Brockie: Gruesome secrets from an ancient Germanic battlefield

BOB BROCKIE

Last updated 09:59, June 25 2018

For centuries, Rome tried to extend its Empire northwards but was repeatedly thwarted by violent German tribes north of the Rhine and Danube Rivers. In AD9, for example, the Germans slaughtered three divisions of the Roman army at Teutoburg.

About AD100, Roman historian Tacitus wrote the book Germania, in which he painted the German tribes as innumerable, bloodthirsty and perverse. He reported that the tribes fought not only the Romans but also among themselves, sometimes on a huge scale. The Bructeri tribe, for example, killed 60,000 of the Chamavi tribe in one battle.

Tacitus gave the German tribes a bad press, concluding, "May the tribes, I pray, retain, if not a hatred for us (Romans), at least a hatred for each other".

Archaeologists have just uncovered direct evidence of ancient German intertribal warfare in Jutland, Denmark. They have unearthed the site of a 2000-year-old battlefield, littered with the skeletons or bones of 82 defeated young men, many of whose skulls were smashed with sharp weapons.

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https://www.stuff.co.nz/science/104909795/.html