July 31, 2007
UNUSUAL DISCOVERY NEAR BERLIN
Europe's soil is blood-soaked from centuries of fighting but rarely yields mass graves from battles that took place before the two world wars. One such grave has now been found near Berlin with over 100 soldiers who died in the 1636 Battle of Wittstock.
...there are only very few mass graves in Europe between 1300 and 1850 that can be attributed to specific battles...
...only four other mass graves in Europe that were associated with specific battles had been discovered:
* on the Baltic island of Gotland, dating from a 1361 battle between Sweden and Denmark
* in the northern English village of Towton. A grave containing 43 soldiers was discovered underneath Towton Hall in 1996. They are believed to have died in the Battle of Towton in 1461 during the English Wars of the Roses
* a grave in northern Germany linked to the Battle of Hemmingstedt in 1500 when peasants defeated an army of knights
* in Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, where the remains of 2,000 soldiers from Napoleon's Grand Army were found in 2002. They died during Napoleon's disastrous retreat from Moscow. Many of the skeletons were found curled up and undamaged, suggesting they were killed by cold, not cannonballs or bullets.
story | Speigel
thanks Conscientious
~What's thats saying: "We stand on the shoulders of giants"? It
may be more curious to be reminded that we live and travel on landfills of peasants?