The Tollense Warriors

Along the Tollense river lies Europe's oldest known battlefield, where more than a thousand men fought and hundreds died on a single Bronze Age day around 1250 BCE, centuries before any battle recorded in European writing. Bronze arrowheads still lodged in bone testify to the violence. The sequenced warriors were mostly drawn from Central Europe, a striking glimpse of organized warfare a millennium before Rome.

The genome-wide data behind this entry was published in Genomic data from the Bronze Age battlefield of the Tollense Valley.

Every Ancestry Map includes the free Notable Matches lens: your coordinates are compared to every sequenced member of every catalog entry, and the distance to the closest member is reported, a Euclidean distance in the same 25-dimensional space the Distance lens uses. Because these are a small group of real individuals, not a population average, distances naturally run larger than population distances. That is expected, not a poor result. And one thing is never claimed: a small distance means similar ancestry composition, not that the Tollense Warriors are your ancestor. See how it looks in the live demo or read about Ancestry Map, the full Global25 report.

• 01

  Who were the Tollense Warriors?

  The Tollense Warriors (c. 1250 BCE, Tollense Valley, Germany) are one of the Historical figures entries in our Notable Matches catalog, represented by 5 sequenced ancient genomes published in the study "Genomic data from the Bronze Age battlefield of the Tollense Valley".

• 02

  What does "matching" the Tollense Warriors mean?

  Your Global25 coordinates are compared to the entry's sequenced members and the distance to the closest one is reported, a Euclidean distance in the same 25-dimensional reference space the Distance lens uses. A notable entry is one person or one small burial group, not a population average, so distances naturally run larger than population distances.

• 03

  Are they my ancestor?

  No, and no DNA test can show that. A small distance means your genome sits near theirs in a shared reference space: similar ancestry composition, not descent. Ancestrify never claims a notable individual is your ancestor or relative.

• 04

  How do I see my own distance to the Tollense Warriors?

  Notable Matches is a free lens on every Ancestry Map, never sold separately. Order Ancestry Map, our Global25 analysis (29.99 EUR), and your report ranks your coordinates against the full catalog, with a portrait, dossier and map for every entry. The public demo shows the lens with example data.

The catalog holds every published entry across three tiers. Browse the full Notable Matches directory. Nearby entries:

• The Griffin Warrior of Pylosc. 1450 BCE

• The Hasanlu Loversc. 800 BCE

• The Golden Warrior of Issykc. 750 BCE

• Aak of the Frisian Terps356-57 BCE

• The Gandharans of the Early Historic Agec. 650 BCE-100 CE

• The Parthians of Gilanc. 100 BCE-50 CE

• The Han Dynasty People of Shandongc. 200 BCE-200 CE

• The Princess of Hasslebenc. 300 CE

• The Georgians of Late Antiquity2nd-6th century CE

• The Christians of Nicaea's Sunken Basilicac. 350-700 CE

• Emperor Wu of Northern Zhou543-578 CE

• Empress Ashina551-582 CE