Previously, it was believed that the first wars began in the Bronze Age: before that, communities did not have the necessary resources to sustain prolonged and large-scale conflicts. But a new study challenges this belief.
Scientists have discovered unusual information about ancient wars in Europe. Researchers who re-examined the 5,000-year-old remains of more than 300 people found during excavations in Spain made a surprising discovery. It turns out that one of the first large-scale conflicts in Europe occurred 1,000 years earlier than previously thought, Phys.org writes.
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This research sheds light on a mysterious period of conflict that occurred during the European Neolithic, approximately 9,000-4,000 years ago. Until now, our understanding of this period has been limited. Previous research suggested that conflicts were short-lived and that small groups were involved in short-term conflicts.
Early societies were believed to lack the ability to sustain long-term, large-scale conflicts. Until recently, scientists assumed that the first such conflict in Europe occurred during the Bronze Age, approximately 4,000-2,800 years ago.
Teresa Fernandez-Crespo and her team carefully examined the skeletal remains of 338 people. These remains were all found in a single mass grave in a cave in the Rioja Alavesa region of northern Spain and are between 5,000 and 5,400 years old.
What makes this study even more important is that 52 flint arrowheads were found in the same region. Previous studies showed that 36 of these tips had minor damage, indicating that they hit the target. This led researchers to examine the skeletal remains for signs of trauma.
The results are incredible. They found that a significant number of people, 23.1%, had skeletal injuries. Even more surprising was that 10.1% had injuries that did not heal; this was much higher than the expected injury rate at the time. Typically these figures range from 7% to 17% for all injuries and 2% to 5% for those that do not heal.
But the surprises didn’t end there. The study also found that 74.1% of non-healing injuries and 70.0% of healing injuries were in adolescent or adult males, with significantly fewer female injuries. Such dramatic gender differences have not been observed at other Neolithic mass grave sites in Europe.
Taken together, these findings paint a vivid picture: Many of the people buried at the site were likely to have been victims of violence and conflict. The high percentage of recovered injuries suggests that this conflict lasted several months and points to a long and turbulent period of unrest.
Important
The reasons for this ancient conflict remain a mystery, but researchers have some plausible guesses. They suggest that tensions between different cultural groups may have played an important role in the Late Neolithic period.
So what can we draw from this study? It challenges our previous assumptions about the capabilities of ancient societies and the nature of early conflict in Europe. This suggests that even in the Neolithic age there were larger conflicts that continued for a long time.
Previously Focus He wrote about a rare Bronze Age tool discovered in Italy. In the small town of Este in northern Italy, the spotlight was on a spectacular archaeological find: a 3,300-year-old wooden yoke.
We also talked about the largest and oldest shipyard in the world. Nearly 300 warships can be produced at the same time.
Source: Focus
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