Even 3,000 years ago, people faced challenges that sound familiar to us today: Hunger, new neighbors or the death of a loved one. A new study led by researchers from Leipzig now shows just how flexible and interconnected the societies of the late Bronze Age really were.
If you want to know how people lived in the past, you have to look into the earth. Bones, ashes and ancient DNA tell stories that no book has handed down. A research team led by the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig has now done just that. They examined skeletons and remains from burial sites in Germany, the Czech Republic and Poland. Excavation sites in central Germany - Kuckenburg and Esperstedt in Saxony-Anhalt - also provided important data. These excavations were carried out by the Saxony-Anhalt State Office for the Preservation of Monuments and Archaeology.
The era in question is called the Urnfield Period. It lasted from around 1300 to 800 BC. It takes its name from a widespread practice at the time. People were cremated, their ashes collected in urns and buried. It was precisely this custom that posed a problem for researchers for a long time. This is because cremation destroys biological material and therefore also the DNA, the genetic blueprint of a person. This period was therefore a blind spot for science for a long time.
Burial was not a uniform matter
The way death was dealt with is also surprising. In one and the same community, there were cremations, normal burials in the ground, but also the sole burial of individual skulls or multi-stage rituals. "These practices do not appear to have been marginal phenomena," explains Orfanou, "but part of a broader repertoire from which people could choose during the Urnfield period."
The scientists also analyzed the genetic data. According to this, there were gradual, regionally varying changes in ancestry, with increasing connections to the Middle Danube region, without local traditions being suppressed. At that time, new ideas spread primarily through contact and exchange rather than by moving entire population groups. Most people lived and died where they were born.
There is no evidence of widespread epidemics. Life was physically hard, but overall most people seem to have been comparatively stable in terms of health. "Change and innovation were integrated into existing traditions," summarizes Wolfgang Haak, project leader at the Max Planck Institute. "These communities actively shaped their ways of life."
Original publication:
Eleftheria Orfanou et al. Reconstruction of the lifeways of Central European Late Bronze Age communities using ancient DNA, isotope and osteoarchaeological analyses
Nature Communications, 24 February 2026.
