Bone trove in Denmark tells story of ‘barbarian’ battle”

[Peter1469]

Bone trove in Denmark tells story of ‘barbarian’ battle”

A Germanic army got its butt kicked bad. Was it another Germanic tribe, or Roman legions?

Thousands of bones from boys and men likely killed in a ferocious battle 2,000 years ago have been unearthed from a bog in Denmark, researchers said Monday.

Without local written records to explain, or a battlefield to scour for evidence, experts are nevertheless piecing together a story of the Germanic people, often described by the Romans as "barbarians" for their violent nature.


Four pelvic bones strung on a stick were among the remains of at least 82 people found during archaeological excavations at Alken Enge, on Denmark's Jutland peninsula, indicating an organized and ritual clearing of a battlefield, said the report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.


The site, which has been studied since 2009, has yielded the earliest discovery of "a large contingent of fighters from a defeated army from the early first century AD," said the PNAS report.
- Well preserved -

Read the rest at the link.

[MisterVeritis]

Clearly, they were carrying military grade clubs, knives, spears, and swords.

[Captdon]

Damn Germans never learn.

[Mister D]

In this era, Roman soldiers were pressing an expansion northward, and around 7 AD, the Romans suffered a massive loss in which tens of thousands of warriors were killed by the Germanic people.
"What they do in the succeeding decades is have these military raids in Germania, basically to punish the barbarians for this huge defeat," said Løvschal.
"What we actually think we are seeing here could be the remains of one of those punitive campaigns."

Is he referring to the Teutoburg? That was in 9 A.D. Anyway, the sheer scale of the carnage makes me suspect Roman activity and it does coincide with the punitive expeditions of Germanicus.

[Peter1469]

Is he referring to the Teutoburg? That was in 9 A.D. Anyway, the sheer scale of the carnage makes me suspect Roman activity and it does coincide with the punitive expeditions of Germanicus.

I was disappointed that the author didn't do a little research on Roman campaigns in the suspected time frame. I suspect it was Romans.

[jimmyz]

The "four pelvis' on a stick" is intriguing. I don't think it was a humiliation ritual of the dead as posited by the author. I think it was so that four bodies could be carried at one time easily. Kind of gruesome, if I'm correct, that survivors would insert the large sharpened stick through the bodies in that way to carry four corpses at a time to the burial pit.

[Mister D]

https://news.nationalgeographic.com/...ology-science/

I'm looking at where this is on a map. Now I doubt it was the Romans. It's too far north. I linked to another article.

[Peter1469]

https://news.nationalgeographic.com/...ology-science/

I'm looking at where this is on a map. Now I doubt it was the Romans. It's too far north. I linked to another article.

Good find. The Romans didn't make it to Jutland.