Europe's Earliest Battle? - The Mystery of the Tollense Valley // Ancient History Documentary

**XenophobicPrussian** · 07-01-2019, 01:08 AM

It's pretty obvious who this was a battle between. The only question is if this was on the border of both people or did the easterners travel from further east, because it isn't certain Lusatian and Pomerian culture were proto-Balto-Slavic and they may've been more similar to Jasdorf/Nordic BA than Baltic or more eastern cultures. We have one Lusatian genome and he's NW Euro, albeit he's from the very far western part of Lusatian in Germany. The Bell Beaker and Unetice samples are also later than the CW samples in Poland. West Baltic cairns culture wasn't very far away, it isn't implausible it was them. Milograd culture(which I think is the most likely candidate for proto-Slavic) seems less likely given the distance.

Anyhow, I'm more interested in the French/Basque/Iberian outliers. Obviously mercenaries, but very unlikely to be southern European mercenaries, Alps/Bavaria/etc is much more plausible(WEZ16, the Sardinian-like sample is a neolithic sample from 2900 BC, not part of the battlefield samples).

**Pahli** · 07-01-2019, 01:16 AM

Celts arrived later into that region, somewhere in the middle of 1st millenia B.C ... Scythians didn't make it that far west and arrived into Europe after this event anyway, their "borders" ended at the vistula river.

**PaleoEuropean** · 07-01-2019, 01:23 AM

Originally Posted by Pahli

Celts arrived later into that region, somewhere in the middle of 1st millenia B.C ... Scythians didn't make it that far west and arrived into Europe after this event anyway, their "borders" ended at the vistula river.

Yea I think people confuse Scythians for the Indo-Aryans who came much earlier, the Scythians were only a fraction of the Indo-Aryan tribes.

**~~War Chef~~** · 07-01-2019, 01:23 AM

Originally Posted by XenophobicPrussian

It's pretty obvious who this was a battle between. The only question is if this was on the border of both people or did the easterners travel from further east, because it isn't certain Lusatian and Pomerian culture were proto-Balto-Slavic and they may've been more similar to Jasdorf/Nordic BA than Baltic or more eastern cultures. We have one Lusatian genome and he's NW Euro, albeit he's from the very far western part of Lusatian in Germany. The Bell Beaker and Unetice samples are also later than the CW samples in Poland. West Baltic cairns culture wasn't very far away, it isn't implausible it was them. Milograd culture(which I think is the most likely candidate for proto-Slavic) seems less likely given the distance.

Anyhow, I'm more interested in the French/Basque/Iberian outliers. Obviously mercenaries, but very unlikely to be southern European mercenaries, Alps/Bavaria/etc is much more plausible(WEZ16, the Sardinian-like sample is a neolithic sample from 2900 BC, not part of the battlefield samples).

Lusatian/Pomeranian culture were a basterdized people. I'm 100% certain about this. Maybe a pre-proto-balto-slavic excursion deep through Lusatian/Pomeranian domain, and then confronted by a force of Nordic_BA(early Jasdorf).

**Token** · 07-01-2019, 01:34 AM

Originally Posted by XenophobicPrussian

Anyhow, I'm more interested in the French/Basque/Iberian outliers. Obviously mercenaries, but very unlikely to be southern European mercenaries, Alps/Bavaria/etc is much more plausible(WEZ16, the Sardinian-like sample is a neolithic sample from 2900 BC, not part of the battlefield samples).

Urnfield mercenaries is a possibility. Perfectly coincides with the time frame.

**~~MS85~~** · 07-01-2019, 01:42 AM

Originally Posted by XenophobicPrussian

What do you see, that I don't see?

I will explain what I see. I see WEZ (red) clustering with Nordic_LN (pink), Nordic_BA (dark green), Nordic_LBA (brown), BenzigerodeHeimburg_LN (light brown) and Unetice_EBA (light green). All of them are pretty much linked to the same area.