Video: A mushroom picker found a priceless artifact of the Bronze Age: What the Czech Excalibur told scientists about
2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55
Recently, in the Czech Republic, a man, not far from his house, in the forest, was picking mushrooms. Suddenly he noticed an unusual piece of metal sticking out of the ground. Looking more closely, the mushroom picker realized that this was not just a piece of iron, but the hilt of a real sword! As a result, an incredibly rare sword of the Bronze Age, the age of which experts estimate at three thousand three hundred years, became the prey of the mushroom hunter! Archaeologists immediately began excavations at this site. What did you manage to find out about the ancient priceless artifact and what else did you manage to find?
A local resident of the town of Jesenike, North Morovia, which is fifteen kilometers from Prague, Roman Novak, found an ancient sword in the forest. There, a man traditionally picked mushrooms.
Roman said: “The rain has just passed and I went to pick mushrooms. Walking and habitually looking out for prey in the grass, I saw a piece of metal sticking out of the stones. I kicked the piece of iron and discovered that it was a blade, or rather, the hilt of a sword. Then I started digging out this weapon and found another bronze ax."
As soon as Roman Novak found the artifact, he contacted archaeologists. The specialists immediately began preparations for excavations in the forest, as well as for a series of studies on the soil and the most ancient artifact.
According to Jiří Jučelka, who heads the archeology department at the nearby Silesian Museum, the sword and ax are about 3,300 years old. Ancient weapons date back to around 1300 BC.
Both artifacts resemble weapons that were mainly used in what is now northern Germany. The sword is broken near the hilt, but the rest is otherwise intact. Archaeologists believe it was a ceremonial site and was not used in the war. The octagonal hilt of the sword is intricately decorated with a pattern of circles and crescents.
Jiri Juchelka said: “This sword has an octagonal hilt. This is just the second sword of this type that has ever been found in these places. This came as a big surprise to experts because the area where the artifacts were discovered was extremely sparsely populated in 1300 BC. However, soil studies carried out by experts have confirmed that the artifacts are in fact local.
Jiri Juchelka explained that 3300 years ago this part of Europe was inhabited by the Urnfield people. They were named for their custom of placing the cremated bones of the dead in urns and then burying them in a field. At the time, they were at an early stage of development, and the sword found was considered extremely valuable in their culture.
The manufacture of such a sword was significantly different from the manufacture of an iron sword at a later time. The iron had to be forged, which would have required the skill of a blacksmith to give the red-hot metal the desired shape. On the other hand, bronze swords were made by melting bronze and pouring it into a mold.
The discovered sword is not the best example of the application of the latter method. “They obviously tried very hard to do everything in the best possible way, but the quality of the metal leaves much to be desired. X-ray examinations of the sword revealed a large number of small bubbles inside it. This can only testify to one thing - this weapon was never used in battle, but had a purely symbolic, ceremonial meaning,”Irizhi Yuchelka said.
His colleague Milan Rihli, who works at the Ethnographic Museum, said: “It looks like a riddle or a jigsaw puzzle. We only have four small fragments. We have to piece it together piece by piece."
Archaeologists are also planning to explore the site where the Bronze Age sword and ax were found. They are going to see if they can find any other artifacts in the area that could give us a deeper understanding of the people who inhabited this region many years ago.
A man who just hunted for mushrooms discovered invaluable historical rarities that will help experts in discovering important facts. In the meantime, the weapon will be on display in the museum.
Very often, seemingly insignificant events become the beginning of the most interesting research. Read our article on how archaeologists discovered a Stone Age metropolis that proved that cavemen were not primitive.
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