The 3,000 Year-Old Girl Buried In An Oak Coffin | Egtved Girl | Timeline

this channel is part of the history hit network [Music] she is young bold and courageous in the year 1368 before christ she set off on a perilous journey [Music] her death some two years later will help to solve an archaeological mystery whatever she did she come from very far away from the place that she was found what caused her to leave her home what happened to her on her long journey full of dangers the roots in every prehistoric region were not without danger she must have reached the limits of her strength it's about money during a journey people had to rely on other people's hospitality who did she meet on her way and how did the people of that period live [Music] she's more than just a person she's kind of a person that is telling me a story about how bronze age society was at that time the story of the eggvet girl opens up a new way of looking at the lives of our ancestors [Music] ex-fed in denmark in 1921 the farmer peter platz wants to remove a hill on his property as he does so he stumbles upon a large tree coffin peter platz has a feeling that it must be a very special archaeological find he notifies the national museum in copenhagen his find is a stroke of luck for science experts excavate the grave what they find is still spectacular today the coffin contains clothing in almost pristine condition and the wood coffin is also undamaged [Music] the bark was removed when they made this tree coffin but it was only the bark that was removed and this entire section the hard wood which we see here the dark parts and also the light parts this sapwood was still attached during the burial and that's what's positive here the fact that the sapwood has survived which is why we can date it exactly and we know that this burial well we know that the tree was felt in 1370 before christ at some point around this time she must have died [Music] tree coffin burials are a complex technical feat the many grave goods the unknown young woman was given are also of a high quality [Music] why did the people around her make such an effort was she an important figure despite her youth i he had selfie gaps oak is very high in tannic acid oak is very hard and a wonderful building material and people knew that and in an oxygen free environment oak can be preserved for thousands of years one of the aims was to protect this dead person with the burial mound as much as possible as well as the grave goods and to preserve everything for as long as possible [Music] it's a small detail that tells the scientists today in which season the act fed girl was buried in the literature the literature tells us that there is a little plant wedged in between the coffin lids and the bottom of the coffin a flower of the common yarrow achillea melefolium and the fact that the plant was blooming tells us that it was summertime the yarrow is considered a medicinal plant perhaps the girl was a healer [Music] here in south bohemia archaeologists are not expecting such a sensational find painstakingly they look for the tiniest bone remains shards and stones german and czech scientists are opening up a burial mound site this is a very very exciting archaeological investigation here what do you see here at the open burial mounds this alone is a situation we don't come across too often because normally such burial mounds shouldn't be touched if possible but here there is a good reason for doing so the construction of a motorway the bronze age people piled up this burial mound using sand and stones the soil is permeable to oxygen which is why few of the remains are preserved in scandinavia we have a different construction principle for mounds there turfs were used as well as plague and soil which was cut off and the turfs were piled up on top of each other to form the body of the mound this influenced various chemical processes because the turfs also contained other substances humic matter and other things than the pure sandy soil that's another difference between the scandinavian mounds and the mounds we have here [Music] the dead who are bestowed with the honor of being buried in an elaborate tree coffin must have played a special role in the society of this era [Music] danish scientists want to examine exactly which position the actvet girl occupied 56 her striking clothes and richly ornamented accessories are an important indication girl lying there with a disc shaped belt place we see immediately that a scandinavian woman was buried here the belt plate decorated with spiral ornaments is a characteristic type of jewelry of the nordic bronze age this means that the egg fed girl was buried like a scandinavian and her disc shaped belt plate must have had a special significance the short wrap skirt made from twisted cords of wool is even rarer and more famous it was placed in the young woman's grave the court skirt is the oldest item of clothing of its kind to survive it is stunningly well preserved an interesting particularity is that the skirt is transparent the skirt is in itself because it is a well-preserved unique such a well-preserved item in our collection that shows us how exactly this item was worn and would have looked like is a very fascinating aspect of our textile collections the object was started by weaving a narrow band and the weft threads in this band was actually constituting the chords that they were later twisted into the main part of the skirt so it's a combination of weaving and twisting this item in this way it's a very simple but also a very ingenious construction the archaeologist further developed the so-called strontium isotope analysis method this method can be used to determine the origin of the wool when we actually took the textiles and we realized that it gave a very different picture of what we thought because her textiles are actually they seemed the experts in in textile research they say they look very nordic so we didn't think that there was something unusual about them but the raw material so the bull that they're made from is not from from here from the surrounding area so that was already something new if the wool from her clothing does not come from scandinavia where does it come from perhaps the girl is not originally from the danish peninsula of jutland i never thought that he would i will find something about herself but about her textiles but it's when we saw this picture and where i could see that unfortunately there were no results from the dna but i thought okay but i could maybe learn more about her because i was intrigued by the fact that the textiles look so nordic but still were made all of them by non-local material so that was for me the the thing that actually tricked me to look farther the expert girl died at a young age according to tooth examinations she was between 16 and 18 years old when she died her molars may reveal even more karen wants to determine her region of origin using strontium isotope analysis so it is an element that you find in the rocks and in the soil and that has a special signature depending on the geology so the type of rocks depending on the age and the gender body type they will have a specific strontium isotopic signature [Music] teeth only grow until adolescence they can tell us things about where a person comes from just like calcium strontium is needed to build teeth and bones and you incorporate that when you eat different plants or different elements that grow in that specific area and this the concentration may change but the strontium isotopic signature is the same so it's kind of like a gps that you actually incorporate in your body [Music] only this analysis helps karine fry because the skeleton is completely decomposed only parts of the girl's long hair fingernails and teeth have survived the dna analysis was unsuccessful because in the acidic environment of the oak coffin the genetic material in the remains of our body was destroyed so when i was there with the first measurements actually the vice director was with me in the room in the mass spectrometer he was just visiting that day and i just told him hey it looks like you know she's not from here and yeah we just looked at each other and we were extremely excited and it was amazing it was really something very special the ex-fed girl is one of the most famous finds in denmark the announcement that she is not scandinavian immediately causes a stir actually i didn't have big expectations i just wanted to learn more about her and i thought that it was incredible there's no bones left so so her body is not really well preserved it's not there actually so the tooth animal is is one of the few things we have from her so i thought this is the perfect uh opportunity for me to look farther and it was just incredible when i was sitting there and i realized oh my god she's actually herself not from here it is sometime around the year 1368 before christ crafts have begun to develop in the settlements the men go hunting and the women grind cereals and sew clothes the people of the bronze age grow spelt emma and wheat they have discovered bronze as a material and they begin to accumulate wealth social structures are changing people try to stand out from the crowd as owners of jewellery swords and richly decorated garments trade networks are becoming increasingly important during this time a young woman bids farewell to her family and leaves her homeland what we know is that she was she was buried here so at some point she must have been here why that's of course the big question [Music] [Music] does it have something to do with the child that was buried with her was it her child this detail of the find in eggvet also poses a puzzle for the scientists it's possible that she had taken it with her to denmark despite the dangers of such a long journey the mortal remains of the child were burned but some bones remained so their physical anthropologists have looked actually at uh at this and they have put them together and then they could see that this was a child that it was about five to six years of age in the bronze age when mortality was high and there were no modern means of communication saying farewell often meant saying farewell for good it's intriguing that the egg fed girl traveled so far why was she buried here there are various possibilities one is that she was married by people from the two regions who knew each other [Music] such marriages were able to consolidate trade relations and cement political ties and alliances between different tribes they also promoted cultural exchange fleming cowell has been researching bronze age cultures for decades a bronze figurine which was found in denmark in the 18th century provides an important clue so you see answer here it's got some igniting here we see a string skirt like the one the expert girl was wearing perhaps it was worn to ritual dances in the bronze age to honor the sun they did bridges or somersaults perhaps such ritual dances and their movements symbolize the course of the sun as it rises and moves across the sky this is how the people choreographed sophisticated dances [Music] did the exvet girl with her short string skirt a cropped tunic and ornate disc shaped belt plate dance to honor the sun [Music] cultic rituals were an integral part of the religious life of the bronze age people the sun symbolized food and life and earth and water [Music] [Music] was it about fertility this very exceptional item of clothing could be an indication because her wild dance moves revealed the girl's belly under her skirt certainly an erotic component the pressure spelled plate also hints at sun worshiping for uraura i built the belt plate is not just a pretty and shiny piece of jewelry that covers the bare belly with its spiral decoration it could also have a deep religious significance the spiral formations that circle in an internal rhythm elegantly point to the course of the sun again the circular motion and the up and down are a symbolic message of the spiral the remains in the tree coffin not only tell us the story of the exwet girl they also give us a glance into the distant world of our ancestors in the albusdorf open-air museum students live and work for a week like our ancestors in the bronze age to find out what their lives were like the tree coffin contains a vessel with dried remains of beer it has been shown to contain 50 different ingredients constantine berg tries to brew this beer [Music] for this beer i'm making i use mostly wheats like the one in the grave the original contained lingonberry honey and a mix of plants and mugwort as a spice and that's what i mean that's how it was done with the egg fed girl drink the lincoln mary there's yeast as well as berries yeast was added so that it ferments because otherwise all you have is a sweet mash of berries beer brewing has always been an elaborate process the art of beer making goes hand-in-hand with people becoming sedentary settlements were formed and fields were tilled only those who grew enough grain to have enough to eat and a little bit left over for fermenting could afford to brew beer [Music] it was a valuable grave good designed to ensure that the young woman had everything she needed in the afterlife i think that the bear in the coffin also had to do with the fact that it was drunk at celebrations and perhaps also at funerary celebrations given the size of the burial mound it's obvious that there must have been a celebration too and the beer was drunk the beer was also available at other festivities and that it was put in the coffin too because it was part of the society of the culture one find shows that cannabis was consumed as an intoxicating drug and as a pain reliever [Music] sweat lodges were used to strengthen the immune system and improve well-being physical and spiritual cleansing perhaps combined as a ritual act the steam was generated by pouring water over hot stones the idea that people walked around unkempt is wrong they must have known how important cleanliness was and also about the healing power of hot moist air [Music] this is further evidence of a rapidly developing society [Music] it's also known that sweat lodges prehistoric soreness if you like have been around since the neolithic period they also existed in the bronze age but evidence for this has only been around for a few years and only in a few finds new clothes are also part of the developed culture of the bronze age wool comes to replace leather what's very typical of the bronze age is that we now mostly find wool textiles in the graves the assumption is that larger sheep were introduced into europe from the iranian region this is what the first sheep may look like they still had quite pronounced guard hair and not that much of an undercoat and in the eastern region this was bred further which created wool fleece like this one here and this was introduced with these larger sheep from the end of the neolithic until the start of the bronze age fashion began to emerge clothing also became a status symbol when it comes to the bronze age you have to distinguish between women's and men's clothes of course they had long capes with matching wool belts worn by the men hats with decorations and the women also had what could practically be described as dresses some with very individual cuts which emphasizes the individual person and their importance their status perhaps even their age [Music] women started to weave and sew clothes using sheep's wool and they did so with exceptional skill and a real sense for shape and color the raw material wool became a sought-after commodity [Music] craft and trades began to emerge these were the beginnings of the division of labor as we know it today bartering transactions led to increasing social differentiation hierarchies gradually developed this era is called a golden age of humanity people had to deal with completely new challenges there must have been such a large textile production that they were absolutely not able to produce the raw materials for for this production themselves that they had to import the raw materials from other areas trade was no longer confined to a specific region people moved around the whole of europe to exchange goods this was much more difficult than it is today because of course there were no paved roads to cover long distances [Music] karin fry was surprised to discover how far the expert girl had to walk from her home region to denmark what we think is that because in the uh schwarz valley in the black forest area you have a quite complex geology and there you have all these different strontium isotopic signatures within quite a relatively small area so to say still big but still rather small you have all these different strategy isotopic signals that you have in the textiles and also the ones that you have both in her teeth and in her hair the young girl walked over 1 000 kilometers through valleys dense forests and perilous swamps she also had to cross rivers even for an adult and experienced man this would have been a real challenge it must have been much more difficult for the ex-fat girl who was only on the threshold of adulthood so i think it tells us that the bronze age society was extremely dynamic we knew that of course but this makes it even much more obvious for us also i think it makes it show us that people could move so far and and actually kind of not only men but also females could she was able to and was empowered to do this also that's another thing that makes the egg fat girl so unusual she is the first prehistoric person in europe to have been shown to have traveled such a long distance she stands for a society in transition did she really manage to do it all on her own or did she get help and if so who might have helped her we believe that she didn't travel on her own but rather perhaps as part of a caravan with many other people she may have traveled along the german rivers on her way across europe there are probably a few places where she could stay the night and get something to eat don't stay up for me such contacts were essential for survival small settlements offered shelter and shared their food the bronze axe and saw allowed people to cut down woodland and turn it into arable land for growing grains fishing evolved and people use spears and fish traps plow sickle and scythe made life easier people dried grass to feed their herds hay during the hard winters people who had previously hunted as nomads and had perfectly adapted to their environment we're now adapting their environment to their own needs on a grand scale the dawn of a new era that is still with us today [Music] it's very hard to say what they ate during their journey perhaps they had salted or dried meat with them but in order to get enough food during their long journey they had to rely on other people's hospitality this was essential um the social relations of our bronze age ancestors were probably as varied as they are today scientists believe that the regional exchange of goods and food was widespread the village communities knew each other eating together and knowing that they depended on each other promoted cohesion without which these vulnerable societies would have lost the struggle for survival [Music] it's likely that she found refuge in the settlements in the different regions and stayed the night with the locals it's clear that she lived with the people in the normal settlements [Music] grave finds show that europe-wide networks developed they even extended across the sea was such a network the reason for her trip research shows that surprisingly a particularly large number of women migrated was their aim to combine business with their private life it is likely that it was women who spread cultural practices skills and techniques across europe it must have been the case that these contact routes were all along the way so that the various stations could be used of course this trading society will have had trading centers and ports of call where you could stop off as a stranger as a trader and she is likely to have been guided to them and uh [Music] [Music] the idea that people in the bronze age were primitive has been refuted they were more similar to us than is often assumed their clothes their social structures their technologies and their way of doing science was part of a developed european culture this era was marked by the revolutionary alloy which gave it its name bronze forbidden sunny bronzer on the interconnections during the bronze age were very strong here in scandinavia we didn't have metals such as tin and copper to make bronze which is why each piece of metal had to be brought to denmark from far away scandinavian so the one thing is the extensive and organized trade for which there is evidence especially in the mediterranean area a famous example is the uluboron shipwreck here an entire ship loaded with trade goods sunk this without a doubt is proof of organized trade on a large scale organization the other thing is what we call small scale supplies in various regions of europe during the bronze age where we see completely different materials being exchanged tin from cornwall the mediterranean area even from far away regions like afghanistan was traded for copper from the alpine region and the balkans northern europe on the other hand had a very special precious commodity [Music] we know that amber the gold of the north from the danish coast was found throughout europe [Music] there have been amber fines along the german rivers amber finds in the alps far away in mycenae in greece and nordicambo was even found in syria so during the bronze age denmark was part of a large communication network denmark was of course a very important stone for jewelry which in all likelihood did not just have a decorative function but was also significant as a lucky charm or had a deeper function especially since it was very rare and some places where the amber was found far away from the original deposits and such a precious gemstone had to be carefully guarded and hidden from thieves there was no state order at the time that could have at least attempted to protect the individual on such a long journey [Music] of course ownership of goods always leads to a change in people's social relations there's envy there's resentment there are needs some have capacities and others do not this is all human we're familiar with this from our own time and it leads to conflicts tensions and confrontations wealth creates envy and greed in addition to trade the first wars over raw materials began to be fought the battlefield in the tolenza valley is evidence of that between 750 and 1000 people died there in the bronze age archaeologists have excavated thousands of bones and weapons made of flint wood and bronze hillary and melanie examine the bone finds using methods from engineering here we have the thigh bone of a young man that had broken into two fragments you have to imagine this bone being held in place in the body with muscles and tendons which are also under tension the pain the poor man was suffering must have been unspeakable and he would definitely not have been able to use his legs anymore it's also well known that quite often when a weapon is pulled out of a wound that the damage is even greater than the damage caused by the original attack if the weapon had not been pulled out that also tells you something about the brutality of it that's pretty awesome for the brutality but bronze was very valuable and when the spearheads or arrowheads were made of bronze people wanted them back this is an exceptional site the bone's state of preservation is remarkable the number of individuals or remains of individuals is quite exceptional so this really is and remains an archaeological sensation and it will be a reference point for many years for bronze age research without doubt [Music] it is also a very brutal period in which the ex-fed girl embarks on her journey to the north dangers were lurking everywhere and it wasn't just wild animals bands of men roamed around often after the precious bronze archaeologists have found many buried pieces of gold and bronze throughout central europe evidently these treasures were hidden by their owners out of fear the roots in every prehistoric region were dangerous there were hardly any build paths as such there were boardwalks leading across moors and there were the rivers and the lakes which were reasonably good for traveling by boat these of course also posed dangers which had to be avoided and we must never forget that bronze age society was very belligerent and hostile a very hierarchical society and that of course also means that if i come to such a society as a stranger as a person from somewhere else it couldn't always have been easy for the travelers communities were not always welcoming to strangers there were also enemies and they could be lurking anywhere without you knowing about it beforehand because the path led through unfamiliar terrain [Music] you had to be alert by day and by night which harbored very different kinds of dangers [Music] even the smallest injuries have serious consequences and infected wounds were usually fatal because the egg fed tree coffin no longer contained any bones the danish scientists were not able to tell whether something happened to the girl on her journey [Music] in albersdorf the students produce weapons and tools from flint this common stone is the perfect raw material as it is sharp and hard it was used for a long time alongside bronze which was rare and precious for a variety of reasons flint is a material that is extremely suitable for the manufacture of tools it's also a very tough and stable material which however cracks easily because of its inner tension its properties are similar to those of glass as you can see here it has a very sharp edge when it breaks and what's more it breaks in a very very predictable way which is especially noticeable here in this spot to make complex things like a dagger for example you need many years of experience because it requires special techniques to make this area so narrow without breaking the blades basically you have to do it in a single blow or you have to start again because the stone becomes useless at the beginning of the bronze age flint was indispensable in people's daily lives for example to make spearheads flint was also used to make fire only gradually was it replaced by weapons and tools made of bronze due to a rise in average temperatures there was plenty of game fish and grains such as einkorn and emma barley spelt and millet pulses like peas and lentils were nutritious and filling the rich supply of food allowed new cultures to flourish and promoted social development [Music] bronze a copper and tin alloy and a great material it is easy to forge yet tougher than anything else people had known before the precious bronze was cast into bars either for later personal use or as a sought after commodity melting it however is a real challenge bronze becomes a liquid at 1048 degrees kai martins is one of only a few people still proficient in this ancient technology there are basically two aspects the first is to get the bronze really hot so that it flows and the second is to heat the mold well and dry it otherwise we would build a little vesuvius and that wouldn't be so good at the time they usually made the molds using sandstone the inside of which had to be painstakingly ground first before the bronze was cast the stone was heated to make sure that it doesn't crack later today kai martens is casting a flanged axe the ledges on the long sides of the axe ensure that it sits securely on the wooden shaft flanged axes were used as tools and as weapons of war they were discovered in numerous hordes alongside sickles and bronzing gods while tin had to be traded from far away the second raw material copper is common in central and southern europe one of the likely reasons why bronze spreads so quickly is the fact that it consists of ninety percent copper and ten percent tin and it's these ten percent that give bronze its hardness for human culture as a whole this was relatively important because at this time many specialists emerged professions developed traders shipbuilders homer said mining engineers what i meant of course is people who worked underground and so forth they didn't exist in this form before then [Music] bronze was sought after like gold and silver it was also used to make jewellery the egg fed girl's coffin contained a comb made from bone or antler as well as a valuable bronze disk and a bracelet perhaps these items indicated her high social status in this society austin we know of course from the grave goods and other finds that people had combs and tweezers and raises body care is likely to have plays an important role for the people not just as a means to dress up and look pretty but also of course certain objects or certain hairstyles represented a certain status [Music] they cared for their skin and hair it's quite obvious that the people of the bronze age were much cleaner than we usually assume when she died the egg fat girl's hair was short at the sides and long at the back a fact that allows the scientists to find out more details about her life human hairs in particular which grow one centimeter a month on average are a storage medium that can tell us a lot they give the scientists insights into the last two years before the girl's death but what is extremely exciting about human hair is that it's a kind of high resolution archive of where we have been so we can actually cut it in pieces and this is a part of what we have left of the sample that we took from the egg that girl and and the hair was about 23 centimeters long so we could cut it months per month to to kind of retrieve the whole travel that she had made made astonishing discoveries since i knew from the teeth that she was non-local and i thought maybe i consent when she say something about when she came to denmark but i have never thought that i will see what i saw [Music] the scientist found out where the actvet girl had been in the last two years of her life and how much she had traveled i could see that she had been travelled forth and back in very long distances from where she was buried and this was extremely interesting and breathtaking in a way in the last two years of her life she covered some 3 300 kilometers during this time she walked the route between the black forest and egg fed three times an almost unbelievable feat of physical strength [Music] it's a mystery posed by the new strontium isotope analysis technique why did she travel so much in the last two years of her life this question will remain unanswered but i suspect that links between scandinavia and the alps played a role copper was probably imported from the alpine region we were also able to tell from the girl's clothing that wool was traded over long distances she had actually not been in denmark within nearly the last half a year of her life which that was also extremely uh surprising because she must have been here at some point just before than the last months of her life which is invisible for us because it also takes a month before you can see it in the hair or in the nails so the last month we don't have and it must have been within these last months that she somehow came to denmark and unfortunately died by our standards the expert girl was very young when she died but early death was nothing unusual in pre-industrial societies the average life expectancy was around 30 years [Music] did the exertion from her long walks affect her health was her position in this early society ultimately her downfall so something happened to her within the last six months of her life a period where she actually either didn't get enough to eat or that she was ill or maybe even she was pregnant [Music] in eggvet the stranger was given a grand burial like a high-ranking member of scandinavian society by her side the danish scientists found bones of a cremated child within this box we found actually the paris petrossa bone that we used to say where the child came from we could see actually that the result was the same as from the tooth animal from the eggplant girl so we think they come from exactly the same spot [Music] did they both turn their backs on their homeland in the black forest was it her child what did it die of yes i personally believe that the child is a family member of hers it doesn't have to be her daughter incidentally we know from other graves the children were rarely buried on their own in the bronze age children often lie with the adults perhaps it was good for them to follow an older person into death it meant that they could go to another world with the adults [Music] more recent discoveries provided proof of something that scientists previously had only speculated about namely that the expert girl is not an isolated case karen fry has a new and spectacular find in her laboratory the skritstrop woman had also traveled to denmark from far away she too was given a lavish burial in jutland we are so lucky in denmark that we actually have comparable females from the same period and even one of them is even nearly from from the the surrounding or area not far away and also from she's the same about the same age as the ekford girl so it's very exciting to to see that we can study other women and she also has teeth and is very well preserved and has great textiles but they look very different the thing is that i want to know more about uh the females after i have realized all what we could learn from the expert girl in south bohemia scientists from hamburg university are also looking for finds from the bronze age here too they are looking for further evidence of the europe-wide mobility of women in this harsh period the strontium isotope analysis technique shows that the girl or woman from skritstrop is very likely to originally have come from bohemia and that's the region we're currently in but women did not always stay with their original family they sometimes had a large sphere of movement in europe like the ex-vet girl i have not imagined a face so to say in my mind but i imagine actually a person and a society around her so i think it's the whole thing that she can tell us about also her society that for me is amazing and very exciting the exvert girl is a godsend it is fascinating to be able to unravel all these hidden stories in our material in our past so that it is not just something which is stored in a museum but it's something that is actually relevant to us today [Music] i think the biggest adventure i have ever experienced definitely it was and it still is because i still think a lot about it and and think how lucky and fortunate we were to to actually look so deep into into a human's life from the bronze age and how much they have actually still to tell us the story of the girl from exfed still touches us today thousands of years later she was almost a child when she left her home she walked through the whole of germany there and back with an unknown task was she a trader or a sun priestess she took the answer into the grave with her [Music] you

Channel: Timeline - World History Documentaries

Views: 925,274

Keywords: Ancient Anthropology, Ancient Civilizations, Ancient Denmark, Ancient European Artifacts, Ancient Graves, Ancient Scandinavian Culture, Ancient World, Archaeology, Bronze Age Denmark, Burial Customs, Burial Practices, Burial Sites, Burial Traditions, Documentary Film, Historical Artifacts, Historical Preservation, Historical Significance, Netflix for History, Timeline - World History Documentaries, Unearthing the Past, Vikings and Scandinavia

Id: v8z_6zypvbQ

Length: 52min 13sec (3133 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 10 2022