The Age of Bronze
In this period, things really start to hot up!
The next two millennia are referred to by historians and archaeologists as the Age of Terror at the end of the Bronze Age, in preparation for the Age of Carnage to come.
So now we enter ‘true history’ as the academics call it. There are written sources and archaelogical remains aplenty for them to pour over. There are complex societies everywhere we look, cities all over the place, civilisation is widespread and agriculture is universal.
Warfare has been evident in the archaeological record since prehistory, but standing armies make their first appearance now for the first time. Warfare is widespread, sophisticated and probably caused by the parceling up of territory due to the growth of Empires and the need for agriculture to support such sophisticated civilisations. The chariot is first seen in Indo Iran about 2,700 BCE and it will soon be adapted for warfare.
The climate as always plays a part. There is a 20% drop in rainfall across the Holy Land and Egypt, and a rise in the water table in Britain with rapid climate change seen across the World, which may be the cause of the collapse of the Old Kingdom in Egypt. At Grimspound on Dartmoor, villages are washed away and abandoned.
In Akkad, Sargon’s dynasty falls to Hammurabi, an Asiatic king by the turn of the second millennia BCE. The Amorites invade the area a few times during this time until the Sumerian Kings of Ur stabilise the region. There are still many nomadic hunter gatherer peoples wandering around as well, so a great deal is going on and the pressure for land and resources really makes itself felt.
Migration is also a factor which must have placed increased pressure upon populations attempting to settle, as hunter gatherers and city dwellers meet and struggle over resources, for example clean water, good hunting and agricultural land. The legends of the Tuatha de Dan in Ireland begin to dominate the land, spawning the legends of the Formorians, a race of giants, and the Partholon also reputedly arrive in Ireland at this time. Source Lebor Gabála Érenn.
The Beaker Culture, or a new cultural wave within the indigenous peoples of Europe, spreads from Iberia to the Rhine and Britain. The Beaker Culture build huge citadels in the Iberian peninsula, massive and extremely well fortified, such as Zambuzhal in Portugal, the remains of which still stand up to 4 metres in height, whose function seems to have been the protection of the copper trade and flint production. It is possible that the Beaker People were the carriers of the Celtic languages into the British Isles as they became the major players in the copper trade, with Ross Island in Co Kerry Ireland dating to 2400 BCE. The distribution of maritime bell beakers reveals the trade routes operating along the Atlantic coast, which also mirrors the tin trade route. This route may explain why the Irish chronicles Lebor Gabála Érenn describe Spanish invasions by sea at this time, though some researchers do postulate a Neolithic date for the arrival of Celtic languages into the Western British Isles, based on the distribution of cardinal impressed ware pottery which would imply that these trade routes are very ancient indeed. This line of reasoning places the Celts in south west Europe millenia before their accepted origins in central Europe in about 300 BCE (a belief which is increasingly being contested by new research).
The Wessex Culture and Stonehenge continues its dominance as the ritual centre of England, easily absorbing these new influences as evidenced by the Mycenae beads and daggers discovered there by archaeologists. Gold and swords were traded widely along Neolithic trade routes at this time, along with cauldrons and bronze axes. The Rhine trade route became very important at this time as powerful chiefdoms developed in northern Europe, and gift exchange of horses, swords and chariots. Interestingly, the gene studies of horses show an extensive trade network between Shetland, Scandinavia and Britain at this time, so the sea trade routes must not be ignored and illustrates very clearly the contact between peoples long before the Vikings.
Trade and migration continues to travel along the ancient trade routes as always, which have been operation for millennia. The most famous is the Silk Road, along which ideas, religions and philosophies have always travelled and the Spice Road and the Amber Road also carry Obsidian, Flint and Cowrie shells, blue fiaence beads, glass, agricultural seeds and roots and knowledge are all traded along established routes, by sea, by caravanserai or via nomadic peoples since the beginnings of human society.
Humans arrive in Madagascar from Java and their slash and burn farming methods lead to massive exctinctions of megabeasts and the Giant Lemur. This early migration may explain the Megalithic structures still in use in Madagascar today.
Migration to the Americas was still ongoing and the peoples of the North and South Americas are developing as fast as humans elsewhere, as can be seen by the settlement at Cerro Sechin. All over the world human societies are thriving. All of the main players are assembled.
The Stonehenge Archer was buried at this time with gold acoutrements, expensive bronze from all across Europe, Swiss textiles and leather goods and Danish shale rings. He appears to have migrated into Britain from the Alps, possibly as a marriage partner or trading partner or possibly as a specialist in metalwork as his cushion stone indicates. By his gold hair pieces, he was obviously rich and successful and given a sumptuous burial. Archaeologists have just recently found the remains of a village near Stonehenge, the houses of people living nearby dated to 2,600 BCE, but not necessarily the builders. Archaeologists believe that the landscape of Stonehenge was visited seasonally for ritual purposes to bury the dead and to feast. Maybe a few peoples lived there all year round but we do not know this for certain. In Western Europe, gold is interred with burials, to mark elite status, a practice unknown elsewhere in the world in the early Bronze Age. The practice of embossing gold was developed in Britain, again this is a practice unknown elsewhere in the world at this time. Beaker gold cups have been excavated in Britain their skills with clever metalworking techniques will soon spread throughout the Beaker world.
The symbolism of the moon, silver, as female is thought to honour the old ways of the hunter gatherer, as the sun, gold, as male is believed to represent the new agricultural world. The sun melts the ice and grows the crops and as such, signifies this New Age. Stonehenge is believed to represent the consolidation of this massive cultural change. Sims Theory of the purpose of Stonehenge is that it settles the fears of people who see the disappearance of animals and witness the extreme weather changes, and suffer the shift to agriculture, shifting worship from female deities (hunters hunt at night under moonlight) to male deities (crops grow in sunlight), which would have caused concepts of the Universe to shift uncomfortably. Sims Theory attempts to show the clever artistry in Stonehenge that knits the two Worlds together, ostensibly to bring peace between conflicting beliefs in a time of great change.
The Northern Hemisphere shaman becomes the wizard, the Master of Time, possibly due to the mysteries of Stonehenge and its growing fame around the World spread by the Beaker Culture, who obviously made common cause with the peoples they met in Britain when they arrived in 2,700 BCE, or were they the same people undergoing a technological change? The wooden posts of Woodhenge and Stonehenge were demolished at this time and stone megaliths were erected at Stonehenge around 2,600 BCE, showing a merging of two cultural influences, or just a new wave of change amongst existing peoples? The ditch around Stonehenge was built at this time as the first Henge design was changed to bring in the blue stones and complete the ring of Sarcens. Woodhenge was demolished, Silbury Hill was begun, Avebury was built and Durrington Walls was in full swing. The West Kennet long barrow was sealed and Newgrange was in decay. Long barrows and Henges proloferate throughout Europe and the Mediterranean. Round Barrows evolve by 2,000 BCE for important individuals. Causewayed Enclosures appear across Europe and Eurasia.
Such large building projects display the hand of kings and powerful leaders. The astrological alignments demonstrate the presence of priests (?Druids who knows what they were called at this time?) who are skilled at reading the heavens.
Hambledon Hill and Windmill Hill excavations show that bodies were exposed on platforms at this time in Britian, though Cladh Hallan gives a glimpse of ancestors being mummified and kept for a very long time before being buried under the houses. The houses at Skara Brae are abandoned at this time.
The Migdale Hoard found at Tulloch Hill in Scotland dates to about 2500BCE and clearly demonstrates what extraordinary crafts were produced in the British Isles at this time.
Caucasian mumies are found along the trade routes into China throughout this period, often buried in the same graves as the local Chinese people.
The first evidence of bridal bits have been found with burials in the Ural moutains as horses increasingly become vital and sacred.
Spiritual belief was changing across the World at this time, and we can imagine that religion is evolving along similar lines as ideas are exchanged along the trade routes, though it is probably still Shamanistic in essence. Across the World the cult of ancestors is well attested, as well as beliefs in reincarnation and immortality, the practice of divination from animal entrails and the flight of birds, or the cracks in burnt shell. The practice of Hallowed Ground and the concept of Solstice and Equinox is also World wide. The Midwinter festival and the Summer Solstice, when time stands still, can be traced all around the World. The festival of Halloween is ancient and World wide, when the dead can pass into the world of the living, is well attested. Long processional avenues are apparent from Britain to Mesopotamia and Egypt, and regional ceremonial centres for gathering and trade can also be identified across the World. Indeed, all of these beliefs do seem to have been widespread in ancient populations, which does tend to imply they were all in contact with one another, or that theses peoples all had the same origins? These beliefs must reach back into the dawn of time.
In Egypt at Heirokompolis Naqada and Abydos specific gods and animals are worshipped, using masks, mummification and tombs (ancestor worship), solar symbols and the full panoply of priests, kings and protopharoahs indicate a unified burial practice and elaborated rituals in an established civilisation with foreign trade, cities, palaces and specialisms in the unified kingdom of Upper and Lower Egypt, all in full swing by this period. The King’s tombs from Abydos contain retainers and family members who seem to have been ritually killed to accompany the dead king. These sacrificial remains also show inscriptions, names and offerings, and so though they may have been poisoned or drugged and asphyxiated, they were valued. None of these remains show any evidence of mumification as this practice was not established at this time.
The very first pyramid at Saqqara was built at this time and Imhotep was a master of his art, building for his Pharaoh Sneferu who was the first king of Egypt’s fourth dynasty, which again implies a civilisation at its peak, and trading as far as Sinai, Lybia and Southwards into Africa. The Egyptian Book of the Dead is ?written in this time period, but has antecedants dating back possibly two millennia at this time. The Egyptians are prolific builders and the construction of the pyramids at Giza are begun later on in this time period. It is thought by some that DJedefre, the son of Khufu, also built the Sphinx at this time. This is the middle of the Egyptian Old Kingdom, covering the 3rd to the 8th dynasties of their kings before its collapse, though the Middle Kingdom soon takes off after this. The Kushite kingdom is already beginning to flower in ancient Sudan. The Nubian Kingdom is also in full spate. These three kingdoms will become ever more intertwined in the next millennia. In Libya, mummies have been found to date from this time.
In the Congo along the Sanga river vast amounts of palm oil nuts and pottery shards have been found, implying a vast trading network and a dense population, though little trace of the people remains today. Now the war is over, archaeologists will be able to reveal another African story so long overlooked.
Academics believe the Minoans inherited their measurements from Megalithic Western Europe, and there is evidence that they had trading connections to the Beaker Culture. It is fascinating to ponder whether ancient trade and contact networks were extensive enough to transfer knowledge from Britain to Egypt via the Minoans, or to influence early development in China throughout the early bronze age! Now that is a contentious suggestion, but the evidence speaks for itself! Stonehenge predates the Pyramids and China and that is that! The Pyramids could not have been built without Pythagorean knowledge so aptly displayed in the construction of Stonehenge. The use of astrology in Britain predates the earliest evidence of its use in China by over two thousand years. It is small wonder that Atlantean myths survive in the British Isles, and many people claim that survivors from Atlantis came to Britain in the distant past. Myths, as we know, are very difficult for academics to take seriously, but there is no smoke without fire, or so people say!
In this time period, the civilisation of the Mesopotamian basin was as sophisticated as the Egyptian culture, only the Chinese, Indian and Minoan civilisations could equal them. Troy I is being built at Hisalik as city states proloferate widely. Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Minoan Greek Indian and Chinese cultures are settled and well established. The Beaker Culture is operating across Europe along with the Kurgans Armenians Thracians Dacians Anatolians Armenians Corded Ware People Elamite People Canaanite People and Semitic People. World wide, the Siberian People Nenets Khakas Hassuna People Yamna People Yangshao People Qijia People Gansu People Indus Valley People Neolithic African People Swahili People Dilmun People Neolithic Americans South Americans and Neolithic Australians and so many more, please forgive me for not naming them all!
The spiral crosshatch circle and dot tunnel wave horizontal line cross dollar and swastika symbols must be very ancient, and new research tends to show that these are universal impressions anyone can see by rubbing your eyes when closed and then watching the resultant light show, especially if you are on hallucinogenic drugs! If this is true, then these are all shamanistic symbols from the dawn of time and will be found wherever people are. NB: beware of claims that they originate from this or that culture!! Many of these signs are used by the African Bushmen for example, and they are widely used from Ireland Australia the Americas and pretty much anywhere in the ancient World you find humans!
Our ancestors were researching the World as rigorously as any modern scientist, but they were using what they had to hand in terms of language, symbolism and representation. They actively studied the sky, the stars, the seasons, physics, mathematics, chemistry, plants and animals - you name it they studied it. It sometimes seems to me that all we modern humans have done is invent new names and new words for ’stuff’. I wonder how clever and advanced our ancient ancestors really were? I think they understood abstracts with great subtlety, for example, the way to become immortal was to be dead! Can we say we understand this today?
The African Bushmen and the Australian Aboriginals had the World all mapped out in the Stone Age, as I believe most ancient peoples did. As before, it is only the language of the modern age that makes us sound so intelligent, but our ancestors would have thought us quite ignorant, no doubt! What knowledge of ancestors, hunting, animals, plants, survival, star knowledge, humility before nature and ability to move 600 ton stones do we have in comparison today? OK we have machines and they didn’t but they did pretty well without them anyway!
Grimes Graves in Norfolk was abandoned by 2,500 BCE as old industries were abandoned for new, a pattern surely also World wide as the Bronze Age really kicks in. All over the British Isles bronze mines appeared as vast amounts of ore was mined and traded, enough copper to produce every bronze implement in use in Europe at this time. This pattern must have also occurred World wide. The trees were cleared for smelting and agriculture, and the very Earth itself engineered into massive fortifications and Hillforts, which confirms again that warfare is a real problem in this period.
The earliest translations of deciderable scripts come from this period, from Eridu in Mesopotamia we get the Epic of Gilgamesh a sacred drama written in the early Bronze Age, but how old is this really? From Babylon and Sumer arachaeologists have already recovered over a million clay tablets, and experts believe there could be as many as ten million tablets still to be recovered from the deserts of Iraq. The tablets record a mythological history going back 400,000 years, even though modern researchers sneer at this. The story of Sargon, a king of Sumer is a very close parallel to that of Moses, a bastard son of a priestess, floated in a basket on a river by his mother, raised by a king to become a king. Sargon conquers Persia, Syria and Modern day Turkey to become the first Emperor of Akkad, ruling for 56 years from a dynasty that lasted 82 years. The precursor story of Noah is also found in these texts, predating the Bible by at least a millennia, and other very similar stories of the flood can can be found from around the world, again raising the question ‘how old are these myths really?’