Julius Caesar, the illustrious Roman general, has shed a great deal of blood in Europe. He even reported on this with his own hand in his book De Bello Gallico. The question was always:what to take with a grain of salt and what really happened? Scientists have now been able to pinpoint a described site of a mass slaughter of Germanic tribes.
Caesar describes in his book the brutal murder of two Germanic tribes in our areas. It was just never clear whether it had really happened and if so, where. The answer has now been found and is located in Kessel in Brabant.
Speak bone remnants
Archaeologist Nico Roymans of the VU University Amsterdam has been researching the archaeological finds from Kessel for years. The finds themselves surfaced during dredging activities between 1975 and 1995 and already indicated a Roman presence. And to war.
The traces on the human remains clearly show that they were killed by force. Severed faces, severed or pierced skulls of both men and women. Something terrible had happened here, that much was clear. Until now, these bones had not been dated exactly. Roymans:“We only recently have a representative number of 25 dates on the basis of which we can say that the vast majority indeed date from the Late Iron Age (250-12 BC). Those dates cost quite a bit of money and you have to have that.”
No mercy
In the fourth book of De Bello Gallico Caesar describes how he killed two Germanic tribes, the Tencteri and the Usipetes, completely murdered. The Romans guarded the northern border of the Roman Empire, the Limes, which ran along the Rhine. These two Germanic tribes crossed the Rhine into Roman territory. Emissaries traveled to Caesar's army camp to seek asylum from him. Caesar alone did not trust the Germans, murdered the emissaries and went after the rest of the tribesmen with his full force of eight legions. The people who had fled were cornered and surrounded near what is now Kessel.
Caesar himself writes that it concerned 430,000 persons. He probably exaggerated this extra to increase the importance of his wars. According to Roymans, however, there are a large number of victims, because these were not tribes of 10,000 strong. “Caesar sent his entire army of 40 to 45,000 men against these Germans. He wouldn't do that if the Germanic troops weren't about the same size. Add to that the women, children and the elderly (we multiply that by four) and you arrive at 160,000 to almost 200,000 people. This is purely speculative, but makes sense when you look at Caesar's previous strategies. If there had been only 10,000 Germanic soldiers, he would have sent only part of his legions.” Once on the scene, Caesar ordered his soldiers not to leave anyone alive, except women and children. The bone remains found, which have been horribly mutilated, show that this actually happened.
Teeth check
But how do we know that these are these Germanic tribes? Lisette Kootker, bio-archaeologist at the Vrije Universiteit, has conducted research into the tooth enamel of three individuals. Using a fairly new method, strontium isotopy called, she was able to determine that all three persons were not from the region. This agrees with Caesar's description that the two Germanic tribes came from an area east of the Rhine.
Kootker:“Strontium, a chemical element, occurs in the geological subsoil. The older the geology, the more strontium there is in the soil. By mapping the isotopic composition of a region or a country, valuable background data is generated. You can then compare the strontium isotope ratio of the studied individuals with the ratios that occur locally or regionally. If these are deviant, you can say that the examined individuals were not born at the location where they were found.”
Determining the origin is a more difficult question, to which the researcher does not yet have an answer. “That is only possible by combining different lines of evidence, such as written sources, archaeological data, osteological data and isotope data. We are currently working on that, so unfortunately I can't say anything about that yet.”
In addition to the many bone remains, special metal finds from the early first century BC have also been found. Both Roman and Germanic iron swords, spear points and Germanic girdle hooks indicate a battle of Romans against Germans. This, together with the new dating, proves (almost indisputably) that Caesar actually committed a mass murder in the Netherlands.