Kings of Bronze Age Europe: The Únětice Culture

In 1800 BC, in what's Germany today, the greatest chief ever to have ruled in Europe was buried in the most magnificent splendour. This man was laid to rest inside a burial chamber with bronze and gold jewellery and weapons and then covered by an enormous artificial mound. He was the ruler of one of the grand chiefdoms of Central Europe. These rulers controlled fertile plains and valleys, with large populations living in villages, growing crops and raising animals. But they also ruled over highlands and mountains, producing enormous quantities of copper and tin that dedicated craftsmen turned into tools, weapons and ingots for trade. This production and their position in the centre of Europe, along navigable rivers, made these chiefs rich and powerful. They facilitated the trade of amber from the Baltic to their north that eventually reached the civilisations of the Eastern Mediterranean. But they were much more than a peripheral tribal society. In fact, these rulers exerted such control over their populations that they became state-like societies, with standardised ritual expressions and institutions like standing armies and centralised grain production. And they grew so wealthy and sophisticated that they were able to create wonders like the world-famous Nebra Skydisk, which has been called the oldest depiction of astronomical phenomena in the world and one of the most important archaeological finds of the 20th century. So how did this society develop and grow into such complexity? What social hierarchies are detectable through archaeology? What can the latest techniques in ancient DNA analysis tell us about ordinary people and their family structures? How were the rulers' axe-wielding armies organised, ruled, housed and fed? Where did this society fit into the wider Bronze Age world and how was their influence felt far from their borders? After centuries of immense power, wealth and dominance, what may have led to their eventual downfall and what was their legacy for the later Bronze Age and Iron Age societies of Europe? This is the incredible story of the most influential society at the heart of early Bronze Age Europe, the Unotecha culture. Later in this video we'll be talking about how genetic testing has helped to reveal not only the ancestry of the Unotecha people but their family relationships too. If you've ever wanted to find out about your own ancestry then I'm pleased to tell you that on this video I've partnered with MyHeritage, a leading global family history and DNA service that makes exploring your family history easier than ever. The MyHeritage DNA test is easy to use. When you get the box you do a simple cheek swab. It takes just two minutes and then you send it back. The I've done this and I'm happy to share my results. It gives you an ethnicity estimate by a percentage breakdown of your origins across 42 supported ethnicities and over 21,000 geographical regions. You can see mine is mostly English and almost a quarter Irish which makes sense as most of my family is from England and I had an Irish grandmother. 23% Scandinavian though was a real surprise but then I have found out from doing my family tree with MyHeritage that my ancestors worked in shipping on the northeast coast of England so perhaps that's where those links were made and I wonder where that small amount of Iberian ancestry came from. I'll have to explore these links further and MyHeritage helps you find new relatives based on your shared DNA. You can see how much DNA you share with them and what their degree of relatedness is and ancestral surnames common to you both. There's also this new feature called Theory of Family Relativity where you might also find out where a DNA match could fit in your family tree. If you want to find out about your own ancestry like I have with MyHeritage then please click the link in the description box to buy a DNA kit. Use the coupon code DAVIS for free shipping and as an added bonus you can start a 30-day free trial of MyHeritage's best subscription for family history research. Thank you to MyHeritage for sponsoring the video. The Unotecha culture is the name archaeologists gave to a group of societies that developed in the early bronze age in central Europe, covering the Czech Republic and parts of Germany, Poland, Austria and Slovakia. The name of it comes from a village in Bohemia where in 1879 an ancient cemetery belonging to the society was discovered. It formed around 2200 BC and ended around 1600 BC. It's divided into two main phases, the early part between 2200 to 1900 BC and the later or classical phase of 1900 to 1600 BC when it developed its great rulers, wealth and institutions. The end of the Neolithic in Europe saw the migration of people, largely men, from Eastern Europe into Central Europe. Here they merged with a Neolithic society called the Globular Amphora culture, a melding which formed the Corded Ware culture. A few centuries later a new way of life emerged from one of the Corded Ware groups with new technologies and burial customs. Archaeologists called this the Bell Beaker culture and they started a new burst of physical expansion and migration. Successive generations expanded demographically and geographically into Iberia and the British Isles and Ireland and across Central Europe into the territory of the people of the Corded Ware culture. But here, unlike in other places, there was no sudden conquest of the new group over the locals. For generations Bell Beaker culture villages and Corded Ware villages lived alongside one another as neighbours, intermingled but separate. This could not last however and over a century or two the Corded Ware culture way of life slowly started to disappear, subsumed into the Bell Beaker life ways that slowly took over. But something about this prolonged contact also transformed the Bell Beaker culture in these regions into something new and unique. So the Unotecha culture arose from the merging of the Bell Beaker culture and the Corded Ware culture. There were perhaps also cultural influences from neighbouring regions in the Carpathians and DNA evidence from human remains also shows this merging of the two related origin populations. One recent study on a cemetery in Bohemia shows there was also another influx likely from Baltic Corded Ware people in around 2200 BC. This merging of the two related cultures and peoples was a long and complex process, with certain practices and material culture being retained and integrated while others were dropped. They also developed new unique practices expressed in burial customs, artistic expressions, clothing styles and decoration and rituals. But really this isn't exactly one single society. Archaeologists have defined 10 subgroups within different regions across the broader Unotecha area, each with their own local variations of the broader customs. Within these subgroups there are also further divisions of smaller chiefdoms, some larger and more powerful than others. And it wouldn't surprise me after more ancient DNA studies are done, if these subgroups turn out to have slightly different proportions of the component populations and lineages due to ongoing migrations and invasions during the Central European Early Bronze Age. But however you define them and whatever you call them, these groups lived in similar ways. The river valleys of this region were highly fertile, which allowed for densely populated landscapes. Most people lived in small settlements that ranged from farmsteads to hamlets to small villages. They also had fewer, larger settlements, with ramparts and wooden fortifications protecting them. Unotecha settlements were often close to their neighbours, within a kilometre or two or even within a few hundred metres. These farmers grew crops and herded animals and lived in large timber houses with wattle and daub walls. They could be 7 metres wide by 20 metres long, that's 23 feet by 65 feet. Some likely had upper floors and could reach even 33 metres or 100 feet long. There were even larger buildings too, one measured 56 metres or 185 feet long. Although these huge halls were too big to be farmhouses for family units, instead they served as the chief's meeting halls or even men's houses, which I'll talk about more later. The large farmhouses were also surrounded by many smaller structures for agricultural purposes and workshops. They also dug huge numbers of storage pits, mostly for grain. And these were sometimes reused for what are called unconventional burials, probably for the disposal of multiple bodies of servants, slaves and criminals. In some multiple burials there are children buried with adults and it's possible that the children were sacrificed during the burial ceremonies. It's also been suggested that entire families could be slaughtered for a criminal offence committed by the male head of the family, although interpretations vary. There were also, rarely and later on, cremation burials and people or parts of them buried in ceramic bowls or jars. But ordinary people, the full members of the community, were buried in cemeteries near settlements. The specific burial rites differed slightly in the different subgroups and between early and late phases of the culture, but generally men and women were buried in individual graves, the body lying on its right side in a crouched position with their heads to the south facing east. This is similar to the corded ware burials of their ancestors, but without the sex differences in burial positions. So does that mean the Unetiche culture was less patriarchal and more sexually egalitarian? Well a 2024 study on Unetiche burials at Leubingen in central Germany, near to the famous Great Princely Burial Mound I'll talk about later, looked at family relationships between people interred in the cemetery. By analysing the DNA of 46 people, they found that the kinship structure of the community was largely patrilineal with female exogamy. This means the adult women went off to be married in other settlements after the age of 16 or so, while women from other places came in to be married to the men living here. The family lineage and the right to the land were maintained through the male line. This was clearly a society where legitimacy and rights resided most of all in men, rather than women. Near Schönebeck by the river Elbe in Germany, there's the famous site of Pommelte, sometimes called Germany's Stonehenge, although it was made from timber, not stone. This ritual site demonstrates the cultural transition from the corded ware culture to the Bell Beaker culture to the Unetiche culture. They call it Germany's Stonehenge, not only out of a lazy journalistic tendency to relate every prehistoric site, especially round ones to Stonehenge, but also because the entrances are aligned with the point of sunrise during summer solstice and the point of sunset during the winter solstice. The corded ware cultural activity here dies away between 2300 to 2200 BC and Bell Beaker culture style artefacts take over. Then Bell Beaker culture men seem to have used the site for mysterious, dark rituals involving alcohol consumption, perhaps relating to warrior initiations. There are graves of men around the enclosure, as well as sacrificial pits containing shards of smashed drinking cups, as well as animal bones, grindstones and the remains of women and children. The Bell Beaker activity here gradually gives way to Unetiche culture style pottery and burials before the site was intentionally destroyed around 2050 BC. Human skulls and stone axes were placed on top of the sacrificial pits and the wooden palisades were burned and thrown into the ditches. This suggests the old ways were being done away with and a new ritual culture was being established. And the end of the early phase of the Unetiche culture and the start of the classical phase saw a huge increase in the social hierarchy. After 2000 BC, enormously wealthy and powerful rulers appear in the archaeological record, buried in splendour beneath vast barrows, imposing themselves forever over their subjects and the landscape. So why did this happen and how did it change this society? The massive Leubingen Tumulus in Germany with its abundance of impressive grave goods was excavated in the late 19th century. The Great Circular Mound of Earth was 8.5 metres or 28 feet high and 34 metres or 112 feet in diameter, covering a sturdily constructed timber burial chamber sheathed in stone packing. The burial chamber was for a man about 50 years old when he died and he was sent to the afterlife with an abundance of pottery, weapons and gold jewellery, and perhaps a human sacrifice. This vast, well-furnished barrow and others like it were called princely graves to reflect the obvious conclusion that the men buried within were ancient great leaders. We tend to use the word prince these days to mean the son of a king, but historically it was used to mean various kinds of aristocratic ruler. The Leubingen Tumulus has been dated to 1942 BC, so by this date in Central Europe, some of the chiefs of the Unetiche culture had elevated themselves to never-before-seen heights. Excavations of other Unetiche burrows in Poland show evidence of massive funeral feasts taking place during the erection of the mounds. The remains of the many horses, cattle, sheep and pigs consumed sealed within the earth. The funerals of these great men might even have included human sacrifice. There was a young man laid across the body of the Leubingen prince, but who he was is unknown. It would be wonderful if their remains could be subjected to DNA testing to perhaps find out if there's a family relation, however at some point the human remains of both were lost. There are probably about 50 princely burrows known from the Unetiche culture, but an unknown number have been destroyed for various reasons since they were erected, by looting ancient and modern, to harvest the material for fertiliser or stone, or to make way for industry or farmland. Very few of the remaining have been properly excavated. There are about 10 remaining Unetiche mounds known in Germany, and only 3 of them have been scientifically studied. The princely grave at Helmsdorf is one of these, and examination of his remains reveals he suffered a violent death. The prince of Helmsdorf was between 30 and 50 when he died, in the prime of his life, and forensic analysis shows he was stabbed twice with one of those fantastic Unetiche bronze daggers. It's not clear whether this was suffered in battle, or if he was assassinated, but after his glorious death, he was buried in a magnificent tomb and covered with a huge mound. Both the princes of Helmsdorf and Leubingen were perhaps subservient to the neighbouring kingdom near Dieskau, where there used to be the largest burrow of all, at Bornhock, which was 65 metres or 213 feet in diameter and 15 metres or 50 feet high. Sadly, this burrow was largely destroyed in the 19th century to make way for coal extraction, but some of the looted content of the tomb has survived. All these princely burials, as far as we know, were of men. In contemporary early Bronze Age societies in Britain, Iberia, Denmark and the Carpathians, the most elite women also received grand burials with precious burial goods. And in later Central European societies, elite women were also buried in splendour comparable to their male counterparts. So what happened to the wives of the magnificent Una-Tiča princes? It seems likely these rulers practised female exogamy to reinforce complex political alliances near and far, marrying the sisters and daughters of their counterparts, the highest status women in their society. These princes not only controlled the rural economy and population like the lesser chiefs before them, but they now also controlled the mining of copper, tin and gold, and the manufacture of tools, weapons and jewellery. After 2000 BC, there was a marked increase in extraction, manufacture and innovation. They started exploiting tin sources in the Ore Mountains and increased copper extraction there and in the Alps. There was a change from using arsenical copper to tin bronze and they started using much more of it. Along with agriculturalists living on the rich soils, there were now specialist mining settlements and miners, and expert metal workers. We see evidence of this activity in the great princely graves, but also in metal hordes. These are collections of objects, most commonly made of tin bronze, that were buried in the earth by their owners forever, only for us to discover them thousands of years later. These contained tools, jewellery, weapons and ingots in the form of ring ingots or rib ingots. These hordes could contain dozens or even hundreds of items. It seems like a terrible waste of precious cast bronze objects doesn't it? There are various theories about why they would bury so much wealth never to retrieve it. Some may have been intended for storage and later retrieval, which never happened. Others may have been deliberate sacrifices to the gods. It's possible bronze was taken out of circulation by burial due to overproduction and price deflation. With hordes though, it's important to think about the ritual acts around the actual deposition process itself. Some seem to be recording social or political statements, maybe relating to the sealing of a diplomatic treaty between two allies, or marking the end of a war between two former enemies, or great victories or defeats, or other important events. Maybe these were done with two chiefs in attendance, along with their kinsmen, warriors, priests and senior metal workers even. Possibly depositional acts were done before the wider community, maybe with feasts and drinking afterwards. Careful analysis of the various hordes has revealed an enormous amount about Unateacher society, in particular the structure and organisation of military forces. The ratios of the various weapon types in the hordes suggests that military units were organised into groups of axe-wielding men, numbering 15, 30 and 45, and 60, 90 and 120, with the largest units being 300. So the basic unit was 15 axemen, which could be combined into larger units, which would be commanded by a man using a bronze halberd. This is the name given to the early Bronze Age Bell Beaker culture weapon, which was like a dagger blade mounted at 90 degrees on a shaft. More senior officers carried the beautiful large bronze daggers and the huge double axes. Senior rank was also displayed by wearing bronze necklaces or bracelets. This level of organisation, as well as the fact that weapons were produced by centralised workshops and distributed to the soldiers, is one reason the Unateacher culture is called a state level or proto-state level society. There is also evidence of massive grindstones for turning grain into flour. Grindstones so huge they would have required two strong men on either side to push them back and forth. This was not a domestic activity performed by women for a household, but back-breaking work done probably by male slaves in facilities controlled by the great chiefs. Near Loibingen, within sight of the princely barrow in fact, was a great hall 11 metres wide and 44 metres long, that's 36 feet by 144 feet and maybe 8.5 metres or 28 feet high. This could be a royal residence, housing the family, servants and slaves with storage for valuable produce and trade goods. They even found a pot buried in front of the house with 98 axes and two halberd blanks inside. The leading local archaeologist and Unateacher expert however, believes this is a vast men's house, kind of like an assembly hall and barracks, for a hundred of the prince's soldiers to live in, 50 of them sleeping in beds along each wall. There are more great halls throughout the Unateacher culture that may also fill this role. A different hoard from this region looks like the deposition of the equipment of the prince, the military ruler, represented by his double axes and gold coloured equipment and gold and amber jewellery, and his 13 senior officers, represented by their bronze halberds and bronze jewellery. There must have been some ritual event where, for some reason, they collectively sacrificed their identifying military equipment. There are even larger hoards with enormous numbers of weapons, evidence of an entire army of hundreds of men. Perhaps these involved a huge spectacle where each man came forward in front of the community to hand over his weapon in an emotional public display until all were disarmed. It may be hard for us to imagine giving up such wealth voluntarily, but these kinds of acts clearly had important and long-lasting meanings for these people, and the princes were so rich, they could probably afford it. After 2000 BC, the Unateacher start building fortified settlements along the trade routes through their territories, and it's this massive increase in trade along with metal production that led to their great wealth. They were a key part of the so-called Amber Road that began transporting amber from the Baltic across Europe to the Adriatic, and from there it found its way into the civilisations of the Mediterranean and the Near East. Amber was a highly prized material and is found archaeologically in the context of elite graves from Britain to Mycenaean Greece and beyond. In exchange, Unateacher princes could offer bronze ingots and finished objects like daggers, which found their way especially to the Baltic but right across Europe. It's incredible to imagine all those journeys thousands of years ago, all the boats on the coasts and rivers and the wagons and carts on the ancient trackways, carrying bundles of ingots and other precious cargo like amber and gold. Less glamorous but enormously important produce like wool, hides, honey, salt and slaves too. It would have been an exciting, dangerous business, requiring diplomatic relationships with neighbouring societies and armed guards to protect the cargo on its journey, as well as the wide ditches and massive timber walls of the fortified settlements along the way. Facilitating all this trade was some level of standardisation. The many hundreds of thousands of bronze ingots produced were within a certain weight range and there were so many that these ingots might also have been used as a medium of exchange, a kind of early money, and they may have developed some kind of accounting system. Across the trade routes, archaeologists have found these tiny clay objects with strange markings known as bread loaf idols. It's hard to say what they are or how they worked, as there's so much variety in the markings, but it's likely they were related to trade and were possibly mobile exchange tokens, recording quantities of goods or payments. No one knows for sure, but it's an indication of the sophistication of the trade networks of this era. These networks connected the Unotecha culture not only to their immediate neighbours in the Carpathians and Alps and the Baltic, but also to the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, and they might not have been merely economic connections. The European Early Bronze Age saw the rise of multiple, rather similar societies of metal controlling elites with proto-state level control over production and trade. At the same time as the Unotecha culture, Britain's Bell Beaker culture developed a wealthy elite, transforming into what archaeologists called the Wessex culture, who controlled copper and tin mining and buried elites with weapons and gold. In Iberia, the Bell Beaker expansions evolved in the southeast into the Argaric culture, with centralised control and elite burials. It also rose in 2200 BC and collapsed around 1600 BC, just like the Unotecha culture, and in the Carpathian region, the Otomani culture, expert metal workers with elites housed in fortified settlements, arises and falls over the same timescale. It's tempting to ascribe the broader 1600 BC collapses to a change in climate, perhaps even one related to the Thera eruption in the Aegean around that time, but there's not much evidence for that across Europe. Perhaps the complexity of the trade networks and the level of interdependence across Europe was the problem. When they were disrupted for any number of reasons, it led to a cascade of problems. A sign of the collapsing order is how many Unotecha cemeteries show signs of being looted at this time, two-thirds of burials or more in some places. This reminds me of the looting of the tombs in the Aegean during the Bronze Age collapse centuries later. It's hard to imagine this was done by locals to their own ancestors, even if they were desperate for material wealth now that trade routes were disrupted. Perhaps these were foreign invaders looking for booty while seeking to desecrate the graves of the locals. We got a snapshot of the Unotecha world in 1600 BC with the discovery of the incredible Nebra Skydisk in Germany. This amazing artifact represents the earliest known astronomical representation of the sky from anywhere in the world. It's been dated to about 1800 to 1600 BC and was modified during its lifetime before being buried between 1600 and 1560 BC along with two swords, axes, spiral arm rings and a chisel. It was probably commissioned by the local high king Adiskau and as it marks the solstices and other phenomena, was used for some kind of portable astronomical religious functions. This era after 1600 BC must have been a time of great concern, the old order beginning to break down or had broken down already. Where it was buried also seems significant. Archaeologists have used the distribution of graves, hordes and settlements to reconstruct possible Unotecha group territories in this region. The Nebra Horde was buried in what seems to be the border between all these territories, on neutral ground perhaps. Who buried it and why is unknown. Maybe a final desperate appeal to the gods to save them. The pairs of accompanying artifacts also seem significant to me. Do they represent two leaders? I'm sorely tempted to speculate further but let me know what you think in the comments. Whatever happened at the end, how many problems were internal or external, it seems that the immense power of the Unotecha princes was unable to cope and they disappeared, to be replaced by the Tumulus culture. This new group emerged and spread, taking over much of the former Unotecha lands to dominate Europe for centuries until about 1200 BC when the Urnfield tradition arose and spread, leading to the Iron Age Proto-Celtic Halstatt culture and then the It's possible to see a cultural through-line going back through the centuries all the way to the Unotecha culture and so it's tempting to conclude that they spoke something like a Proto-Italo-Celtic language, mediated by their extensive trade networks. But linguists disagree about things like that so we can't say for sure. Certainly however, the Unotecha culture had an influence on the societies that followed it. The Tumulus culture continued burying their elite in splendour beneath barrows. Although it was more of a tribal society, there were more lesser chiefs with sword-armed warrior retinues rather than princes with centrally equipped armies. But those enormous great Unotecha barrows continued to dominate the landscape and the example and memory of the great chiefs surely continued to inspire. The innovations in ceramics and especially metalworking, technically and artistically, continued through the Tumulus cultures and on down the centuries. Remember, if you want to find out more about your own ancestry with MyHeritage, please use the link in the description and be sure to use the coupon code DAVIS for free shipping. You'll also get that added bonus where you can start a 30-day free trial of MyHeritage's best subscription for family history research. This is also a great way to help support the channel and the work I do here. Now, to find out more about another sophisticated and complex contemporary Bronze Age European culture, another state or proto-state level society with proto-urban settlements and palaces, please watch this video on the incredible Argaric culture of Iberia. Thank you for watching.