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The legionnaire’s entire tank has been discovered. Evidence suggests human sacrifice
On the ancient battlefield of Kalkriese, archaeologists have recovered an almost completely preserved Roman armor. It is the oldest specimen of this type and could attest to the bloody rituals of the Teutons.
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Restorer Rebekka Kuiter exposes the rail truss on the block panel by panel
Source: Hermann Pentermann
reThe legionnaire’s last hours must have been gruesome. With the few comrades still able to fight, he had prepared against the Germans. While the rest of the Romans were probably slaughtered and looted immediately, they had him captured and tied up. Then he was sacrificed to the gods in full armor, “on the altars of the barbarians,” as the Roman historian Tacitus reports.
This could be the interpretation of the find that archaeologists have presented on the ancient Kalkriese battlefield north of Osnabrück, where Governor Varus’ legions were likely destroyed by the Teutonic rebels under the leadership of Arminius in 9 AD. A Roman legionnaire’s rail is a real sensation, on the one hand because it has been almost completely preserved. It is also more than 100 years older than known remains of this type. And it can bear witness to the personal fate of a soldier who did not survive the death march of Varus and his 20,000 men.
This is how the armor could have been on the tracks of a legionnaire’s body, on the right plates from the left neck and shoulder area.
Source: Roland Warzecha, Rebekka Kuiter
Scientists from Kalkriese and the University of Osnabrück discovered the tank in 2018 when a detector showed a large metallic object in the ground during ongoing excavations. Recovered as a block of around 500 kilograms, its nature could be deciphered on high-throughput CT at the Fraunhofer Development Center for X-ray Technology EZRT in Fürth. Since then, the plates and other parts have been exposed and restored step by step.
“It is the oldest rail truss and the only one that has been preserved so far,” says Munich archaeologist Salvatore Ortisi, acting head of the science department at the Kalkriese Museum and Park. We have received numerous ancient representations of this bodily protection. But its construction could only be deduced from a few torsos. The most important are six rail armor halves that fell on us in Corbridge, England, at Hadrian’s Wall. It was built as the northern border of Great Britain from 122 AD
Kalkrieser Rail Truss Shoulder Zone Plate
Source: Hermann Pentermann
Unrestored and restored individual plates
Source: Hermann Pentermann
From earlier finds of a few individual plates and hinges at Kalkriese, archaeologists had inferred an earlier “Kalkriese type”, which technically differed significantly from the elaborate Corbridge specimens. Now it turns out that the opposite happened. The bulletproof vests, which were manufactured in series in the imperial workshops of Augustus, already had the same construction as in Hadrian’s time. However, the new finding shows that the rail armor differed in shape.
Unlike the tanks of the second century, which also protected the armpits of the shoulders, those of the Varus legionnaires were more like vests that left the upper arms completely free, concludes archaeologist Stefan Burmeister, managing director of the Museum and Kalkriese Park, since its new find. These rail trusses consisted of around 35 iron rails and plates pushed together, which were connected to each other by a filigree system of hinges, buckles, eyelets and straps and thus offered their users a high degree of mobility.
Roman operation area in Germania after the turn of the century
Source: Die Welt Infographic
Excavation work in Kalkriese
Source: Picture Alliance / Friso Gentsch
Therefore, the Kalkriese tank requires “a review of our prior knowledge of the standard of Roman military technology,” says Burmeister. Caesar’s legionaries in the middle of the 1st century BC Chr. Gaul conquered with a chain mail weighing up to twelve kilograms (and not with rail armor, as is often shown in the Asterix cosmos), his legacy Augustus equipped his troops in rail armor, weighing only eight kilograms. It also had other advantages: it was faster and more efficient to manufacture, easier to repair in the event of a breakdown, and offered better resistance to knocks and knocks. The Roman army relied on this bodily protection until late antiquity.
A sensational detail provides an indication of the tragic fate of the legionnaire who brought the tank near Kalkriese. An alleged neck violin was found in the context of the find. This is a typical Roman instrument of slavery that fixed the hands to the neck. During the fighting that lasted more than three days, such a piece may have fallen into the hands of the Teutons. Apparently a surviving legionnaire, with the current size M, was arranged with him.
The neck violin as it was before restoration
Source: Rebekka Kuiter
Numerous traces show that the victors systematically searched the battlefield for valuable Roman metal equipment. If a full tank has escaped this corpse hunt, that only allows one conclusion: its carrier was slaughtered, “slaughtered”, as Tacitus writes. In the moors of northern Germany and Scandinavia, many of these Germanic weapons victims have survived. With these valuable gifts, the victors probably wanted to thank the gods for their luck in arms.
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