Bones prove ‘barbarian’ rituals 2,000 years ago

If there’s one thing humans have long excelled at, it’s slaughtering one another in war.

One horrific, long-forgotten battle was fought 2,000 years ago in northern Europe among fierce Germanic tribes. Now, archaeologists have uncovered bones of the combatants in a wetland in Denmark, the earliest evidence yet of large-scale warfare in that part of Europe, a new study suggests.

The discovery also reveals evidence of post-battle rituals by the winners, showing what they did with the bodies and bones of the losing side.

Although the fight took place during the Roman Empire’s expansion into Europe, there is no evidence Roman armies made it that far north, so the battle probably was between German “barbarian” armies.

“This was barbarian-on-barbarian,” Princeton University archaeologist Peter Bogucki told National Geographic. Bogucki, who was not part of the study, added that the military organization and scale of the conflict wasn’t necessarily motivated or influenced by Roman incursions into barbarian areas south of Scandinavia.

Nearly 2,100 human bones and bone fragments were unearthed at the site on about 200 acres on the shore of Lake Mossø in Denmark’s Jutland Peninsula.

The human bone fragments from 82 males, most of them adults, show signs of trauma before and around the time of death as well as tooth marks from animals such as dogs, pigs and cattle. Some of the combatants were as young as 13.

Spearheads, swords, shield fragments, iron knives and an ax also were uncovered. The research was published Monday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.