The Mysterious Horned Helmets of Bronze Age Europe

figures wearing horned helmets are depicted in Scandinavian rock art on Steely in the Iberian Peninsula and on many years on Corsica and horned helmets feature on statuettes from Zealand Sardinia and Cyprus on wall decorations of the sea people on reliefs in Egypt and on the Mycenaean Warrior vars clearly horned helmets were widely distributed during this period of the Bronze Age but why what do they mean and are they connected in some way in this video we're taking an epic Voyage Through the European Bronze Age in the 12th century BC from Scandinavia to the Iberian Peninsula and across the Mediterranean to the east in search of the horned helmets of Traders Warriors Kings and gods [Music] these helmets were discovered in the 1940s during peat cutting in northeastern Zealand they were deposited as a pair in what would have been a bog during the Nordic Bronze Age metal analysis suggests that originally the holes were adorned with feathers while the Center Ridge was crested with horsehair like a Mane at the front of the crest there extends a hook like the beak of a bird of prey many studies over the years have emphasized their likely role in rituals and religion framing them as a kind of mask that transformed the wearers into human animal hybrids the animals themselves are significant water Birds especially are creatures of the air the land and the water moving between the different mediums with ease the sky represented the heavens the land is this world and water is the underworld or at least a root into it places where these mediums met were access points where people and objects could travel between the realms drawing on the power of these birds imparts some of their ability to slip between worlds to the bearers of these Helms the horse too is associated with death often carrying the soul of The Departed into the underworld it is significant to note that these homes were deposited underwater into a bogland at a place that was both water and land and yet neither this final ritual may have sent them on their way into the underworld to their rightful owners the warrior Chiefs who had Once Upon a Time famously worn them in battle because of course these Helms were for use in Warfare 2. the bronze Dome of the helmet was formed using the same method as Bronze Age helmets from Central Europe and these were Warrior societies the damaged weapons found in burials and the huge Burrows raised over them a test that this was the age of Heroes so while they no doubt had a ritual function in a battlefield context these would have protected the head but more importantly terrified the enemy and inspired the warrior retinue of the Chiefs wearing them but if this was the helmet of a warrior Chief why does it have an almost identical counterpart does this mean that there were two chiefs well these helmets are the only examples that have been discovered but there is other evidence too in the form of these small figurines found in the 18th Century A.D again in Zealand there were seven of them found but five were lost and only two remain we do at least have a drawing showing what was lost and we can see a pair of figures in horned helmets and it's thought that they are representations of the Indo-European Divine Twins A Familiar expression of the Indo-European horse twins is caster and Pollux of Greek and Roman mythology they are both the sons of leader however Caster is the son of a mortal father while Pollux was fathered by Zeus who seduced leader in the guys of a swan so is it a coincidence that swans and horses are featured on the twin Helms from the Nordic Bronze Age probably not caster and Pollux and many other expressions of the Divine twins are also associated with journeying and with ships and with settling new lands there is a Bronze Age horse yoke from Scania featuring twin figures in horned helmets they also have a similar pointed beak between and above the eyes there is a theory that Nordic Bronze Age societies were often ruled by twin Chiefs one ruling over the sacred the spiritual and the domestic world and the other ruling over Warfare trade and international relations and there is more evidence of horned figures in Bronze Age Scandinavian rock art where they wield axes swords Spears and bows and many are protected by circular Shields they are closely associated with ships these massive figures sometimes appear in command of a crew and in other cases they perform heroic Feats of Strength lifting whole into the air so heroic Journeys in the real world echoed perhaps in ritual traveling to other Realms is well evidenced here and journeying to other places is an important part of the story of the Bronze Age because although there are distinct archaeological cultures and distinct populations that can be detected using archaeogenetic testing of ancient remains there is also evidence of contact between these societies to see one example of this Let's Travel now from Bronze Age Sweden all the way along the Atlantic coast to Galicia the rock art of boersland features napped figures on sloping panels of granite situated in a maritime landscape of long valleys and the very same can be said for the rock art in Galicia precise dating is notoriously difficult but the art in both places was produced roughly between 2000 BC and 500 BC by pre-literate Peoples living close by the sea or along important passages in the landscape the sites are 2 000 kilometers apart in a straight line and three thousand following the coast and yet there was an Atlantic Trade Network linking these places in the late Bronze Age and there are two panels that also indicate some kind of cultural exchange both feature which is called a sundia motif and both sites have the same dual compositions of a stag and a doe in the first scene on the lower left the circle symbol is associated with the front legs of the Stag in the second scene above to the right the circle symbol is associated with the front legs of the dough as if she is entering the Sun or perhaps the moon or a watering hole or all of these there are many examples of the sun deer and also similar Sun horse motifs and no doubt they had many meanings but this composition surely represents the same story of course it's possible their creation is separated by centuries but it's also possible because of The Uncanny similarities that the site of one inspired the other directly it's important to note that Northwest Iberia is one of the locations along with Brittany and Cornwall where tin was extracted in the Bronze Age there were also gold and copper mines here also in Iberia further to the South are funerary Steely featuring warriors with horned helmets these and other images display a range of weapons and large round Shields and a third of them display horse-drawn wagons or chariots again dating these Steely is not simple but attempts have been made based on the equipment shown amongst other things for example the shield with a notch in it is seen in a specific Bronze Age Shield found in Ireland and the swords fibulae and the shapes of the helmet without horns also inform the chronology however there is a debate over whether these horned helmet images date closer to the 11th century BC or if they are closer to the 9th century BC either way another link between these places is the specific type of bronze axes deposited along the so-called Southern fjords of Galicia these axes typical for Northwest Iberia have also been found in a deposit in Sweden near another Center of rock art panels and they have also been found in deposits in Sardinia so let's Journey east across the Mediterranean to look at the remarkable horned helmets of the neuragic civilization the neurogic civilization gets its name today from the stone Towers dating to this era which were probably defensive homesteads some of these were extremely impressive these people grew powerful in part thanks to their position on a trade route between the tin producers in the west and the voracious tin consumers in the East they also produced these small bronze statuettes more than a thousand have been found in these Stone domestic structures in sacred Springs and sanctuaries but only about a hundred dated to the 11th to 10th centuries BC depict Warriors most of these Warriors are equipped with sword and shield and one cares a spear a minority of them have long curving horns like those of a bull and like those seen in Iberia and Scandinavia while the rest have a different style short and pointing forwards and perhaps placed on an organic cap rather than a bronze one there are many arches too and three-quarters have short highly curved horned Helms a quarter have no horns and a single figure has the long gently curving horns to the north of Sardinia the island of Corsica has its own history of megalithic cultures and fortified Stone Towers after which the taurian civilization takes its name it also has examples of broadly contemporary statue menis featuring sword armed Warriors these statues also sported horns whether they were real horns from a bull or replicas made of something else we don't know because they're long gone but clearly the horned warriors were here too recorded in their local Stone statue tradition rather than the bronze figurines of their metal trading neighbors to the South one Sardinian bronze figure of which only the head survives now shows between the upward bent small horns a disc or round object that is perhaps similar to that worn by the sure Den or shardana one of the sea peoples as depicted in the reliefs at the Temple of Ramesses III at Medina Habu in Egypt so let's go east again across the Mediterranean all the way to Egypt during the invasions of the sea peoples the sea peoples is a name given to the groups that attacked the civilizations of the East Mediterranean around the time of the late Bronze Age collapse there are nine Nations named in ancient Egyptian sources and the debate on the identities of these ethnic groups continues today one hypothesis is that the sherden or shadana in the ancient Egyptian sources refers to sardinians of the norajic civilization supporting this are the release from Medina Habu of Sheridan Warriors not only do they wear horned helmets but their weapons and round Shields are thought to be similar to those from Sardinia you know some people say that the idea that anyone actually wore horned helmets in battle is ridiculous because of how impractical they would be enemy weapons would obviously hook onto them and either knock the helmet off or drag down the Warrior's head leaving him open to attack but here we see these figures clearly wearing haunt helmets in the thick of the fighting and of course successful Warriors from other eras War crests or decorations that would be called impractical and yet they were also worn in battle on these Temple images the sherden sport a yellow helmet with red horizontal and vertical lines perhaps indicating organic netting over a bronze cap the horns are light or pale blue suggesting they were constructed from a different material to those of the cap so do these freezes actually show Invaders from Sardinia well we've seen that Warrior equipment like horned helmets Spears long swords and round Shields are found in many parts of Europe at this time but it certainly seems plausible the armies of Egypt defeated the shirt in and awarded them land on the hittite frontier and then employed them as mercenaries they fought for Egypt at the Battle of Kadesh in 1274 BC now before we go north by sea again we must first travel east Inland to the land between the rivers and go further back in time because the earliest known depiction of a man in a horned helmet is from sipah on the victory Steely of naram sin dated to about 2400 to 2300 BC over a thousand years earlier than the other examples we've seen so far only Mesopotamian deities had been shown with the Bull's horns before but The Arcadian King's military achievements were so great that he was depicted like a god indeed the horned helmet was a Divine attribute there are other later examples of gods in the near East with horned Helms like this Bal figurine from Syria dated to 2000 to 1800 BC incidentally the God's name Bal was originally a title for a human leader meaning Lord that was then applied to gods and there is this hittite example from The 14th Century BC from hatusha and all also a later neo-hittite example of two bull men with a winged son dating to 1 000 to 900 BC after the laked Bronze Age collapse now let's take a ship from Syria across to Cyprus and the village of encomi which was an important Bronze Age City and was perhaps the capital of the kingdom of Alasia that ruled Cyprus this was an incredibly important place for the smelting and trade of copper and they had strong cultural links with the peoples on the coast of Syria which perhaps explains the spread of the horned God to here this statuette with long horns on his headgear is dated to the 12th century BC and depicts what is thought to be a deity there is another statuette too and this one is kitted out like a warrior with his horned helmet spear shield and Grieves they call him the Ingot God because he is standing on an oxide Ingot the name of that comes from the shape which resembles an ox hide these ingots of copper and sometimes tin were transported across the ancient world in ships and on pack animals this so-called Ingot God seems like a warrior guarding the most important substances in the world these ingots were shipped in and out of Cyprus right around the Eastern Mediterranean in this period including to and from minoan Crete Bulls were an important element of minoan culture and their religious practices their famous bull leaping rituals for example and the so-called horns of consecration symbol that often appears with the double axes minoan culture greatly influenced the Mycenaeans across the Aegean to the North in fact minoan artifacts including those featuring bulls have been discovered in the graves of the Mycenaean Elites and we see more evidence of horned headgear in one of the graves at dendra on the Eastern peloponnese the graves here are famous in part because of the dendra panoply the remarkable Bronze Age plate armor in one of the Beehive tombs at dendra there were horns made of lead which were deposited at the feet of the deceased the horns seem to have been part of a headgear which being organic has decomposed or they may have been removed from a metal cap before burial there is pictorial evidence too in the form of the warrior vars also known as The House of the warrior crater a bowl for mixing wine dated to the 12th century BC this shows images of spear armed Warriors protected by Shields Greaves and Helms with short horns the repeated similar figures show that this is an army or at least a retinue rather than images of a hero a chief or a king also in these Mycenaean tombs is found baltic amber which was channeled at this time through the tumulus culture of Central Europe which linked Scandinavia and the central Mediterranean Prestige Goods traveled the other way from the Eastern Mediterranean deeper into Europe often through the terramere culture of the po valley Danish archaeologist Christian Christensen says quote Warriors and Traders moved on a regular basis between South Scandinavia South Germany and probably even further the terramere settlement of Northern Italy provided one such Bridgehead here we find amber beads but also other evidence of Northern Connections in Sword types and pottery these networks which were kept together by treaties and political alliances between the chiefdoms or rather kingdoms along the Route which in turn provided Logistics and supports for the Traders dynastic marriages between chiefdoms or kingdoms along the Route have long since been demonstrated archaeologically end quote there are too many examples of these contacts to discuss now but it's notable that metal workers from Southern Germany were making swords in Denmark and indeed evidence of links between these cultures is embodied in the horned helmets from Zealand which are combinations of Scandinavian and central European decorations and metal working techniques so now we've completed a circus of Bronze Age Europe what does all this mean do these horned helmets have a shared meaning across all these cultures well it's hard to say because the actual function of horned helmets or the meaning of the horns themselves is unclear and it could be that horned helmets developed independently in many places after all it's a concept that suggests itself quite easily look at the famous headdresses from Star Car in Britain made from Red Deer stag skulls these are from the Mesolithic era about 9000 BC and they were worn perhaps by hunters to disguise themselves when stalking their prey or by people taking part in ritual shamanistic activities or both of course presumably either way this masking process involved the participants taking on some aspects of the animal merging certain characteristics of the beasts with the human performing the activity so there's no doubt horned headdressers have emerged independently around the world without being linked to Warrior's body armor and all these Bronze Age examples could have evolved independently out of earlier unrecorded traditions in each area and it's possible that apparent links between say Scandinavia and mycenae for example might be due to a shared Indo-European tradition rather than Bronze Age contact nevertheless there does seem to be a spread from Mesopotamia into Syria and Cyprus where the Bull's horns are linked to Divinity and semi-divine Kings who are an embodiment of divinity and a conduit to it some Scholars have argued that this influence spread also to the Hittites and the Minoans and from the Minoans onto the Mycenaeans and from them it spread to Sardinia and Scandinavia and Iberia here is where we see the long curving horns surely representing cattle or oryx related to rulers and to Sacred rituals it's surely notable that these Longhorns sometimes feature cut-off ends with ball or Bowl reinforced tips but there are even more examples of small horns on what often seems to be organic head protection used by Warriors in Sardinia it is the figures portraying what are sometimes called Warrior demons or over-equipped Warriors who have multiple arms and eyes who sport the long horns while the human Warriors sport short horns in Cyprus 2 the unarmed God has long horns while the Ingot God the warrior God if that's what it is has short ones so what were the small horns supposed to portray nothing seems obvious perhaps they are intended to reflect their status as the retinue of Kings great horns for the ruler short horns for the Lesser men who serve him to reflect their diminished status aristocratic Warriors but less than Kings these regions display Warriors often associated in images with transport in the form of ships or chariots or wagons and this was a time when trade was dominated by Kings and carried out by their Warriors ultimately although the horned helmet's meme seems to have caught on we can't be sure where it originated and which direction it spread partly this is because these regions were in contact through complex ever-shifting exchange networks where Goods people and cultural influence went both ways or always what most linked to all these places all these separate and distinct ethnic groups is the trade in metal while almost everyone lived their lives in their own homelands a small number certainly journeyed from place to place there would also have been raids piracy and invasions but it was often about the exchange of goods raw materials produce and slaves the relative stability of this complex system linking the Atlantic Baltic and Mediterranean worlds would soon come to an end during the late Bronze Age collapse at this time Warriors from Sardinia Italy Greece and perhaps further afield moved in large numbers down into the civilizations of the Eastern Mediterranean and the near East many of them no doubt wearing horned helmets a new order would eventually emerge from the chaos but the horned helmet Motif would no longer Thrive as it once had archaeologist Marianne modlinga says the following about horned helmets quote it is not necessary to seek a single causal link of development and we must take into account the many different practical and cultural reasons and networks which influence the development both locally and regionally of horned headgear we can perhaps see in horned headgear a significant element of connection between the Nordic Bronze Age the earnfield culture and various Mediterranean networks from about 1200 BC onwards and as a thread which leads from war and social upheaval in the East Mediterranean over Sardinia and Iberia to Zealand with offshoot to adventurous sea travels Warfare material culture emulation transfer of cosmological elements myth making and the transport of bronze along the Atlantic coasts and copper mining or Trey trade end quote [Music] if you like these videos please support the channel on patreon make sure you hit like on this video it helps me out enormously now please watch this video on the rock art of Southwest Sweden and what it tells us about the Nordic Bronze Age Warrior Trader Society it goes really well with this one thank you for watching

Channel: Dan Davis History

Views: 474,906

Keywords: bronze age history, medieval history, history of europe, history documentaries, ancient history documentary, ancient civilizations, bronze age collapse, bronze age, sea people, trojan war, ancient egypt, bronze age civilization, ancient history, bronze age collapse documentary, bronze age history documentary, nordic bronze age, mycenaean greece, mycenean, mycenaean civilization, minoan civilization, ancient greece, ancient anatolia

Id: 8IUWvk4MuNw

Length: 24min 13sec (1453 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 17 2021