What really happened?

God didnt like how things are going so he did what he is best at: kill humans.

If he was so good at that, why are there more humans than ever?

Because god is dead ya doofus. Did you even read a book?

>In Central Europe, a massive battle took place with thousands of death bodies being recovered, despite the absence of state or complex societies there, they managed to set up a large scale battle, the biggest of which there is material evidence in the bronze age
what

Tollense battle

>despite the absence of state or complex societies there, they managed to set up a large scale battle, the biggest of which there is material evidence in the bronze age

I think the existence of the battle site should force us to reconsider some of the received wisdom about the absence of complex societies in Northern Europe at that time. Clearly, they had tribal kingdoms capable of raising and paying pretty big armies. The Danube Valley and the Rhine Valley certainly had lots of fortified settlements doing bronze production and stuff.

Given that they left behind so many corpses, it sounds like an invading army far from home that just continued to move on. Generally, if something like that happens on your own turf, and you win, you clean up the mess - this sounds like either it really just was in the middle of nowhere, or the winners genocide the losers, and didn't stick around to take the land for themselves.

>A rough estimate is that 4000 warriors took part in the battle. At the time of the battle, northern Europe is believed to have had no towns and only a few small villages. Known archeological sites indicate local people lived with their extended families on farms, and the population density was less than five people per square kilometer. The nearest known large settlement was more than 350 kilometers to the southwest, in the historic Watenstedt district of current Salzgitter. Chemical tracers in the body remains indicate most of the Tollense warriors were from hundreds of kilometers away and ate millet, not grown in that part of the country at the time. Based on the difficulties of fighting in armor for novices, the warriors are inferred to have been professional fighters.

Maybe some distant province had a disagreement about a tithe, and sent over a trained punitive force that the locals united to try to ambush, and said locals lost hard. *shrug*

>and said locals lost hard
No because
>Chemical tracers in the body remains indicate most of the Tollense warriors were from hundreds of kilometers away

the fact these people even MAKE armor should tell you it was a large scale society/proto-'state'.

Smithing, standardized war tech (armor is the direct response to standardized weaponry) and standardized gear means standardized need for that gear (combat).

A fight between 'neighbors' occurs in "the heat of the moment" and would not necessitate a methodical response to grievances on that level. (little more than revenge 'killings', things of the like). A fight between 'states' on the otherhand (united villages, micro regions, tribes etc..) would have a vested interest in its participants surviving to see more conflicts in a row (war), against an enemy that is both predictable ( in so much that they will use the "standardized" weaponry of the age) and identifiable (different from you). and major 'differences' only appear over long periods of sustained, standardized behavior and time.

what I'm trying to say is, that whatever happened during this time period, is just a small part of an infathomable whole, that has been lost, OR obscured from investigation. The type of thing that changes everything that comes after it and its knowledge, forever.

The Nordic bronze age people surely produced a huge mole of bronze weapons and some of the most advanced bronze armor of the time

Still seems like a force or two that was pretty far from home, rather than evidence two massive civilizations colliding on their home turf. There's only so many circumstances where you leave adorned soldiers to rot on the battlefield.

I agree, totally and to me it seems like whoever the dead were, were from this said large civilization. the "home team" as it were, was decimated, and left to rot. on top of that, in a time period that metallurgy and the associated industry and society to support it would have greatly dictated the sheer importance it would have been to take every bit of armor off of these people as invaluable booty. So whoever it was that "won" saw nothing of value, and virtual insignificance in their rivals plight. Surely even sanitary motivations would have ushered a clean up, for fear of disease. Instead It was a meaningless victory for these invaders, whomever they were, as the proverbial loot-of-all-loot (war materiel) was wholly ignored. Thousands upon thousands of them, which the entire goal of this article was absolutely unthinkable numbers for this type period, and would need a full re-write of history to explain.

And it was just 'ignored"? an unthinkable, literal empire sized loot drop? was left in a field? Who would do this? What type of people have no concern for something like this, given the ages characteristics of civilizations in the area?

If the Illiad could be used as a historical work for this argument, (thought to be ~800b.c. creation), nearly the entirety of the story notes that virtually every dead combatant is stripped of his armor and weapons. It is of utmost importance to these people and the story itself.

>side note

Ive read theories before that The Iliad itself is some kind of psuedo-historical memory of such "sea-people" incursions. and perhaps had a greek-lense superimposed on it to retain cultural relevancy.

what do you mean, user?

that those were germanic and that had civ before the romans?

>What happened?
Women got the vote.

The Romans had bronze weapons too so no, the nearby villanovians also made huge settlements on top of many plateaus

could be that were looking for civilizations as we know them, and that maybe, grand major-scale civilizations were in existence during a different epoch of man, that do not leave the traditional "historic record" we look for or find now.

They were sea boys. Nothing we could do

A hundred years earlier, the Indus Valley Civilization enters its twilight. The first Vedic cities along the Ganges arise at the very beginning of the BAC. In the far East, the Shang lords give way to the Zhou kings near the end of the 12th century after a period of civil strife.

Something was happen, a pulse of societal change across almost all of Eurasia. This leads to recorded civil strife or collapse across all major mainland Eurasian civilizations that left behind a significant historical record, with resonant effects threading into north africa who's ancient economy was already tied into the major trade routes of this era. This was a system that already dared to stretch across the entire supercontinent, a millennium before the Silk Road proper. This was a gradual process that started from the Neolithic onward, and it was well developed by the late Bronze Age.

And all the major civilizations along that east-west axis become destroyed or suffer significant reorganization in a two hundred year period, with the sole exceptions of Egypt and Assyria. This does not necessarily correlate with the physical transition from bronze to iron working itself. Instead, in the West it correlates with the development of monotheism and in the East, the Mandate of Heaven. The Late Bronze Age world of many gods with the King being but one gives way to more abstract or formalized conceptualizations of heaven. This is typified by elevating what was once one god among many, Aten for Egypt, Yahweh for the Caananites, Shangdi for the ancient Chinese, and reconfiguring them as head of the whole if not the only God around. From this, the divine ruler ceases to become divine but merely "divinely-appointed", meaning he can now be fallible. He can lose the mandate to rule, he can lose the will of the one God. He can be overthrown without causing strife to society and commerce.

This, I believe, is one of the key differences that separates civilizations before and after the BAC

The amber trade was a pretty big deal at that time, there were very profitable trade routes that connected to the Middle East and rest of the Med basin. In particular, the Danube valley had organized political units that profited off this trade.

It's not unimaginable that two kingdoms, making tons off money of trading amber, furs, slaves to the Med via the rivers of Europe, got into a big war, and an expeditionary force or two was sent into Northern Germany because the Baltic coast was the amber harvesting zone. The more organized trading kingdoms farther south probably had alliances or vassal-relationships with the tribal societies on the Baltic coast, it's inconceivable that armies would head up there to smash the enemy's moneymaking source and get the goodies.

*it's not inconceivable

Yeah, I'm thinking something more along those lines, rather than suggesting there was some massive civilization in the immediate area that we're just "missing" somehow.

So the concept of philosopher kings became obsolete?

>In the far East, the Shang lords give way to the Zhou kings near the end of the 12th century after a period of civil strife.
The Zhou was a former Shang vassal and the head of an anti-Shang coalition there's no decisive link between the Zhou dynasty and the BAC.

>Shangdi for the ancient Chinese
Shangdi's role as a supreme arbiter predates the BAC showing no signs of anthropomorphic characteristics unlike the later sky gods.

Zhou worship of Heaven(Tian) on the other hand was influenced by the steppes with Tengri as a Mongolic counterpart. The Zhou were clearly Sinitic speaking agriculturalists who had extensive contact with the para-Sinitic/Tibeto-Burman agro pastoralist ancestors of the Rong-Di.

>BAC
Is that BMAC? I dont get what BAC is

>I dont get what BAC is
Bronze Age Collapse

oh jokes that makes sense, thanks

so the bronze age collapse was essentially the genesis of proto "deep-state" concept that could retain the meme of a given regions society irrespective of individual rulers and their ability to shape culture in-totality. (??)