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Slaughter At The Bridge: Uncovering A Colossal Bronze Age Battle (sciencemag.org)
schwit1 quotes a report from the American Association for the Advancement of Science via Sciencemag.org: About 3200 years ago, two armies clashed at a river crossing near the Baltic Sea. The confrontation can't be found in any history books -- the written word didn't become common in these parts for another 2000 years -- but this was no skirmish between local clans. Thousands of warriors came together in a brutal struggle, perhaps fought on a single day, using weapons crafted from wood, flint, and bronze, a metal that was then the height of military technology. "If our hypothesis is correct that all of the finds belong to the same event, we're dealing with a conflict of a scale hitherto completely unknown north of the Alps," says dig co-director Thomas Terberger, an archaeologist at the Lower Saxony State Service for Cultural Heritage in Hannover. "There's nothing to compare it to." It may even be the earliest direct evidence -- with weapons and warriors together -- of a battle this size anywhere in the ancient world.
Not that bad, to be honest. If you can't have a week's worth of food in stock, then you're never going to last the winter anyway. And that's "in stock" for each man alive, for his families, etc.
Extrapolating that to "Lads, these newcomers are raping our women (or whatever), all the other villages are affected too, and we need to get rid of them. It's agreed that we all attack at dawn on the day after full moon?" and each man bringing a bag of food, plus some extra, plus telling all their friends in the next village and so on until it gets down to the guy who says "That's two weeks walking, I'll have to consider it more carefully"? Not that unusual.
People think that ancient peoples were stupid, unskilled or unable to plan. They weren't. The pyramids had been up for thousands of years at this time, remember. Do you assume that Egypt was the only civilisation capable of organisation?
Think of the Bronze Age (hint: Bronze. Weapons) as a time of the hunter, and it all becomes clear. We used to run huge animals to exhaustion over days of chasing. You can't do that on an empty stomach either. These people weren't stupid. They just weren't intellectual.
What you say near the end is what is the most fascinating about ancient history: That we regularily underestimate their capabilities, often vastly. There was so much trade going on between so distant areas in a time where our mental image has isolated villages barely surviving.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org