War in Europe Began Way Before We Thought, Ancient Discovery Reveals

Human bones unearthed from prehistoric mass graves have revealed that major wars in Europe may have occurred much earlier than previously thought.

For research published in journals scientific reportA team of researchers reanalyzed the remains of more than 300 people originally excavated from the San Juan Ante Portum Latinum (SJAPL) rock-cut complex in northern Spain.

Human remains date back approximately 5,000 years to an era known as the Neolithic period. In Europe, this period lasted from approximately 9,000 to 4,000 years ago, with notable variations between regions.

The latest research has shown that many of the people excavated from the SJAPL site may have been victims of the early stages of the war in Europe.

Until now, the oldest known large-scale conflict in Europe was thought to have occurred more than 1,000 years later, during the Bronze Age, which lasted in the region from about 4,000 to 2,800 years ago.

“The oldest known major conflict [prior to this study] It is probably the Bronze Age German Battle of Tollense, which may have involved around 4,000 combatants, although it appears to be a single event.” from the University of Valladolid, Aix, Spain. said study author Teresa Fernández Crespo. This was announced by the University of Marseille in France and the University of Oxford in the UK. newsweek.

“This study is particularly important in providing evidence of larger-scale, more organized and long-lasting conflict during the Neolithic period than previously thought, the extent of which continued into the Bronze Age 1,000 years later. Not observed. Depiction of known battlefields and warriors.”

Small and medium-scale collective violence in the form of conflicts between neighboring groups may be as old as humanity itself. However, war, or large-scale, organized violence between groups, appears to be associated with specific conditions that generally accompany the transition from hunter-gatherer to agrarian-based societies.

These conditions include people increasingly settling in one place, increasing population density, and concentration of resources and power. Nevertheless, conflicts in the European Neolithic remain poorly understood.

Previous research suggests that conflicts during this period consisted of short-term attacks lasting no more than a few days and involving small groups of up to 20 to 30 people. As a result, researchers deduced that Neolithic societies lacked the logistical capabilities to support large-scale conflicts. However, the latest research challenges this view.

“In the context of the study, a large-scale war is one that involves a large number of individuals, is organized, lasts or continues for a long period of time (at least several months), and has widespread effects on the communities living in the area where the conflict occurs. “It means a conflict that caused a conflict. It happened,” Fernández Crespo said.

To investigate the Neolithic conflict, the authors of the latest study reanalyzed remains found in the SJAPL rock trench. The rock trench was accidentally discovered in 1985 when bulldozers were widening the railroad tracks, and human remains were discovered there.

Subsequent rescue excavations identified the remains of at least 338 people, dating from approximately 5,400 to 5,000 years ago. These people were buried together in a haphazard manner, and their bodies were found intertwined with each other, some in unusual positions. The bodies were found along with 52 flint arrowheads, 64 blades, two polished stone axes, and other artifacts.

Many of the remains, including both complete and incomplete skeletons, showed evidence of arrowhead damage, and researchers also found an example of unhealed trauma to the skull.

Initial interpretations of mass graves suggested that the people found there were massacred in genocide, the indiscriminate killing of helpless or non-resistance people. However, subsequent research has shown that this is not the case, based in part on the fact that the bodies were primarily those of adolescents and adult males, suggesting that many of the bodies had died in one or more violent conflicts. refutes this interpretation.

A reexamination of SJAPL’s remains in the latest study aimed to identify new evidence of violence in the bones. Part of the reason this study was conducted is that evidence previously documented at this site, namely the prevalence of arrowhead injuries and the fact that there is only one unhealed cranial trauma, suggests that unhealed cranial trauma predominates. It was unusual compared to other burial sites in Neolithic Europe, which tended to be associated with genocide.

The authors found that the proportion of skeletal damage in the remains was significantly higher than expected at the time. It was also observed that while men were disproportionately affected by injuries, they had a relatively high rate of injury healing overall.

These findings lead the authors to believe that the people at the burial site may have been victims of the conflict, and the relatively high rate of healing of their injuries suggests that the conflict lasted for several months. I concluded that there is.

The bones provided evidence of various recurrent violent incidents. For example, some individuals show both healed and unhealed injuries that suggest repeated exposure to violence, while evidence of arrowhead injuries or cranial trauma suggests that they have been exposed to various types of combat. Fernandez said it shows he was involved. – said Crespo. The remains also suggest that these people experienced social instability and difficult living conditions, and exhibited symptoms such as malnutrition and anemia.

The factors that caused this proposed conflict are unknown, but the authors suggest several potential causes.

“We believe we are seeing the consequences of regional intergroup conflict. We believe that resource competition and social complexity are sources of tension that can escalate to deadly violence. “It suggests that,” Fernández Crespo said.

“We conclude that Neolithic warfare was far more sophisticated and organized than previously thought, and could have affected civilian populations. It means there was a socio-economic class.”