In previous materials, it was already mentioned that in the upper reaches of the Volga and in the area of the Volga-Oka interfluve in the Bronze Age, tribes lived there from the upper reaches of the Dnieper. In the places of their settlement there are the so-called Fatyanovo burial grounds. Obviously, more progressive forms of economy came with them to the forest areas of the Upper Volga than the local residents of the region had before. But the tribes who came here apparently had to spend a lot of energy to protect their crops and herds.
Ceramics of the Fatyanovo culture.
Representatives of the Fatyanovo culture were engaged in breeding small and large horned livestock, and also knew agriculture. The Fatyanovites knew how to polish and drill their stone battle axes. However, they also knew how to cast and cast axes made of bronze, using ancient Eastern models as models.
There are many interesting things about the Fatyanovo culture.
Moreover, the tribes of the Fatyanovo culture were also familiar with the products of the foundry workers of those tribes that lived to the west of their territory. So, in Mytishchi, in the Ivanovo region, in the same burial with Fatyanovo-type utensils, archaeologists found a bronze bracelet, characteristic in its shape for the Unetitsa culture located in Central Europe.
Ceramic vessel. Tashkovskaya culture of the Lower Tobol region. Early Bronze Age.
At the end of the II millennium BC. NS. The tribes inhabiting the Volga regions continued to develop the technologies of bronze casting. So, in a burial ground near the Seim station, near the city of Gorky, remarkable samples of foundry of that era were discovered. These were Celtic axes, spearheads that spread to the Danube, Yenisei and Issyk-Kul, daggers of an original form and equally original combat knives. It can be assumed that the craftsmen who made all this were familiar with the works of foundry workers from the territory of present-day Hungary and up to the very remote China of the Shang-Yin era.
Seima-Turbino copper idol. Early Bronze Age.
By the way, the territory of modern Hungary already in the early Bronze Age stood out for its achievements in the field of bronze casting. Obviously, there were connections with the Cretan-Mycenaean culture, which in the middle of the 2nd millennium contributed to the flourishing of the skill of the production of bronze products on the lands along the middle course of the Danube. Swords, battle axes, tools and ornaments were cast, distinguished by a delicate engraved pattern. Obviously, they diverged very well (and widely!).
Agriculture also developed, both farming and cattle breeding. Excavations show that in the second half of the 2nd millennium BC. e., settlements (the so-called terramars) arose here, from wooden huts, located on platforms that stood on stilts. Such sections are found in the valleys of the Tisza River, as well as the Sava, Drava and Danube. In the swampy sediments in the valleys of the named rivers, where these terramars were located, many various objects have survived to our time, which made it possible to shed light on many aspects of the life of those who lived in them. Archaeologists have found many bronze sickles and foundry molds for casting them. Well, horse bits only prove that here on the Danube, as well as on the territory of the Caucasus, horses have already begun to be used for riding. A significant number of imported items - amber from the Baltic States, beads and jewelry from the Eastern Mediterranean - speaks of the relatively lively exchange relations of the inhabitants of the Danube settlements for that period.
Reconstruction of the terramar culture houses.
A similar culture arose in the Po valley in the late Bronze Age. Moreover, an image of a plow was found on the rocks in the Italian Alps, and if so, it means that the ancient farmers who lived both in Northern Italy and on the middle reaches of the Danube knew the plow and were able to work the land with it. It is believed that the North Italian and Danube tribes belonged to the same group of the Indo-European population of Europe, called the Illyrian. It occupied the entire territory between the Po valley and the upper turning of the Danube, and also extended to the western lands of the Balkan Peninsula.
Early Bronze Age artifacts, 2800 - 2300 BC.
In central Europe in Silesia, Saxony and Thuringia, as well as in the Czech Republic and the lands of Lower Austria, and areas north of the Danube in the first half of the II millennium BC. NS. the tribes of the Unetice culture spread. They lived in settlements of quadrangular houses with walls in the manner of a wattle fence, but plastered with clay. The grain pits found in the settlements indicate that agriculture is widespread among them. In the burials, the remains of bones belonging to domestic animals are found, that is, there was a custom, together with the deceased, to put pieces of meat in the grave - that is, they also had developed cattle breeding. That is, from an economic point of view, the Unetice culture was a typical culture of Central Europe of the Bronze Age. It is also known where they got the raw materials for their bronze items. These are copper deposits in the Ore Mountains, the Sudetenland and the Western Beskids. It is interesting that among their products there were also such that allow us to speak about the influence of the culture of the Eneolithic tribes who lived in the southern Russian steppes on them. And in the pottery, the influence of the Cretan-Mycenaean forms is clearly noticeable.
"Celestial Disc from Nebra" - a disc with a diameter of 30 cm in bronze, covered with an aquamarine patina, with gold inlays depicting the Sun, Moon and 32 stars, including the constellation of the Pleiades. The find is truly unique. By indirect indications, it is customary to refer it to the Unetice culture of Central Europe (c. XVII century BC)
Nebra Disc Museum.
"Swords from Nebra". Typical weapons of the Late Bronze Age.
It is interesting that the tribes of the Unetice culture gradually occupied new territories, but at the same time it also changed. For example, for some reason its representatives switched to cremations, and the remains of the burnt corpses began to be placed in an earthen vessel. First, they were placed in deep earthen graves and laid out around them circles of stones - the magic signs of the Sun. But then the funeral rite of the "Unetitsians" for some reason changed, so that the new form of burial even received a special name - "fields of burial urns." And so gradually in the second half of the II millennium before and. NS. here a new culture, called the Lusatian culture, developed. Most researchers attribute it to the Proto-Slavic, that is, they created its tribes that already spoke the language to which the ancient languages of the Slavic branch of the Indo-European language family belonged.
Archaeological monuments of the Lusatian culture are found on a vast area from the Spree to the Danube, from the Slovak Mountains to the Saale and Vistula. In the northwestern territories of Ukraine in the middle of the II millennium BC. NS. settled Komarov tribes, culturally close to the Lusatian. And it is in them that the researchers see the ancestors of the Eastern Slavs. Typical monuments of Lusatian and all related cultures include settlements of houses, the walls of which were made of vertically placed posts with wattle, coated with clay, or sheathed with hewn boards. Since many bronze sickles are found inside the burial urns, as well as grain grinders and the remains of grains of various cereals, it is obvious that agriculture played a very important role in the life of the Lusatian tribes. In the peat bogs of present-day Poland, two plows belonging to this culture were found, that is, they already knew plow farming!
Bronze sickle, 1300-1150 BC Lusatian culture. (Budishin City Museum, Serbia)
As for social relations, they, as before, were primitive communal here. But now, with the transition to plow farming, the role of the man - the breadwinner of the family, walking behind a team of bulls during plowing - has begun to increase markedly. And this allows us to say that there has already been a transition from ancient matriarchy to patriarchy, and that the Lusatian and Komarov cultures were already at the stage of decomposition of the primitive communal system.
Bronze hatchet-chisel of the Komarovo culture.
But studies of burial mounds located in the west of Central Europe - in Upper Austria, West Germany and Holland show that the local tribes were more cattle breeders than farmers, as indicated by their burial inventory.
Obviously, this predominantly pastoral culture was abandoned by tribes that belonged to the immediate predecessors of the tribes belonging to the Germanic branch of the Indo-European language family. Interestingly, archaeological evidence tells us that the level of development of the tribes in Scandinavia in the Bronze Age was higher than the level of the tribes inhabiting the territory of Germany.
All the activities of the people who lived in Bohuslan during the Bronze Age are held here in front of us. Someone plows with a plow on a team of two bulls, someone hunts, someone grazes a bull herd …
Their bronze burial inventory is much more diverse, and among the rock carvings in southern Sweden (for example, in Bohuslän, where the bulk of the petroglyphs date back to the late Bronze Age 1800-500 BC) there are even drawings of multi-oar boats, sea battles and warriors with long bronze swords in their hands and with round shields. Among them there is a drawing depicting plowing with a plow.
But what we see in this picture, most likely, was of a ritual nature!
There are seven men aboard the upper ship, one of whom blows an ornate bronze lure. There is also a man with an ax in his hand, which he raised to the sky as a sign of greeting, while others raise their oars to the sky. It is possible that these cave paintings are associated with the funeral rite - people of the Bronze Age believed that the way to the kingdom of death was a voyage on a ship.
We go even further to the West and see that in France in the Bronze Age lived two culturally different groups of tribes - one mainland and northern seaside. The latter glorified themselves by continuing to do what they did back in the Eneolithic era - they built giant cromlechs - round sanctuaries dedicated to the Sun, long alleys of menhirs (stone pillars dug into the ground), and erected dolmens - huge boxes of stone slabs, preserved to this day in Normandy and Brittany, and on the territory of Russia - we have in the Black Sea region of the Caucasus. Similar monuments are typical for the south of England. Archaeological data show that all this was built by agricultural tribes, who also raised cattle needed for plowing. They lived in small villages, and they, in turn, grouped around fortified settlements, where the population from the surrounding area converged in case of danger. In the mounds around these settlements, ordinary members of the community were buried. Elders, priests and tribal leaders were buried in dolmens, or special tombs, built of stone and dug into the ground. This culture was called megalithic (literally - "big stone"), and it is notable for the fact that its characteristic features are approximately the same everywhere.
The inscription next to almost every such object indicates that it is owned by the French state.
Le Menec Stone Avenue is one of the most famous megalithic monuments in Carnac, France.
The creators of mainland cultures left on the territory of France a truly huge number of burial mounds, which served them for the burial of their dead. In different parts of France, they differ in the design of burial chambers: often these are real underground dolmens with a gallery leading to them, but there are also burials in pits with walls made of massive logs or stones. The tribes that left us with these burial mounds have characteristic features in many respects close to the culture of the tribes of the megalithic culture. These tribes can be considered the ancestors of the tribes who spoke the languages of the Celtic branch of the Indo-European family, who later began to live here. It should be noted that the tribes living in France of the Bronze Age were excellent metallurgists, and their products were distinguished by an exceptional variety.
People of that era loved to decorate themselves. "The Blano Treasure" from the Archaeological Museum in Dijon, France.
Bronze dishes from the Archaeological Museum in Dijon, France.
The graves show serious inequality in wealth. Some contain modest grave goods. Nearby are the magnificent graves of military leaders, where the inventory is very rich: several swords, spearheads, helmets and shields, but ordinary community members have only axes in their graves from weapons. A feature of the rich burials of the Bronze Age in France are the finds of fine examples of bronze dishes. And all this high culture for its era at the beginning of the 1st millennium formed the basis of the era of mastering the technique of processing iron (the so-called Hallstatt culture).
Antenna dagger of the Hallstatt culture from the Archaeological Museum in Dijon, France.
In the south of the Iberian Peninsula, a kind of El-Argar culture has developed, the monuments of which are found on the entire eastern coast of the peninsula and then in the southern regions of Spain and Portugal. El-Argar was a center for the production of bronze and pseudo-bronze (an alloy containing arsenic instead of tin) during the Early and Middle Bronze Age. The main metallurgy products of the El Argars were knives, halberds, swords, spears and arrowheads, as well as large axes, which are often found not only in the monuments of El Argar, but throughout Iberia. They were also engaged in the extraction of silver, while gold, which was often used during the Chalcolithic period, was used by them much less often.
Fuente Alamo is one of the Bronze Age settlements in Spain.
Apparently, the main occupation of the El-Argars was mining, that is, the extraction of copper and its subsequent processing by the bronze-casting masters. The tribes of the El-Argar culture had close ties with other neighboring tribes who lived in the Iberian Peninsula, but, in addition, even with those who lived in the distant British Isles.
Bryn-Kelly-Dee. "Corridor Tomb", Britain.
Bryn-Kelly-Dee. This is how it looks from the inside.
Trade with the "British" was of particular importance, since the tin necessary for the smelting of bronze came from there. The evidence of the high level of development of metallurgy is found in the houses of the El-Argar settlements of bronze foundries. Products of the El-Argarians are found in large numbers in southern and especially in southwestern France and up to northern Italy. Moreover, not only bronze items were found there, but also black polished ceramic vessels, which, for example, bell-shaped goblets in the Eneolithic era, were brought here along with bronze weapons. They were also familiar with the Cretan-Mycenaean culture, that is, the sea connected, and did not separate, these two cultures.
That is, there was a development of intertribal trade. Whole caravans, loaded with bronze and even ceramics (!), Moved from one settlement to another, mutually beneficial trade deals were made, while people who most likely spoke different languages or dialects of the same language successfully communicated without knowing the script, kept records and control, without which trade is unthinkable, and actively borrowed technological techniques and cultural achievements from each other. Indeed, this was the first global civilization of peoples who had not yet reached the level of statehood (in the West and North), while in the south, ancient states already existed.
Over time, these copper skins began to be valued literally "worth its weight in gold" …
But the fate of the same El-Agarians is sad. They cut down forests for coal, and this is about 1550 BC. led to environmental disaster and economic collapse. Their culture has disappeared. By its nature, this collapse resembles the "dark ages" of ancient Greece, when the population seemed to remain the same, but at once its culture was thrown back for several centuries …
