
Slaughter at the bridge: Uncovering a colossal Bronze Age battle - curtis
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/03/slaughter-bridge-uncovering-colossal-bronze-age-battle
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mmanfrin
This is within a century of the fall of the Hittites, Egyptians, Babylonians,
Mycenaeans, Canaanites, Troy, Miletus, and a few others. What I would give for
a time machine to know precisely what caused all this turmoil.

~~~
InclinedPlane
The entire bronze age is fascinating, with little historical data surviving.
This was an era where humans stepped into a new age of civilization. So much
of what we think of as modern ways of life had their start in the bronze age.
You have trade networks that span continents, running from the British Isles
all the way across to the Horn of Africa, and possibly beyond. You have
merchants who travel around those networks, making trips of hundreds or event
thousands of kilometers and connecting vastly different cultures and
civilizations. You have people from the Levant and the Aegean spreading out
and settling in Morocco, Libya, Spain, Italy, etc. You have a whole host of
new technologies being invented, adding to the already impressive list of
innovations from the stone age. Advances in tools, boats, clothing, housing
and construction, writing, mathematics, the wheel, agriculture, pottery, and
so on. Then you have cultures who exist not just in small bands but have
grouped together into city states and even empires. You have kings, queens,
emperors, etc. Add on to that the enrichment of philosophies, mythologies,
stories, etc. that was happening culturally.

So much of our modern culture has roots in that era, with fables like Jason
and the Argonauts, epics like the Iliad and the Odyssey, mythological elements
like the great flood, supernatural cosmology (deities and their interactions
with mankind), and on and on. You can trace the origins of so much of the
nature and character of 21st century human civilization back to that era. And
yet, so little of what happened was recorded, so little was preserved even
with artifacts and ruins. So much happened and we know so little about it.

~~~
Shorel
Most records were destroyed either in the burning of the Alexandria Library
and/or in the Sack of Baghdad.

Both events were a huge loss for humanity.

~~~
InclinedPlane
Most records simply weren't made to start with, period. A lot of those
civilizations and cultures weren't literate. And even among those that were,
they didn't keep many records. There wasn't a tradition of keeping track of
history the way there was in later societies. This is a problem even in places
that were very sophisticated and had written language, like China. But it's
even more of a problem in areas that were largely pre-literate, such as most
of Northern and Western Europe, the areas around the Black Sea, etc.

There are entire cultures and nation-states as important to history as the
Greeks who we know very little about simply because they didn't have the habit
of recording damned near everything of importance that happened and eventually
writing it down. There is so much of the Hittites, the Scythians, the Celts,
etc. that we just don't know and may never know because of that.

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mhurron
> About 3200 years ago, two armies clashed at a river crossing near the Baltic
> Sea. The confrontation can’t be found in any history books—the written word
> didn’t become common in these parts for another 2000 years

I think they got their math or information wrong, written word not being
common for another 2000 years after 3200 years ago would mean that writing
didn't become common in Germany until ~800 CE.

Writing not being common in Germany until about 2000 years ago or 1200 years
later (than 3200) would be more correct.

~~~
jonsen
Fro Wikisources:

 _RUNES, RUNIC LANGUAGE AND INSCRIPTIONS. The art of writing with an alphabet
appears to have been introduced into Germanic Europe in the Iron Age. ... The
Iron Age is supposed to have existed from circa 200 to circa 650, and it is to
the close of this epoch that the beginning of the writing on Scandinavian
memorials is attributed._

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
What we think of as writing is hard without the right technology. You need
parchment/vellum/papyrus, and something to make ink, and something to make
pens with.

None of this is trivial. And it's not obvious until someone invents it, or is
told how to do it by someone else.

So you can have an alphabet - but if it's only ever engraved into rocks, that
guarantees that whatever gets written is really, really important to someone,
and there won't be a lot of diarising, philosophising, or gossip, or even
recording of battles.

The fact that we can buy pens, paper, and digital keyboards so easily we take
them for granted is actually kind of amazing.

~~~
eru
> [...] but if it's only ever engraved into rocks, [...]

You can engrave into wood much easier. Won't last for as long as rocks,
though. That's why we see less of it.

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323454
Humans were doing really "modern" stuff so much earlier than I realised!

