In a part of the Nile Valley that was soon going to be flooded by the construction of the Aswan Dam, the archaeologist Fred Wendorf made a groundbreaking discovery.
In 1964 he found a prehistoric burial site which contained 61 skeletons near the border between Egypt and Sudan. This burial site, called Jebel Sahaba, was constructed by members of the Qadan culture about 14,000 years ago.
Because almost all these skeletons showed clear signs of physical trauma, Wendorf and his colleagues thought they had found the oldest battlefield in history. But were these skeletons really the victims of the first battle? And did organized warfare even exist at all at that time? If so, what did it look like?
In this video we address these questions and search for the origins of war.
