everything so incredibly streamlined that they didn't need to look for food, craft actual tools, or build houses to live or work in. They were able to devote themselves entirely to ritual and ceremony. Or maybe there needs to be people who have a more grounded real world mindset going into archaeology. Like people who have actually used tools before for non ceremonial purposes.

Oh that’s a good idea! I love that channel

@@TheFallofRome Yours is great too.

@@Boric78 thank you!

A more ambitious crossover than Marvel.

My buttplug is ceremonial

respect brother

Well, for what it’s worth, I’m happy these seem to help! I myself am not military, though my family is. Thank you for your service

@@TheFallofRome You're the guy who is the only survivor from the war who records the story for posterity.

Oh absolutely! Archaeology, and by extension history, is really becoming a true interdisciplinary subject. I’m excited to see where it leads. Doing this video was a lot of fun, actually, probably because it’s outside my usually areas of focus

You might enjoy a recently released (Aug/22) historical novel by Gregory Michael Nixon set during the Bronze Age Collapse: *The Diomedeia: Diomedes, the Peoples of the Sea, and the Fall of the Hittite Empire*. Nothing dull in there !

You just summarized about 30% of my online life in the 20 years I've been online. I'm not sure whether to be embarrassed or to think I'm normal. ^.^;

Yes! I’m going to be following this over the next couple years and doing more videos on the Bronze Age in europe

I always have my salt shaker on hand with RU-vid comments, but when someone advises me to use it I'm ironically inclinded to apply it more conservatively.

Small numbers of women and children among the dead would be consistent with the survivors being captured as slaves. Though if the fighting went for days at a river crossing, they might also have covered the escape of the "civilians".

Southern group = Urnfield and following this Tollense war Naue 2 swords were transported to North Germany. Urnfield core was in Hungary/Slovakia, closest genetically to these warriors from modern people are Poles and Ukrainians but these Tollense warriors had higher WHG autosomal dna

Given the way ancestry works, every person from that era who has any descendants is almost inescapably your ancestor.

@@Wick9876 R1a and R1b for the WIN. 😁😉

I’m R1b and I originate from the Unetice culture apparently

RU-vid:'YHVH DEUTSCHLAND' mit 'DEUTSCHE, RUSSEN, IREN, SCHOTTEN' 👋🇩🇪

Yeah, these societies are really under-communicated imo. When I studied at the university of Oslo I basically stumbled upon the rock carvings in the area dating back to the bronze age, I was so surprised. That period is basically not known here, in school they give the impression civilization in Scandinavia started with the viking age thousands of years later.

That’s actually a common pattern through most of history. Many, many states develop in areas suitable to trade networks, not necessarily direct resource extraction

@@TheFallofRome Off topic, but the term "resource extraction" got me thinking about Imperial Japan in the 20th century and StrategyStuff's video about its grand strategy. I am curious if you have seen any of StrategyStuff's videos. I feel there is a similarity in terms of academic rigor, though strategy stuff seems to focus more on geopolitics and IR in a historical context.

Thank you!

I’m already working on that. It should be out at some point in the next couple of weeks

Do we know more about the Western and Central Mediterranean in the Bronze Age now? Do we for example know if there was anything in Cadiz or Carthage before the Phoenicians?

@@TheFallofRome You must be reading every moment you aren't making these videos!

And by "pseudo" historians I assume you mean the hacks in Academia. They're the most dogmatic cult of all.

​@@chrisnewbury3793 Oh please, you conspiracy theorist. Bet you believe in ridiculous theories about Indo European migrations like out of India theory, that's the kind of pseudohistorical bull crap he's mentioning.

@@deiansalazar140 and I bet you're due for more boosters.

What language?

@@andybunn5780 Latviešu.

Sea peoples are believed to originate from various places in the Mediterranean (the Shekelesh from Sicily, the Sherden from Sardinia, the Peleset and perhaps the Denyen from Greece, the Lukka from Lycia, some think the Teresh were from Etruria), and I don't think we have "sea people DNA" to speak of, since we don't have archeological remains that we can with reasonable certainty match with sea peoples (you can't assume every corpse in Ugarit on the layer where it was destroyed with european origins were Sea people, most were probably traders who came decades earlier while we don't have any site related to sea peoples in Egypt). As for the artifacts I don't know enough, but the issue is that the "sea peoples" were very diverse (Anatolian, Greek, Italian...) so it is very difficult to separate between what has been brought by trade and what has been brought by the invasion (an Anatolian weapon in the tomb of some high ranking egyptian general in the reign of Ramesisu III could as well be a Hittite gift or something his grandfather bought from an Ashshuwa merchant as a Lukka weapon seized after a battle). I can't say much about southern european material culture but what I know is that it is very hard to link the sea peoples to it since they are only known from written sources, and the theories that are favoured by scholars today tend to defend that sea peoples were actually the same people as previous bronze age inhabitants of Greece, Italy and Anatolia. So there were probably myceneans and nuraghe people among them, thus once again it would be very hard to differenciate between artifacts brought through trade to northern Europe from Mycenean Greece before its fall from something that could have a direct link with the "sea people" phenomenum. I think what could be more easy to study is if there was large scale societal collapse in Bronze Age Europe, to explain why there was such an increase in violent raids in the Mediterranean (and possibly link the migration that stems from it to classical Greek historiography about the dorian and phrygian invasions)

Thanks Gavin!

Thank you!

@@TheFallofRome Your videos transcend "content" and should be considered well-illustrated lectures!

Thank you! More Bronze Age stuff will be coming !

Yes I will be

@@TheFallofRome Thank you, I'm looking forward to that. :-)

@@TheFallofRome There's information about the bronze axe culture and bell beakers etc... But everything seems to be in the south. I live in Trøndelag, I'm wondering what was going on along the coast around our area, further north and south etc. And the history of the Sami and the people predating them etc. There's so much history out there, but so little is known from back then. As far as most Norwegians are concerned history started with the viking age, possibly in some rare cases they're aware of the nordic bronze age. But prior to that? When did the domestication of goats arrive here? What kind of ships did people use? When did farming arrive in various places, and from what culture? What people lived here? Are there much left of the people predating the nordic bronze age and the ancestors of the Sami? I have so many questions.

Random guy here. Just checking in to mention that I'm also curious about this fascinating topic.

I am primarily taking that line of argumentation from Meller, the foremost archaeologist who works on the Unetice. Obviously we need more digging and work generally, but if you haven’t read his paper on why he thinks this is evidence of some sort of standing army, even if on a small scale, I’d recommend it. It put forth its thesis in a fairly convincing way, though I admit I am an outsider to the field

@@TheFallofRome in that era it sounds like you wouldn't be around long if you DIDN'T have a good gang of guys armed to the teeth being right around the corner. esp. if you had anything worth stealing!!! and you noted these units were often in the centre of grave areas?? THAT would keep the looting down a bit!

Yes, I don't know much about bronze Age Europe, but I know that even in the urbanized Middle East, significant standing armies were only introduced by Sargon of Akkad, the only professional soldiers before that were the rulers guard, the rest of the army was a citizen militia complemented with some hired highlanders and desert pastoralists. This would mean that the pre-urban Unetice culture would have to be extremely militaristic to sustain up to 80 standing soldiers at all time... We believe they were indo-european, and indo-europeans tended to be more militaristic than most but still... Even most germanic chieftains had not 80 huscarls around them. Thus I think that the patron hypothesis is more likely, perhaps there was some kind of an equivalent of a longhouse with all local nobles having their gifted axe there, and where they regularly met. A local elite of warrior nobles serving the king is more believable to me than professional soldiers. It would still indicate a quite organized state that controlled the local area but not a professional army or administration (professionnal administrators in the Middle East were tied to large temple complexes, to which we have no equivalent in Bronze Age Europe). The large area controlled by the state would then explain the number of combatants at Tollense (imagine an alliance of serveral kings on each side). Thus we can maintain the accepted view of Bronze Age Europe while being capable of explaining Tollense. I really think the comparison with the Middle East which is better known is necessary to view what is likely and what is not.

It probably is not related. I’m given to understand that Makotrasy is a Funnelbeaker Culture site, which means it predates Unetice by possibly one thousand years, if not that then certainly by several hundred. Unetice does, however, have some connections to the cultures that emerged from Funnelbeaker

It would be nice to know what those ditches are, Its possible that they aren't the same age as the battle site. If they are the same age though, that would be very interesting.

You’re welcome! I kept having flashbacks to my archaeology minor!