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Three thousand years ago, large numbers of people were killed in Tollense in present-day Germany in what has been described as the first known battle in Europe. Now another interpretation is made, which rather speaks of a massacre of unarmed merchants.
In the mid-1990s, several finds of human remains began to be made near a river in the Tollense Valley in northeastern Germany, near the border with Poland. It soon turned out that these were people who died a long time ago, more specifically around 1200 BC. After many years of study, a consistent picture began to emerge, saying that more than a thousand people had died in a great battle between two armed forces fighting for control of an important trade route.
In this way, it came to be described as “the first battlefield” of northern Europe. In the most imaginative accounts, even in-depth analyzes were made of how the various forces had come together. One enthusiast said, for example, that one side should have been made up of archers who used a tactic similar to that of the famous medieval battle of Agincourt in 1415, when the English with long bows defeated heavily armed knights.
But now archaeologists working at the site have started to make a different interpretation of the finds, which various outlets recently reported. Chief archaeologist Detlef Jantzen explains in an interview with Die Welt that the dead are now rather believed to have been part of a caravan of traveling men, women and children, who traveled the area when they were robbed, looted and then brutally executed. It has already been established that among the remains that were analyzed were several women and children.
Now it has also been shown that many of the men who were previously thought to be professional warriors appear to have been people who were used to carrying heavy loads. It has been concluded that the bones of the lower part of the body show signs of wear, while the upper part of the body does not do it in the same way. This is interpreted to mean that they were themselves merchants, often carrying their wares on their backs, or servants or slaves of these merchants.
Examination of the horse bones found at the site also contradicts that they were warhorses. The horses were simply too young for that, and it is now believed that they were intended to be used for bartering.
Yet this indicates, says Detlef Jantzen, that the interpretation that what happened in Tollense was a regular battle between two armies must be abandoned. At the same time, he is careful to point out that this new interpretation is not definitive either: the investigations will continue.
It is a fact that trade networks were established between northern and southern Europe at that time. For example, amber from the north was traded for coveted products from the Mediterranean, such as metals, glass beads from Egypt, and fine fabrics from Mesopotamia. This was also a period of rapid social change, when, for example, new ethnic groups arrived in what is now Sweden, about which Karin Bojs of DN writes in the book “Swedes and their parents – the last 11,000 years.
Several of the various objects found in Tollense will be exhibited at the Landesmuseum in Greifswald in the spring of 2021.
New image of how Jämtland became part of Sweden
The process that began in 1645 when Jämtland became part of Sweden, after the peace at Brömsebro, was quicker and more conflict-free than previously thought. That is the opinion of Thord Theland, who recently submitted a doctoral thesis on the history of this period. Therefore, it goes against the traditional image that the Jämtlanders were oppressed from the beginning and wanted to become part of Norway-Denmark again. The dissatisfaction that followed came later, according to Theland. It was also due more to the fact that the Swedish state began to exact taxes and soldiers for wars in excess than to a nationalistic desire to be part of another country.
The exhibition testifies to the Japanese camps in Canada
In recent years, attention has been paid to the discriminatory treatment of the Japanese in the United States during World War II. But even in neighboring Canada, people of Japanese descent were hit hard. In 1942, 22,000 Japanese-Canadians, nearly nine out of ten, were forcibly relocated from their former homes. In some cases, they were forced to move more than 300 miles. In many cases, the state seized their old houses and sold them. The restrictions lasted until 1949 and also affected future generations economically and socially. This is recounted in a new exhibit at the Nikkei Museum in Burnaby, Canada, writes the Atlas Obscura site.
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