The Egtved Girl was buried in Egtved, Denmark 1370 BC. Famous for her well-preserved grave, she has become an icon for the Danish Bronze Age and the object of continuous archaeological study. The latest groundbreaking research has revealed that the she was not local from the Egtved area but instead grew up far from present day Denmark, and travelled long distances in her short life. The Egtved Girl is thus directly linked to the trade and alliance networks that existed across Europe and the Middle East in the Bronze Age. This is the Egtved Girl’s fascinating story and bring new perspectives to understanding her identity and social role in the Bronze Age.
The Egtved Girl is an iconic female from the Early Nordic Bronze Age (1700 – 1100 BC). She was buried in a mound in Egtved, Denmark in the year 1370 BC, and has since she was found in 1921 personified the Danish
Bronze Age. The Egtved Girl died as a young woman and
her death has remained an enigma. Her burial has been studied for nearly 100 years and continues to reveal new dimensions of Bronze Age life. New scientific methods have recently been developed making it possible to follow the young woman’s movements from her early childhood years
to her death and following burial.
A grave is revealed…
The original investigation - The story begins in February 1921 when
farmer Peter Platz in Egtved was removing a burial mound from his field. This was not illegal at the time and thankfully he stopped when he discovered something unusual – a large coffin made from an oak log.
Believing it was an old grave of importance he stopped the work and wrote a personal letter to the National Museum in Copenhagen.
When senior archaeologist Thomsen arrived in Egtved to inspect the find he was not disappointed. It was indeed an oak coffin burial from the Early Bronze Age This was the first oak-coffin grave to be discovered in Denmark in over three decades. In the previous century several other oak-coffin burials from the Early Bronze Age had been discovered, many of them showing remarkable conditions of preservation. At the site in Egtved, the lid of the coffin was carefully lifted. The inside of the coffin was exactly as when it had been sealed over 3000 years ago. Nothing was touched on this preliminary inspection, and the coffin was transported via train to the National Museum in Copenhagen. Here it was to be investigated by archaeologist Thomas Thomsen in close collaboration with the
conservators Gustav Rosenberg and Julius Raklev (Thomsen 1929; Glob 1970). It is this professional excavation and following con-
servation that is the reason why scientists still today, after almost 100 years, can carry out groundbreaking research on the Egtved Girl.
At the National Museum the excavation began. A cowhide had been placed as lining in the coffin with the hair towards the body. Under it a big woven blanket had been placed covering the dead.
#ancient #documentary #history
The Egtved Girl is an iconic female from the Early Nordic Bronze Age (1700 – 1100 BC). She was buried in a mound in Egtved, Denmark in the year 1370 BC, and has since she was found in 1921 personified the Danish
Bronze Age. The Egtved Girl died as a young woman and
her death has remained an enigma. Her burial has been studied for nearly 100 years and continues to reveal new dimensions of Bronze Age life. New scientific methods have recently been developed making it possible to follow the young woman’s movements from her early childhood years
to her death and following burial.
A grave is revealed…
The original investigation - The story begins in February 1921 when
farmer Peter Platz in Egtved was removing a burial mound from his field. This was not illegal at the time and thankfully he stopped when he discovered something unusual – a large coffin made from an oak log.
Believing it was an old grave of importance he stopped the work and wrote a personal letter to the National Museum in Copenhagen.
When senior archaeologist Thomsen arrived in Egtved to inspect the find he was not disappointed. It was indeed an oak coffin burial from the Early Bronze Age This was the first oak-coffin grave to be discovered in Denmark in over three decades. In the previous century several other oak-coffin burials from the Early Bronze Age had been discovered, many of them showing remarkable conditions of preservation. At the site in Egtved, the lid of the coffin was carefully lifted. The inside of the coffin was exactly as when it had been sealed over 3000 years ago. Nothing was touched on this preliminary inspection, and the coffin was transported via train to the National Museum in Copenhagen. Here it was to be investigated by archaeologist Thomas Thomsen in close collaboration with the
conservators Gustav Rosenberg and Julius Raklev (Thomsen 1929; Glob 1970). It is this professional excavation and following con-
servation that is the reason why scientists still today, after almost 100 years, can carry out groundbreaking research on the Egtved Girl.
At the National Museum the excavation began. A cowhide had been placed as lining in the coffin with the hair towards the body. Under it a big woven blanket had been placed covering the dead.
#ancient #documentary #history
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LearningTranscript
00:00She is young, bold and courageous.
00:13In the year 1368 before Christ, she set off on a perilous journey.
00:21Her death, some two years later, will help to solve an archaeological mystery.
00:30Whatever she did, she came from very far away from the place that she was found.
00:35What caused her to leave her home?
00:37What happened to her on her long journey full of dangers?
00:42The routes in every prehistoric region were not without danger.
00:48She must have reached the limits of her strength.
00:54During a journey, people had to rely on other people's hospitality.
01:01Who did she meet on her way?
01:03And how did the people of that period live?
01:11She's more than just a person.
01:13She's kind of a person that is telling me a story about how Bronze Age society was at
01:18that time.
01:20The story of the Egdved girl opens up a new way of looking at the lives of our ancestors.
01:39Set in Denmark in 1921.
01:44The farmer Peter Platz wants to remove a hill on his property.
01:48As he does so, he stumbles upon a large tree coffin.
01:52Peter Platz has a feeling that it must be a very special archaeological find.
01:57He notifies the National Museum in Copenhagen.
02:00His find is a stroke of luck for science.
02:04Experts excavate the grave.
02:06What they find is still spectacular today.
02:10The coffin contains clothing in almost pristine condition.
02:14And the wood coffin is also undamaged.
02:20The bark was removed when they made this tree coffin.
02:23But it was only the bark that was removed.
02:27And this entire section, the hard wood which we see here, the dark parts and also the light
02:33parts, this sapwood was still attached during the burial.
02:38And that's what's positive here.
02:40The fact that the sapwood has survived, which is why we can date it exactly and we know
02:45that this burial, well, we know that the tree was felled in 1370 before Christ.
02:55At some point around this time, she must have died.
03:08Tree coffin burials are a complex technical feat.
03:11The many grave goods the unknown young woman was given are also of a high quality.
03:19Why did the people around her make such an effort?
03:22Was she an important figure, despite her youth?
03:27Oak is very high in tannic acid.
03:30Oak is very hard and a wonderful building material.
03:34And people knew that.
03:36And in an oxygen-free environment, oak can be preserved for thousands of years.
03:42One of the aims was to protect this dead person with the burial mound as much as possible,
03:48as well as the grave goods, and to preserve everything for as long as possible.
04:18It's a small detail that tells the scientists today in which season the act-fed girl was
04:28buried.
04:29The literature tells us that there is a little plant wedged in between the coffin lid and
04:36the bottom of the coffin, a flower of the common yarrow, Achillea melefolium.
04:43And the fact that the plant was blooming tells us that it was summer.
04:51The yarrow is considered a medicinal plant.
04:54Perhaps the girl was a healer.
05:01Here in South Bohemia, archaeologists are not expecting such a sensational find.
05:06Painstakingly, they look for the tiniest bone remains, shards and stones.
05:15German and Czech scientists are opening up a burial mound site.
05:20This is a very, very exciting archaeological investigation here.
05:24What you see here are the open burial mounds.
05:26This alone is a situation we don't come across too often, because normally such burial mounds
05:31shouldn't be touched if possible.
05:33But here there is a good reason for doing so, the construction of a motorway.
05:44The Bronze Age people piled up this burial mound using sand and stones.
05:49The soil is permeable to oxygen, which is why few of the remains are preserved.
05:56In Scandinavia, we have a different construction principle for mounds.
06:00There, turfs were used as well as plagan soil, which was cut off and the turfs were piled
06:05up on top of each other to form the body of the mound.
06:09This influenced various chemical processes, because the turfs also contained other substances,
06:13humic matter and other things than the pure sandy soil.
06:17That's another difference between the Scandinavian mounds and the mounds we have here.
06:28The dead, who were bestowed with the honour of being buried in an elaborate tree coffin,
06:33must have played a special role in the society of this era.
06:40Danish scientists want to examine exactly which position the Egtved girl occupied.
06:49Her striking clothes and richly ornamented accessories are an important indication.
06:57When we see the Egtved girl lying there with her disc-shaped belt plate, we see immediately
07:02that a Scandinavian woman was buried here.
07:08The belt plate, decorated with spiral ornaments, is a characteristic type of jewellery of the
07:13Nordic Bronze Age.
07:17This means that the Egtved girl was buried like a Scandinavian, and her disc-shaped belt
07:21plate must have had a special significance.
07:31The short wrap skirt, made from twisted cords of wool, is even rarer and more famous.
07:37It was placed in the young woman's grave.
07:40The cord skirt is the oldest item of clothing of its kind to survive.
07:44It is stunningly well preserved.
07:47An interesting particularity is that the skirt is transparent.
07:51The skirt is, in itself, because it is a well-preserved unique.
07:55Such a well-preserved item in our collection, that shows us how exactly this item was worn
08:01and would have looked like, is a very fascinating aspect of our textile collections.
08:07The object was started by weaving a narrow band, and the weft threads in this band was
08:15actually constituting the cords that were later twisted into the main part of the skirt.
08:22So it's a combination of weaving and twisting this item.
08:27In this way it's a very simple, but also a very ingenious construction.
08:38The archaeologist Karin Frey further developed the so-called strontium isotope analysis method.
08:44This method can be used to determine the origin of the wool.
08:48When we actually took the textiles and we realised that it gave a very different picture
08:53of what we thought, because her textiles are actually, they seem, the experts in textile
08:59research, they say they look very Nordic.
09:01So we didn't think that there was something unusual about them, but the raw material,
09:06so the wool that they're made from, is not from here, from the surrounding area.
09:11So that was already something new.
09:15If the wool from her clothing does not come from Scandinavia, where does it come from?
09:21Perhaps the girl is not originally from the Danish peninsula of Jutland.
09:25I never thought that I would find something about herself, but about her textiles.
09:31But it's when we saw this picture, and when I could see that unfortunately there were
09:35no results from the DNA, but I thought okay, but I could maybe learn more about her, because
09:40I was intrigued by the fact that the textiles look so Nordic, but still were made, all of
09:48them, by non-local material.
09:52So that was for me the thing that actually triggered me to look farther.
09:57The expert girl died at a young age.
10:00According to tooth examinations, she was between 16 and 18 years old when she died.
10:08The molars may reveal even more.
10:10Karin Frey wants to determine her region of origin using strontium isotope analysis.
10:17So it's an element that you find in the rocks and in the soil, and that has a special signature
10:22depending on the geology.
10:24So the type of rocks, depending on the age and depending on the type, they will have
10:28a specific strontium isotopic signature.
10:37Teeth only grow until adolescence.
10:40They can tell us things about where a person comes from.
10:43Just like calcium, strontium is needed to build teeth and bones.
10:48And you incorporate that when you eat different plants or different animals that grow in that
10:54specific area.
10:55And the concentration may change, but the strontium isotopic signature is the same.
11:01So it's kind of like a GPS that you actually incorporate in your body.
11:10Only this analysis helps Karin Frey, because the skeleton is completely decomposed.
11:16Only parts of the girl's long hair, fingernails and teeth have survived.
11:21The DNA analysis was unsuccessful, because in the acidic environment of the oak coffin,
11:27the genetic material in the remains of our body was destroyed.
11:31So when I was there with the first measurements, actually the vice director was with me in
11:37the room in the mass spectrometer.
11:38He was just visiting that day.
11:41And I just told him, hey, it looks like, you know, she's not from here.
11:46And yeah, we just looked at each other and we were extremely excited.
11:50And it was amazing.
11:51It was really something very special.
11:55The egg-fed girl is one of the most famous finds in Denmark.
11:59The announcement that she is not Scandinavian immediately causes a stir.
12:05Actually I didn't have big expectations.
12:08I just wanted to learn more about her.
12:10And I thought that it was incredible that there's no bones left.
12:15So her body is not really well preserved, it's not there actually.
12:18So the tooth enema is one of the few things we have from her.
12:22So I thought this is the perfect opportunity for me to look farther.
12:26And it was just incredible when I was sitting there and I realized, oh my God, she's actually
12:31herself, not from here.
12:35It is sometime around the year 1368 before Christ.
12:39Crafts have begun to develop in the settlements.
12:42The men go hunting and the women grind cereals and sew clothes.
12:46The people of the Bronze Age grow spelt, emmer and wheat.
12:51They have discovered bronze as a material and they begin to accumulate wealth.
12:56Social structures are changing.
12:58People try to stand out from the crowd as owners of jewelry, swords and richly decorated
13:03garments.
13:05Trade networks are becoming increasingly important.
13:08During this time, a young woman bids farewell to her family and leaves her homeland.
13:14What we know is that she was buried here.
13:18So at some point she must have been here.
13:20Why?
13:21That's of course the big question.
13:41Does it have something to do with the child that was buried with her?
13:45Was it her child?
13:47This detail of the find in Ekved also poses a puzzle for the scientists.
13:52It's possible that she had taken it with her to Denmark, despite the dangers of such a
13:56long journey.
14:04The mortal remains of the child were burned, but some bones remained.
14:10So the physical anthropologists have looked actually at this and they have put them together
14:16and then they could see that this was a child, that it was about five to six years of age.
14:27In the Bronze Age, when mortality was high and there were no modern means of communication,
14:33saying farewell often meant saying farewell for good.
14:39It's intriguing that the Ekved girl travelled so far.
14:47Why was she buried here?
14:49There are various possibilities.
14:51One is that she was married by people from the two regions who knew each other.
15:00Such marriages were able to consolidate trade relations and cement political ties and alliances
15:05between different tribes.
15:08They also promoted cultural exchange.
15:11Flemming Kaul has been researching Bronze Age cultures for decades.
15:17A bronze figurine, which was found in Denmark in the 18th century, provides an important clue.
15:27Here we see a string skirt, like the one the Ekved girl was wearing.
15:32Perhaps it was worn to ritual dances in the Bronze Age.
15:36To honour the sun, they did bridges or somersaults.
15:42Perhaps such ritual dances and their movements symbolised the course of the sun as it rises
15:46and moves across the sky.
15:49This is how the people choreographed sophisticated dances.
16:00Did the Ekved girl, with her short string skirt, her cropped tunic and ornate disc-shaped
16:05belt plate, dance to honour the sun?
16:21Cultic rituals were an integral part of the religious life of the Bronze Age people.
16:26The sun symbolised food and life, and earth and water.
16:35The sun symbolised fertility.
17:00Was it about fertility?
17:02This very exceptional item of clothing could be an indication, because her wild dance moves
17:08revealed the girl's belly under her skirt, certainly an erotic component.
17:14The precious belt plate also hints at sun worshipping.
17:21The belt plate is not just a pretty and shiny piece of jewellery that covers the bare belly.
17:33With its spiral decoration, it could also have a deep religious significance.
17:41The spiral formations that circle in an internal rhythm elegantly point to the course of the
17:46sun.
17:50The circular motion and the up and down are a symbolic message of the spiral.
18:01The remains in the tree coffin not only tell us the story of the Ekved girl, they also
18:06give us a glance into the distant world of our ancestors.
18:17In the Albersdorf Open Air Museum, students live and work for a week like our ancestors
18:22in the Bronze Age, to find out what their lives were like.
18:26The tree coffin contains a vessel with dried remains of beer.
18:31It has been shown to contain 50 different ingredients.
18:34Konstantin Böck tries to brew this beer.
18:37For this beer I'm making, I use mostly wheats like the one in the grave.
18:45The original contained lingonberry, honey and a mix of plants and mugwort as a spice.
18:54And that's what I mean, that's how it was done with the Ekved girl drink, the lingonberry.
19:00There's yeast as well as berries.
19:02Yeast was added so that it ferments, because otherwise all you have is a sweet mash of
19:07berries.
19:11Beer brewing has always been an elaborate process.
19:15The art of beer making goes hand in hand with people becoming sedentary.
19:20Settlements were formed and fields were tilled.
19:24Only those who grew enough grain to have enough to eat and a little bit left over for fermenting
19:29could afford to brew beer.
19:37It was a valuable grave good, designed to ensure that the young woman had everything
19:45she needed in the afterlife.
19:50I think that the beer in the coffin also had to do with the fact that it was drunk at celebrations
19:55and perhaps also at funerary celebrations.
19:59Given the size of the burial mound, it's obvious that there must have been a celebration too
20:03and that beer was drunk.
20:05The beer was also available at other festivities and that it was put in the coffin too, because
20:10it was part of the society, of the culture.
20:15One find shows that cannabis was consumed as an intoxicating drug and as a pain reliever.
20:26Sweat lodges were used to strengthen the immune system and improve well-being.
20:31Physical and spiritual cleansing, perhaps combined as a ritual act.
20:37The steam was generated by pouring water over hot stones.
20:42The idea that people walked around unkempt is wrong.
20:47They must have known how important cleanliness was, and also about the healing power of hot,
20:52moist air.
20:54This is further evidence of a rapidly developing society.
21:25It's also known that sweat lodges, prehistoric saunas if you like, have been around since
21:29the Neolithic period.
21:32They also existed in the Bronze Age, but evidence for this has only been around for a few years
21:37and only in a few finds.
21:43New clothes are also part of the developed culture of the Bronze Age.
21:48Wool comes to replace leather.
21:51What's very typical of the Bronze Age is that we now mostly find wool textiles in the
21:55graves.
21:56The assumption is that larger sheep were introduced into Europe from the Iranian region.
22:02This is what the first sheep mainly looked like.
22:06They still had quite pronounced guard hair and not that much of an undercoat.
22:10And in the Eastern region, this was bred further, which created wool fleece, like this one here.
22:16And this was introduced with these larger sheep from the end of the Neolithic until
22:20the start of the Bronze Age.
22:31Fashion began to emerge.
22:33Clothing also became a status symbol.
22:38When it comes to the Bronze Age, you have to distinguish between women's and men's clothes,
22:42of course.
22:43They had long capes with matching wool belts worn by the men, hats with decorations, and
22:49the women also had what could practically be described as dresses, some with very individual
22:54cuts, which emphasizes the individual person and their importance, their status, perhaps
22:59even their age.
23:10Women started to weave and sew clothes using sheep's wool.
23:14They did so with exceptional skill and a real sense for shape and color.
23:19The raw material wool became a sought-after commodity.
23:37Craft and trades began to emerge.
23:40These were the beginnings of the division of labor as we know it today.
23:45Bartering transactions led to increasing social differentiation.
23:50Hierarchies gradually developed.
23:53This era is called a Golden Age of Humanity.
23:57People had to deal with completely new challenges.
24:00There must have been such a large textile production that they were absolutely not able
24:06to produce the raw materials for this production themselves, that they had to import the raw
24:13materials from other areas.
24:16Trade was no longer confined to a specific region.
24:20People moved around the whole of Europe to exchange goods.
24:24This was much more difficult than it is today, because of course there were no paved roads
24:29to cover long distances.
24:37Karin Frey was surprised to discover how far the Eckwert girl had to walk from her home
24:50region to Denmark.
24:53What we think is that because in the Schwarzwald, in the black forest area, you have a quite
25:00complex geology, and there you have all these different strontium isotopic signatures within
25:06quite a relatively small area, so to say.
25:09Still big, but still rather small.
25:12You have all these different strontium isotopic signatures that you have in the textiles,
25:17and also the ones that you have both in her teeth and in her hair.
25:22The young girl walked over 1,000 km, through valleys, dense forests and perilous swamps.
25:30She also had to cross rivers.
25:33Even for an adult and experienced man, this would have been a real challenge.
25:43It must have been much more difficult for the Eckwert girl, who was only on the threshold
25:48of adulthood.
25:50So I think it tells us that the Bronze Age society was extremely dynamic.
25:56We knew that of course, but this makes it even much more obvious for us.
26:00Also I think it makes it show us that people could move so far, and actually kind of not
26:09only men, but also females could.
26:12She was able to, and was empowered to do this also.
26:18There's another thing that makes the Eckwert girl so unusual.
26:22She is the first prehistoric person in Europe to have been shown to have travelled such
26:26a long distance.
26:29She stands for a society in transition.
26:32Did she really manage to do it all on her own?
26:35Or did she get help?
26:37And if so, who might have helped her?
26:48We believe that she didn't travel on her own, but rather perhaps as part of a caravan
26:58with many other people.
27:03She may have travelled along the German rivers on her way across Europe.
27:10There are probably a few places where she could stay the night and get something to
27:16eat.
27:20Such contacts were essential for survival.
27:24Small settlements offered shelter and shared their food.
27:28The bronze axe and saw allowed people to cut down woodland and turn it into arable land
27:33for growing grains.
27:36Fishing evolved and people used spears and fish traps.
27:39Plow, sickle and scythe made life easier.
27:45People dried grass to feed their herd's hay during the hard winters.
27:51People who had previously hunted as nomads and had perfectly adapted to their environment
27:56were now adapting their environment to their own needs on a grand scale.
28:00It's the dawn of a new era that is still with us today.
28:14It's very hard to say what they ate during their journey.
28:18Perhaps they had salted or dried meat with them.
28:21But in order to get enough food during their long journey, they had to rely on other people's
28:26hospitality.
28:28This was essential.
28:41The social relations of our Bronze Age ancestors were probably as varied as they are today.
28:48Scientists believe that the regional exchange of goods and food was widespread.
28:53The village communities knew each other.
28:57Living together and knowing that they depended on each other promoted cohesion, without which
29:02these vulnerable societies would have lost the struggle for survival.
29:13It's likely that she found refuge in the settlements in the different regions and stayed
29:17the night with the locals.
29:19It's clear that she lived with the people in the normal settlements.
29:27Grave finds show that Europe-wide networks developed.
29:37They even extended across the sea.
29:40Was such a network the reason for her trip?
29:44Research shows that, surprisingly, a particularly large number of women migrated.
29:50Was their aim to combine business with their private life?
29:55It is likely that it was women who spread cultural practices, skills and techniques
30:00across Europe.
30:08It must have been the case that these contact routes were all along the way, so that the
30:12various stations could be used.
30:14Of course, this trading society will have had trading centres and ports of call where
30:18you could stop off as a stranger, as a trader, and she is likely to have been guided to them.
30:23and she is likely to have been guided to them.
30:45The idea that people in the Bronze Age were primitive has been refuted.
30:49They were more similar to us than is often assumed.
30:53Their clothes, their social structures, their technologies and their way of doing science
30:57was part of a developed European culture.
31:02This era was marked by the revolutionary alloy which gave it its name – bronze.
31:13The interconnections during the Bronze Age were very strong.
31:17Here in Scandinavia, we didn't have metals such as tin and copper to make bronze.
31:23Which is why each piece of metal had to be brought to Denmark from far away.
31:29So the one thing is the extensive and organised trade for which there is evidence, especially
31:34in the Mediterranean area.
31:36A famous example is the Ullebron shipwreck.
31:39Here an entire ship loaded with trade goods sunk.
31:43This without a doubt is proof of organised trade on a large scale.
31:49The other thing is what we call small-scale supplies in various regions of Europe during
31:53the Bronze Age, where we see completely different materials being exchanged.
31:59Tin from Cornwall, the Mediterranean area, even from faraway regions like Afghanistan,
32:05was traded for copper from the Alpine region and the Balkans.
32:09Tin in Europe, on the other hand, had a very special precious commodity.
32:19We know that amber, the gold of the north from the Danish coast, was found throughout
32:24Europe.
32:26There have been amber finds along the German rivers, amber finds in the Alps, far away
32:34in Mycenae in Greece, and Nordic amber was even found in Syria.
32:43So during the Bronze Age, Denmark was part of a large communication network.
32:55Amber was of course a very important stone for jewellery, which in all likelihood did
32:59not just have a decorative function, but was also significant as a lucky charm or
33:04had a deeper function, especially since it was very rare, and some places where the amber
33:08was found are far away from the original deposits.
33:19Such a precious gemstone had to be carefully guarded and hidden from thieves.
33:25There was no state order at the time that could have at least attempted to protect the
33:29individual on such a long journey.
33:38Of course, ownership of goods always leads to a change in people's social relations.
33:43There's envy, there's resentment, there are needs. Some have capacities, and others
33:49do not. This is all human, we're familiar with this from our own time, and it leads
33:54to conflicts, tensions and confrontations.
34:00Wealth creates envy and greed. In addition to trade, the first wars over raw materials
34:06began to be fought.
34:09The battlefield in the Tolenza valley is evidence of that. Between 750 and 1000 people died
34:15there in the Bronze Age. Archaeologists have excavated thousands of bones and weapons made
34:21of flint, wood and bronze. Hella Hartenbueger and Melanie Schwinning examine the bone finds
34:28using methods from engineering.
34:33Here we have the thigh bone of a young man that had broken into two fragments. You have
34:39to imagine this bone being held in place in the body with muscles and tendons, which are
34:43also under tension. The pain the poor man was suffering must have been unspeakable,
34:49and he would definitely not have been able to use his legs anymore.
34:57It's also well known that quite often when a weapon is pulled out of a wound, that the
35:01damage is even gracer than the damage caused by the original attack, if the weapon had
35:05not been pulled out. That also tells you something about the brutality of it.
35:12But bronze was very valuable, and when the spearheads or arrowheads were made of bronze,
35:16people wanted them back.
35:23This is an exceptional sight. The bone's state of preservation is remarkable. The number
35:28of individuals or remains of individuals is quite exceptional. So this really is and remains
35:35an archaeological sensation, and it will be a reference point for many years for Bronze
35:39Age research, without doubt.
35:46It is also a very brutal period in which the Exverdgarl embarks on her journey to the north.
36:05Dangers were lurking everywhere, and it wasn't just wild animals. Bands of men roamed around,
36:16often after the precious bronze.
36:36Archaeologists have found many buried pieces of gold and bronze throughout Central Europe.
36:43Evidently, these treasures were hidden by their owners out of fear or while on the run.
36:51The routes in every prehistoric region were dangerous. There were hardly any built paths
36:56as such. There were boardwalks leading across moors, and there were the rivers and the lakes,
37:02which were reasonably good for travelling by boat. These of course also posed dangers
37:06which had to be avoided. And we must never forget that Bronze Age society was very belligerent
37:12and hostile, a very hierarchical society. And that of course also means that if I come
37:17to such a society as a stranger, as a person from somewhere else, it couldn't always
37:22have been easy for the travellers.
37:31Communities were not always welcoming to strangers. There were also enemies, and they could be
37:37lurking anywhere without you knowing about it beforehand, because the path led through
37:44unfamiliar terrain. You had to be alert, by day and by night, which harboured very different
37:51kinds of dangers.
38:04Even the smallest injuries had serious consequences, and infected wounds were usually fatal. Because
38:11the Ekved tree coffin no longer contained any bones, the Danish scientists were not
38:16able to tell whether something happened to the girl on her journey.
38:28In Albersdorf, the students produce weapons and tools from flint. This common stone is
38:34the perfect raw material, as it is sharp and hard. It was used for a long time alongside
38:40bronze, which was rare and precious.
38:45For a variety of reasons, flint is a material that is extremely suitable for the manufacture
38:49of tools. It's also a very tough and stable material, which however cracks easily because
38:55of its inattention. Its properties are similar to those of glass. As you can see here, it
39:01has a very sharp edge when it breaks. And what's more, it breaks in a very, very predictable
39:06way, which is especially noticeable here in this spot. To make complex things like a dagger,
39:11for example, you need many years of experience, because it requires special techniques to
39:16make this area so narrow without breaking the blades. Basically, you have to do it in
39:20a single blow, or you have to start again because the stone becomes useless.
39:27At the beginning of the Bronze Age, flint was indispensable in people's daily lives,
39:32for example to make spearheads. Flint was also used to make fire. Only gradually was
39:39it replaced by weapons and tools made of bronze. Due to a rise in average temperatures, there
39:46was plenty of game, fish and grains such as einkorn and emmer, barley, spelt and millet.
39:53Pulses like peas and lentils were nutritious and filling. The rich supply of food allowed
40:00new cultures to flourish and promoted social development.
40:13Bronze, a copper and tin alloy, and a great material. It is easy to forge, yet tougher
40:19than anything else people had known before. The precious bronze was cast into bars, either
40:25for later personal use or as a sought-after commodity. Melting it, however, is a real
40:31challenge. Bronze becomes a liquid at 1048 degrees. Kai Martens is one of only a few
40:38people still proficient in this ancient technology.
40:43There are basically two aspects. The first is to get the bronze really hot so that it
40:48flows, and the second is to heat the mould well and dry it. Otherwise we would build
40:53a little Vesuvius and that wouldn't be so good.
40:57At the time, they usually made the moulds using sandstone, the inside of which had to
41:01be painstakingly ground first. Before the bronze was cast, the stone was heated to make
41:07sure that it doesn't crack later. Today Kai Martens is casting a flanged axe. The
41:15ledges on the long sides of the axe ensure that it sits securely on the wooden shaft.
41:22Flanged axes were used as tools and as weapons of war. They were discovered in numerous hordes
41:27alongside sickles and bronze ingots. While tin had to be traded from far away, the second
41:34raw material, copper, is common in central and southern Europe.
41:39One of the likely reasons why bronze spreads so quickly is the fact that it consists of
41:4390% copper and 10% tin, and it's these 10% that give bronze its hardness.
41:57For human culture as a whole this was relatively important, because at this time many specialists
42:02emerged, professions developed. Traders, shipbuilders, I almost said mining engineers,
42:08what I meant of course is people who worked underground and so forth. They didn't exist
42:12in this form before then.
42:26Bronze was sought after like gold and silver. It was also used to make jewellery. The Eckwert
42:32Girl's coffin contained a comb made from bone or antler, as well as a valuable bronze disk
42:38and a bracelet. Perhaps these items indicated her high social status in this society.
42:50We know of course from the grave goods and other finds that people had combs and tweezers
42:55and razors. Body care is likely to have played an important role for the people, not just
43:01as a means to dress up and look pretty, but also of course certain objects or certain
43:06hairstyles represented a certain status.
43:25They cared for their skin and hair. It's quite obvious that the people of the Bronze
43:30Age were much cleaner than we usually assume. When she died, the Eckwert Girl's hair was
43:36short at the sides and long at the back, a fact that allows the scientists to find out
43:41more details about her life. Human hairs in particular, which grow one centimetre a month
43:49on average, are a storage medium that can tell us a lot. They give the scientists insights
43:56into the last two years before the girl's death.
44:00But what is extremely exciting about human hair is that it's a kind of high-resolution
44:05archive of where we have been, so we can actually cut it in pieces. And this is a part of what
44:10we have left of the sample that we took from the Eckwert Girl. And the hair was about 23
44:17centimetres long, so we could cut it month per month to kind of retrieve the whole travel
44:23that she had made.
44:30Karin Frey made astonishing discoveries.
44:33Since I knew from the teeth that she was non-local, and I thought maybe I can say something about
44:39when she came to Denmark, but I have never thought that I will see what I saw.
44:52The scientists found out where the Eckwert Girl had been in the last two years of her
44:56life, and how much she had travelled.
45:00I could see that she had been travelling forth and back in very long distances from where
45:06she was buried, and this was extremely interesting and breathtaking in a way.
45:15In the last two years of her life, she covered some 3,300 kilometres. During this time, she
45:22walked the route between the Black Forest and Eckwert three times. An almost unbelievable
45:28feat of physical strength.
45:36It's a mystery posed by the new strontium isotope analysis technique.
45:45Why did she travel so much in the last two years of her life?
45:50This question will remain unanswered, but I suspect that links between Scandinavia and
45:55the Alps played a role. Copper was probably imported from the Alpine region.
46:03We were also able to tell from the girl's clothing that wool was traded over long distances.
46:13She had actually not been in Denmark within nearly the last half a year of her life, which
46:18that was also extremely surprising, because she must have been here at some point just
46:25before then, the last months of her life, which is invisible for us, because it also
46:29takes a month before you can see it in the hair or in the nails. So the last months we
46:34don't have, and it must have been within this last month that she somehow came to Denmark
46:40and unfortunately died.
46:45By our standards, the Eckwert girl was very young when she died. But early death was nothing
46:51unusual in pre-industrial societies. The average life expectancy was around 30 years.
47:00Did the exertion from her long walks affect her health? Was her position in this early
47:11society ultimately her downfall?
47:14So something happened to her within the last six months of her life, a period where she
47:18actually either didn't get enough to eat or that she was ill or maybe even she was pregnant.
47:26In Eckwert, the stranger was given a grand burial, like a high-ranking member of Scandinavian
47:32society. By her side, the Danish scientists found bones of a cremated child.
47:46Within this box we found actually the Pars Petrosa bone that we used to say where the
47:51child came from. We could see actually that the result was the same as from the tooth
47:58animal from the Eckwert girl. So we think they come from exactly the same spot.
48:07Did they both turn their backs on their homeland in the black forest? Was it her child? What
48:13did it die of?
48:19I personally believe that the child is a family member of hers. It doesn't have to be her
48:25daughter. Incidentally, we know from other graves that children were rarely buried on
48:30their own in the Bronze Age. Children often lie with the adults. Perhaps it was good for
48:38them to follow an older person into death. It meant that they could go to another world
48:43with the adult. More recent discoveries provided proof of something that scientists previously
48:56had only speculated about, namely that the Eckwert girl is not an isolated case. Karin
49:03Frey has a new and spectacular find in her laboratory. The skrittstorp woman had also
49:09travelled to Denmark from far away. She too was given a lavish burial in Jutland.
49:16We are so lucky in Denmark that we actually have comparable females from the same period.
49:24One of them is even nearly from the surrounding area not far away. She's about the same age
49:33as the Eckwert girl. So it's very exciting to see that we can study other women and she
49:39also has teeth and is very well preserved and has great textiles, but they look very
49:42different. The thing is that I want to know more about the females after I have realised
49:48all that we could learn from the Eckwert girl. In South Bohemia, scientists from Hamburg
49:56University are also looking for finds from the Bronze Age. Here too, they are looking
50:02for further evidence of the Europe-wide mobility of women in this harsh period. The strontium-isotope
50:11analysis technique shows that the girl or woman from skrittstorp is very likely to originally
50:16have come from Bohemia, and that's the region we are currently in. Women did not always
50:24stay with their original family. They sometimes had a large sphere of movement in Europe,
50:30like the Eckwert girl. I have not imagined a face, so to say, in my mind, but I imagine
50:36actually a person and a society around her. So I think it's the whole thing that she can
50:40tell us about also her society that for me is amazing and very exciting. The Eckwert
50:48girl is a godsend. It is fascinating to be able to unravel all these hidden stories in
50:55our material, in our past, so that it is not just something which is stored in a museum,
51:03but it's something that is actually relevant to us today. I think the biggest adventure
51:11I have ever experienced, definitely. It was, and it still is, because I still think a lot
51:18about it and think how lucky and fortunate we were to actually look so deep into the
51:25human's life from the Bronze Age and how much they have actually still to tell us.
51:33The story of the girl from Eckwert still touches us today, thousands of years later.
51:40She was almost a child when she left her home. She walked through the whole of Germany, there
51:45and back, with an unknown task. Was she a trader or a sun priestess? She took the answer
51:52into the grave with her.