Kings of Bronze Age Europe: The Únětice Culture

Over four thousand years ago in the early bronze age, great princes emerged to rule over central Europe. They controlled copper and tin production, creating vast amounts of bronze that made them rich. These powerful rulers also facilitated the amber trade along the so-called Amber Road, transporting the precious material from the Baltic to the civilisations of the Near East. They were so rich they could afford grand burials beneath enormous barrows, their tombs laden with gold weapons and jewellery. To protect their wealth they had standing armies of axe wielding warriors and officers bearing halberds and huge daggers. And they created the incredible Nebra Sky Disc, oldest depiction of astronomical phenomena in the world. This is the story of the Únětice Culture.

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*Sources*

Papac et al, Dynamic changes in genomic and social structures in third millennium BCE central Europe (2021)
Haral Meller, Princes, Armies, Sanctuaries the Emergence of Complex Authority in the Central German Únětice Culture (2019)
Penske et al, Kinship practices at the early bronze age site of Leubingen in Central Germany (2024)
Nicklisch et al, Bioarchaeological investigations of the princely grave at Helmsdorf attesting to the violent death of an Early Bronze Age leader (2022)
André Spatzier, The enclosure complex Pömmelte–Schönebeck (2019)
Pavol Jelínek, Interpretation possibilities of the so-called collective graves in the milieu of the Únětice culture

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*Video Chapters*

00:00 The Únětice Culture
02:32 MyHeritage
04:20 Origins of the Únětice Culture
07:45 Houses and settlements
09:00 Únětice burial traditions
10:05 DNA and Family Structure
10:58 Pömmelte “Germany’s Stonehenge”
13:04 The Princely Graves
16:52 Bronze Hoards
22:22 Trade and the Amber Road
24:52 Early Bronze Age Europe
26:39 the Nebra Sky Disc
28:09 The Únětice legacy

[DanDavisHistory]

Thanks for watching! Please smash your bronze axe into the like button. Cheers!

[fuferito]

It's a great Sunday morning when Stefan Milo and Dan Davis History synchronize their video drop at the exact same time to the minute.

[eftalanquest]

that moment when a history youtuber starts talking about a village you lived close to for decades

[kleinweichkleinweich]

it's a nice day in 1605 BC and the first thing you hear is that BROPEC will cut down production to keep bronze prices up

[Pirrata]

Thank you! I live in Germany and visited the places you mentioned. Also Landesmuseum Halle/ Saale, which i can highly recommend. Very interesting and suitable for the whole Family.

[pekarr]

Thank you from Únětice, Czech republic 🇨🇿

[CarpathianCZ]

Greetings from Únětice, Dan :-) great work as always. Keep it coming.

[anon]

Bronze Age Europe is so fascinating. I really like the stylistic expression of the period. Really wish I could go back and see what it was like, without dying or being enslaved..

[McVet]

God bless everyone! Thanks Dan for your hard work! It's really nice to be able to learn about historical eras that are often left out by mainstream history creators.

[stefanfranke]

Great presentation of my favourite prehistoric epoch. I was born and raised in the area where this culture thrived (east saxony near the czech border) and I recognised almost all landscape shots. If you're in the area, don't miss out on visiting the Museum of Prehistory in Halle a. d. Saale where the Nebra Skydisk and many of the mentioned hoard finds are displayed. What the author missed to mention was that a major pillar of wealth for the regional powers came from trading with salt. In Halle were natural salt springs where the brine was processed on a early industrial level. It's even in the name of the city Halle where 'Hal' is a indo-germanic word stem meaning salt and also the river Saale is associated with salt with the 'Sal' stem. You find this word roots in other place names like Hallein or Hallstadt all over central Europe where salt was also sourced since the bronze age.

[mattstakeontheancients]

Videos like this are why I enjoy Dan’s channel. Not many people cover ancient Europe since they don’t have the well known empires like the Bronze Age Middle East but have such fascinating and advanced cultures. Happy Dan is showing these cultures love.

[TyrSkyFatherOfTheGods]

You always narrate an incredible journey! Thank you, Dan!

[morganbonczek]

Another great video! I actually got a tattoo of the Nebra Sky Disc on my back a couple of years ago to represent my love all all things history and archaeology!

[liezldldb]

You made my Sunday! Like always, brilliant, thank you.

[alasdairmenzies]

Loved seeing the Nebra sky disc on the art - I live next to the river where the gold supposedly came from, but its amazing that the disk was found on mainland Europe, which is hundreds of miles away!

[ruththinkingoutside.]

Today is AWESOME! Dan AND Stefan? It’s like a mini intellectual Xmas 😂
Woo!

[SlightlySusan]

As soon as I heard your description of the men's houses, I immediately thought of Beowulf.

[appelflapdrol]

Thank you for your efforts, really enjoy the vids.

Much love from Amsterdam ✌️

[Krommer]

Just giving you a heads up, I have bell notifications on, and was not made aware of this video by YouTube.

[dancefeast]

You ask for comments on the Nebra disk. This comment is about the social nature of ritual of the period, practices that actually had Neolithic origins, but carried over to the Bronze Age due to the nature of the transition, with Neolithic holy sites remaining holy for some centuries in many cases. Ritual sites seem to have been places where people gathered from vast distances, for events taking place at the solstices, and the winter solstice in particular, in spite of the difficulty of winter travel. Travel was by water when possible. A gathering was not always the assemblage of some existing entity such as the land of a high king; rather it was the gathering of many clans or regions (perhaps each clan had a region: Scottish clans did, Scythian clans did not). They participated in the gathering by region, with each region (or clan) having a designated segment of the site. There may have been a high king in some cases, but the clans (or regions) remained important. A holy gathering place was not primarily a residential site, although a few people lived there year round. It was not the high king's great hall. It was not primarily a cemetery. Participants built boothies for the winter gathering. The main ritual activity was a procession. An important person, priest or king or priest-king, arrived (often by water) and went up a processional avenue to a circular site, and then went around it. So outside the outermost ring of posts was the processional circle, and outside that, a barrier between the ritual space and the ordinary space beyond. The ordinary space was divided like the segments of an orange, with each segment belonging to one clan or region. Work to build or improve the site was organized by clan, with each clan being responsible for a section; the splendor of the work was the clan's honor.

The processional way came to the circle from the direction of a solstice sunrise or sunset, and the king or priest arrived just as the setting or rising solstice sun shone on his face. On the cart he rode, was a disk, bright on one side and dull on the other, and at the climax the disk was turned around, or they used two disks, for day and night. The Nebra disk is the night disk.

The point of all this calendar sky-watching was to determine, or set, on which day of the lunar month did the winter solstice occur. This number was carried back home by the participants, and was necessary for the practical functions of a calendar, that is to make appointments and have people show up on the right day. Without a calendar you can't have scheduled markets or religious festivals, and you don't even know whether the coming year will have 12 lunar months, or 13. Determining the date of the solstice is difficult, and if two places both try, they will often set different dates. A single central site must set the date of the solstice, but only a single number, the day of the lunar month that it fell on, needs to be carried back home by each party, for the whole region to enjoy the benefit of everyone using the same calendar.