Source and Reference : “Recent digs show long-distance trade and complex social structures were around for longer than archaeologists thought.”
“Around 2000 B.C., as Scandinavia was poised to enter the Bronze Age, settlements were thought to consist of scattered farms, with little cooperation between them. Instead, a study by archaeologist Magnus Artursson of the University of Gothenburg in Sweden suggests that these societies formed hierarchical chiefdoms some 800 years before such social structures were believed to have emerged. Artursson examined graves and found wide variations in wealth; the presence of imported high-status metals indicated contact between distant settlements. Early Iron Age societies are also turning out to be more advanced than scholars previously realized. “
