When I grew up, I learned about the prehistory of central and northern Europe from a Roman perspective. The Celts and Germans were mere barbarians who invaded civilised Rome and Greece with nothing but destruction in their hearts. From watching TV and movies, it seemed like the German tribes wore furs and lived in the woods.

It wasn't until much later that I discovered the incredible achievements of not only the Iron Age people but their Bronze Age ancestors, expressed in artefacts like stunning goldwork.

For thousands of years, these wealthy societies produced genius artists working in gold, especially from the Bell Beaker era onwards. They produced large and sometimes heavy wearable pieces, and also created the finest details with stamps and etching, and many other complex techniques requiring masterful working and annealing.

It's surprising how much gold survived from this era, considering how much must have been melted down in the centuries since after tomb raiding and accidental discovery.

I've mentioned these massive, Nordic Bronze Age ritual axes before a couple of times.

Usually there are a couple comments saying "Typical academics, saying everything is ritual. Obviously they were weapons!"

In fact, the axes are blunt. Now, blunt axes this size, especially with a curve like that to focus the force could still make excellent weapons for cracking skulls and breaking arms.

But they're not solid bronze! They actually had cores of CLAY, over which molten bronze was cunningly cast. The outer skin of bronze is rather thin.

Level 100 Bronze Casting skill.

Why did they do it that way? To save metal, presumably.

What did the axes mean to them? Wow, that's a great question, yeah 👍

Kristiansen and Larsson consider these bird-boat-wagons from Dupljaja, Serbia dating to perhaps 1300 BC, to be representations of the Indo-European dawn goddess.

Chariots pulled through the sky by birds like swallows or swans were said to carry the sun god to Hyperborea for winter in Ancient Greek (and other IE) mythology.