> Before the 1990s, “for a long time we didn’t really believe in war in prehistory,” DAI’s Hansen says. The grave goods were explained as prestige objects or symbols of power rather than actual weapons. “Most people thought ancient society was peaceful, and that Bronze Age males were concerned with trading and so on,”<p>Is that really true (that "we" didn't believe in war in prehistory)? It seems like a case of taking an absurd null hypothesis, not finding any evidence to refute it, and then deciding that your null hypothesis is probably true. We have plenty of evidence of pre-literate societies engaging in organized warfare, so why would prehistoric Europe be any different?
This article was impossible not to read all the way through. I really hope to be able to write in such a compelling way at some point in my life. Admittedly, the subject matter of an epic battle is probably intrinsically more interesting than what I'll typically write about in my career, but still, the author tells such a vivid story by diving into minute details only to zoom back out to a broader context.
More details: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tollense_valley_battlefield" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tollense_valley_battlefield</a>
Same battle as in this recent article
<a href="https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/09/warrior-skeletons-reveal-bronze-age-europeans-couldn-t-drink-milk" rel="nofollow">https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/09/warrior-skeletons-re...</a>
Lindybeige did a great and relatively short video on this <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoYj4BZdB1w" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoYj4BZdB1w</a>
Discussed at the time: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11383601" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11383601</a>