The Battle of the Bridge over the Tollense River
The Tollense Bronze Age Battle
Over three thousand years ago small bands of warriors came together and traveled a great distance to lay siege to an enemy fortress. Their deeds have been remembered by poets and novelists. The Achaeans were Bronze Age warriors who laid siege to the legendary city of Troy, a Middle Eastern fortress once believed to exist only in Homeric poetry until Heinrich Schliemann found the ruins of Homer’s most famous city. The Trojan War gradually came to life over the next 100 years as archaeologists painstakingly dug up the clues that confirmed much of Homer’s imagery, including the defensive trench the Achaeans built to protect their ships. And until now we believed there was no other war like the war between the Achaeans and the Trojans.
But for the past 20 years archaeologists have been studying the remnants of a long-forgotten battle in the Tollense river valley. When I wrote about that battle five years ago we believed it was little more than a skirmish but now the team that has been digging up the dead and their lost treasures have produced a stunning report of a massive battle involving potentially thousands of warriors. We know of many battles during the 2nd Millennium BCE, including the battle that destroyed Troy around 1250 BCE. But until now we knew almost nothing about the warfare that was sweeping across northern Europe around the same time.
We have learned much about how Neolithic peoples migrated across Europe and we believe we know where they settled and how they intermarried with the older peoples they found living there. Archaeologists and DNA specialists have determined that Neolithic farmers and hunter-gatherers fought each other, sometimes over women. But why did these peoples migrate so far from their homes?
Prevailing theory holds that there was a great upheaval, probably due to climate change, sometime in the 13th century BCE. This upheaval may have been part of a 1200-year cycle of climactic shifts that have periodically forced people to abandon their old homelands and find new lands. If this theory holds true, we are still 300 years away from the next climactic shift, although human-engineered global warming has probably accelerated the cycle.
But climate change and migrating tribes don’t explain what we have found by the shores of the Tollense river, a marshy waterway that flows north into the Baltic Sea. Over 100 individual skeletons have been identified from among a huge trove of bones. Weapons, armor, clothing, and even leaders’ horses have been recovered from the ancient dirt. And now DNA analysis has revealed something that contradicts much of what we believed about the movement of peoples across northern Europe.
The two forces that clashed at the Bridge on the Tollense River were composed of very different peoples. The western bank may have been defended by a local tribe. The eastern bank was attacked by an army composed of men from many different areas, lands located hundreds of miles away. What brought so many warriors together? Why did they attack the People of the Tollense Valley?
We may never know the answers to these questions but the remarkable nature of the attacking force has forced us to rethink exactly what was going on across Bronze Age northern Europe. The battle suggests that a major movement of peoples was underway, and archaeologists have noted that the scattered farms and small villages that dominated the landscape around this time soon gave way to fortified villages and towns.
What we still do not know is why so many different groups would commit warriors to a campaign so far from their homes. It is almost as if Agamemnon had a northern cousin who rallied many tribes to form an alliance against a powerful northern people. But unlike the Achaeans, who were eventually victorious over the Trojans, the victors in the north appear to have been the People of the Tollense Valley. How did they assemble a sufficient force to turn back the invaders?
The implications of the battle are both immense and profound. Scientists may spend decades digging up sites all around the area. There may be remnants of old camps, perhaps an unknown fortress, and maybe roads and rich resources that led to the clash of ancient armies. The logistics required to stage such a battle in the ancient world would have been complex. The foreign warbands had to converge on the bridge at just the right time. Were they mercenaries hired to follow a would-be king and conqueror? Were they allied clans fulfilling a cultural debt? Did the People of the Tollense Valley do something that led to many other clans or tribes uniting against them?
One question we have yet to answer is why there was a bridge at the spot where the battle took place. Bridges do not exist by themselves. There was a road that crossed the river at this place. From whence did it come and where did it lead? What was the manner of its construction? Who controlled it? How much activity was there on it. We may learn much by trying to follow the road, if we can dig up traces of it.
It is probably no coincidence that this huge battle occurred around the same time the Sea Peoples were attacking Egypt, the Achaeans were toppling Troy, and Greek kings began building fortifications. Egypt made peace with the Hittites and the Hebrews began carving out a kingdom in Palestine. The known world was in upheaval and there were migrations and changes in cultural patterns as far away as the British Isles. And the Scandinavians were just getting settled in to their new home around this time.
It is clear to us now that all of Europe must have been in turmoil. The movement of peoples will have to be reconsidered. The invaders of the Tollense Valley may have been the defeated losers of other battles elsewhere, seeking new homes. Or they may have been raiders similar to the later Anglo-Saxons and Vikings, who set out on annual summer campaigns.
Roman writers record various incursions by large groups of German warriors who were ultimately defeated and slaughtered from the 1st century BCE to the 3rd century CE. These warbands may have been following in the footsteps of the Tollense Valley invaders, and if that is the case then ancient northern Europe’s prehistory must have been far more violent than we have previously believed.
There may be traces of other battles still covered in the ancient mud of rivers where large groups of men clashed. Their ambitions and objectives are lost to us but it may be that they were hungry, or fearful of change, or simply adventurers who had grown bored with life at home. We’ll know as we uncover more ancient mysteries. And it is almost certain we will find them. We keep digging up strange and fascinating new places, like the 4,000-year-old La Bastida in Spain. The past is calling to us. And we must answer.
See also:
New Research Sheds Light on Near Eastern Neolithic Migrations
New Insights Into Clashes Between Neolithic Farmers and Hunters