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It is the site of a huge battle that took place 3,300 years ago in Germany. A relatively recent discovery, little is known about what actually happened there – but it still changes our perception of the Bronze Age.

Researchers discover belongings of a warrior on unique Bronze Age battlefield site Recent archaeological investigations in the Tollense Valley led by the University of Göttingen, the State Agency for Cultural Heritage in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and the University of Greifswald have unearthed a collection of 31 unusual objects. Researchers believe this is the personal equipment of a Bronze Age warrior who died on the battlefield 3,300 years ago. This unique find was discovered by a diving team headed by Dr Joachim Krüger, from the University of Greifswald, and seems to have been protected in the river from the looting, which inevitably followed...

Fractured human remains found on a German river bank could provide the first compelling evidence of a major Bronze Age battle.Archaeological excavations of the Tollense Valley in northern Germany unearthed fractured skulls, wooden clubs and horse remains dating from around 1200 BC. The injuries to the skulls suggest face-to-face combat in a battle perhaps fought between warring tribes, say the researchers. > The archaeologists also found remains of two wooden clubs, one the shape of a baseball bat and made of ash, the second the shape of a croquet mallet and made of sloe wood. Dr Harald Lubke of the...

Early Bronze Age battle site found on German river bank 22 May 11 02:38 ET ? By Neil Bowdler Science reporter, BBC News Fractured human remains found on a German river bank could provide the first compelling evidence of a major Bronze Age battle. Archaeological excavations of the Tollense Valley in northern Germany unearthed fractured skulls, wooden clubs and horse remains dating from around 1200 BC. The injuries to the skulls suggest face-to-face combat in a battle perhaps fought between warring tribes, say the researchers. The paper, published in the journal Antiquity, is based primarily on an investigation begun in...

The team sequenced the genome of an early farmer woman, who lived near Belfast some 5,200 years ago, and those of three men from a later period, around 4,000 years ago in the Bronze Age, after the introduction of metalworking. Their landmark results are published today in international journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA. Ireland has intriguing genetics. It lies at the edge of many European genetic gradients with world maxima for the variants that code for lactose tolerance, the western European Y chromosome type, and several important genetic diseases including one of excessive iron retention, called...

Along a river in northern Germany, thousands of men lined up for a pitched battle. Some had come great distances, determined to seize or hold this modest waterway. They went at it mercilessly, leaving hundreds dead, many shot in the back while fleeing. Victory was decisive. [1250 BC]

Archaeologists have discovered the bones of at least 50 prehistoric people killed in an armed attack in Germany around 1300 BC. The signs of battle from around 1300 BC were found near Demmin, north of Berlin. They are the first proof of any war north of the Alps during the Bronze Age, said state archaeologist Detlef Jantzen on Thursday. One of the skulls had a coin-sized hole in it, indicating the 20- to 30-year-old man had received a mortal blow. A neurologist said he was probably hit with a wooden club and died within hours. Scientists plan DNA tests on...

A battlefield of 3,250 years ago in Germany is yielding remains of wounded warriors, wooden clubs, spear points, flint and bronze arrowheads and bronze knives and swords. The gruesome scene, frozen in time by peat, is unlike anything else from the Bronze Age in Northern Europe, where, researchers thought, large-scale warfare didn’t begin until later. Analysis of the remains of the 130 men, most between ages 20 and 30, found so far shows some may have been from hundreds of kilometers away—Poland, Holland, Scandinavia and Southern Europe. The hand-to-hand combat of the battle, which may have involved thousands of people...

Fresh analysis of Europe's earliest known battle has thrown up the possibility the 1,400 people who died at the site, in Germany's Tollense Valley, were not warriors engaged in a brutal melee, but ambushed merchants who were ruthlessly slain. The identity of the assailants remains unknown but it is thought they surprised the entourage and killed their guards before looting and murdering them. Human remains at the site in North East Germany, near today's border with Poland and 80 miles north of Berlin, were first found in 1996.

By analyzing proteins found within ancient dental calculus, an international team of researchers provides direct evidence for consumption of milk from multiple ruminants, including yak. In addition, they discovered milk and blood proteins associated with both horses and ruminants...The study presents novel protein findings from an elite Mongol Era cemetery with exceptional preservation in the permafrost. This is the first example of yak milk recovered from an archaeological context.Previous research indicates that milk has been a critical resource in Mongolia for more than 5,000 years. While the consumption of cattle, sheep, goat and even horse milk have securely been dated,...

...This conclusion was drawn from an analysis of residues found in clay vessels discovered in the Kujawy-Pomerania Province...In 2016, while conducting rescue excavations in the vicinity of the village of Sławęcinek (Kujawy-Pomerania), archaeologists discovered ceramic vessels in a Late Neolithic layer (approximately 3650-3100 years ago). The excavation also revealed traces of a small settlement that included four houses, wells, and burial sites.To investigate the vessels and the deposits on their surface, the researchers utilized a multi-stranded proteomic and lipid-analysis. By comparing proteomic data, it is possible to directly identify cheesemaking and other dairy processing methods that enrich curds by examining...

Oct. 18 — Bacteria found in a 2,000-year-old piece of cheese could be the final evidence that this food was a continuous source of infectious disease in the ancient Roman world. According to a study published in a recent issue of the Journal of Infection, a tiny piece of cheese containing disease bacteria was carbonized in the volcanic eruption that one night in late August, 79 A.D. covered Pompeii and the nearby towns of Herculaneum and Stabiae with nine to 20 feet of hot ash and pumice. About 250 people fled to the beach, trying in vain to escape the...

Clues to Roman Illnesses in 2,000-Year-Old Cheese Oct. 9 — By E. J. Mundell NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - A tiny piece of cheese, carbonized in the volcanic eruption that killed the citizens of Pompeii, is yielding up secrets as to how ancient Romans ate, lived and died. Using an electron microscope, anthropological researcher Dr. Luigi Capasso of the State University G. d'Annunzio in Chieti, Italy, has been able to pinpoint goats' milk cheese as a prime source of brucellosis--a debilitating joint disease that ravaged the ancient world. "Roman cheese was an important and continuous source of possible infectious...

Traces of dairy fat in ancient ceramic fragments suggest that people have been making cheese in Europe for up to 7,500 years. In the tough days before refrigerators, early dairy farmers probably devised cheese-making as a way to preserve, and get the best use out of, milk from the cattle that they had begun to herd. Peter Bogucki, an archaeologist at Princeton University in New Jersey, was in the 1980s among the first to suspect that cheese-making might have been afoot in Europe as early as 5,500 bc. He noticed that archaeologists working at ancient cattle-rearing sites in what is...

(Phys.org)—As a young archaeologist, Peter Bogucki based his groundbreaking theory on the development of Western civilization on the most ancient of human technology, pottery. But it took some of the most modern developments in biochemistry—and 30 years —finally to confirm he was right. While working as director of studies at one of Princeton University's residential colleges in the 1980s, Bogucki theorized that the development of cheese-making in Europe—a critical indicator of an agricultural revolution—occurred thousands of years earlier than scientists generally believed. His insight, based on a study of perforated potsherds that Bogucki helped recover from dig sites in Poland,...

Residue on 7,200 year old pottery found in Croatia has pushed back the dawn of cheese making in the Mediterranean. The find resets the timeline of agriculture in the region, with fermented dairy products being made a mere five centuries after milk was first stored. But its innovation was more than just a culinary milestone for dairy connoisseurs – it could have been a life saver. … Archaeological data shows people have been growing crops and raising livestock in the region for roughly 8,000 years. Impressed Ware, named for the simple shell-like impressions used to decorate the clay. They form...

Ptahmes was Mayor of Memphis and high-ranking official under the Pharaohs Sethi I and Ramses II (1290-1213 BC) of the XIX dynasty. His tomb is located in the south of the Causeway of the Pharaoh Unas which yields a number of tombs dated to the New Kingdom. It was rediscovered in 2010 after a part of it was revealed in 1885 and lost under the sands at the end of the 19th century. During the 2013/2014 excavation season, Cairo University archeologists found broken jars at the site. One jar contained a solidified whitish mass, as well as canvas fabric that...

Last month, archaeologists cracked open a tomb excavated in Alexandria, Egypt, revealing three skeletons bathing in an crimson pool of sludgy sewage. In response, tens of thousands around the world immediately petitioned for the right to sip from the freshly uncorked casket of amontillado. (Spoiler: It hasn't worked out.) But fear not, coffin connoisseurs: There's a new artisanal artifact in town -- the world's oldest solid cheese, over 3,000 years in the making. The tomb of Ptahmes, mayor of Memphis, the ancient capital of Egypt during the 13th century BC, contains quite the trove of treasures. First uncovered in 1885,...

The team has been investigating findings from an ancient rock shelter at a site named Takarkori in south-western Libya. It is desert now, but earlier in the Holocene age [our present age], some 10,000 years ago, it was part of the "green Sahara" and wild cereals grew there. More than 200,000 seeds - in small circular concentrations - were discovered at Takarkori, which showed that hunter-gatherers developed an early form of agriculture by harvesting and storing crops. But an alternative possibility was that ants, which are capable of moving seeds, had been responsible for the concentrations...The site has yielded other...

The buttery cheese, named after the word “doormat” for a very specific reason, dates to the 17th century. Naomi Tomky August 15, 2017 When my Quebec City tour guide mentions that the island we’re heading to has the oldest cheese in North America, I’m briefly concerned. A grotesque vision of a 150-year-old pickle my friend Harriet once told me about flashes before my eyes. But, what I learn upon arriving at the Île d'Orléans, 15 minutes from the capital, is that Paillasson is simply the oldest style of cheese in North America—it’s made fresh on the island, tastes extremely good...