3,200yo Bronze Age Sword Found In Brit Holiday Hotspot

This is the moment a Spanish archaeological team unearths a bronze sword made around 1200 BC on the holiday island of Majorca.

The Late Bronze Age weapon was found at the Talaiot del Serral de ses Abelles archaeological site in the municipality of Puigpunyent in Majorca located in the eastern Spanish region of the Balearic Islands.

The talaiots, sometimes written as talayots, are Bronze Age megaliths on the islands of Menorca and Majorca that form part of the Talaiotic Culture which existed in the Balearics between the 1000 BC and the 600 BC and used talaiots as buildings for public worship, according to experts.

Head archaeologists Jaume Deya and Pablo Galera called the discovery “a huge surprise” and added that it was the first historical sword to be found at the site.

The weapon is believed to have been forged around the 1200 BC and later buried as an offering when the monument stopped being used during the decay of the Talaiotic civilisation after 600 BC. It is presumed that the sword belonged to an aristocratic family of the Talaiotic Culture but Deya said they are still studying the artefact.

Deya told Central European News (CEN): “This is the first sword found at the archaeological site and we will now be able to study its origin and symbolic value.”

Deya explained that 10 similar swords have been found in the Balearic Islands, but they were all discovered by builders and farmers and they were unable to properly research the artefacts as they did not know where and how they had been found.

The archaeologist said that they found the 3,200-year-old sword by accident while preparing to open the site as an archaeological museum.

Deya told CEN: “It was a huge surprise. We did not expect to find anything like this because the area had already been excavated.”

According to local media, two thirds of the Talaiot del Serral de ses Abelles archaeological site was first excavated by historian Guillem Rossello Bordoy in the 1950s.