Hidden History: Lost Civilizations, Secret Knowledge, and Ancient Mysteries by Brian Haughton (beginner reading books for adults txt) 📕

Over the past 300 years or so, incredibly well-preserved human bodies have been discovered in the desolate peat bogs of Britain, Ireland, the Netherlands, Germany, and Denmark. The majority of these bog mummies or bog bodies date to between the first century B.c. and the fourth century A.D., though the oldest dates from the Mesolithic period (about 10,000 years ago). There are also some medieval and modern examples. The astonishing

preservative powers of the bogs have prevented the decay of these ancient remains so effectively that, although the skeleton does not usually survive, we have the skin, internal organs, stomach (sometimes including the remains of the last meal), eyes, brains, and hair.

A bog consists of about 90 percent water. This water usually contains large amounts of acidic peat (decaying plant matter). Such an environment does not permit the growth of bacteria, so organic materials immersed in this bog water, such as bodies, will not be destroyed. Certain acids contained in this bog water, together with the cold temperature and the lack of oxygen, also act to preserve and tan the skin, which explains the dark brown color of most of the bodies. But how and why did these people meet their death in remote bogs thousands of years ago? One thing we do know is that a large amount of the bodies recovered show signs of extreme violence, including signs of torture and murder.

Perhaps the most famous of these bog mummies is Tollund Man, found in May 1950, near the village of Tollund in Denmark, by two brothers cutting peat. When the men first glimpsed the face staring up at them, they thought it was a recent murder victim and immediately contacted the local police. But subsequent radiocarbon dating of Tollund Man's hair showed that he had died around 350 B.c. During the operation to remove the body from his resting place, one of the helpers collapsed and died of a heart attack. Perhaps, as the late Danish archaeologist P.V. Glob suggested, this was a case of the bog claiming a life for a life. Tollund Man's body had been arranged in a fetal position at the time of death, and was naked apart from a pointed skin cap and a hide belt. His hair had been cropped extremely short and there was stubble clearly visible on his chin and upper lip. A rope consisting of two leather thongs twisted together was pulled tightly around his neck, and it is believed that he was probably hanged or garroted using this rope. Tests on the

contents of his stomach reveal that Tollund Man's last meal had been a kind of vegetable and seed soup. An interesting fact about the soup is that its ingredients were a mixture of various kinds of wild and cultivated seeds, which included such an unusual quantity of knotweed that it must have been gathered especially for the purpose. One possibility is that the knotweed was an important ingredient in a ritual last meal that was somehow part of a sacred execution rite. This possibility is also suggested by the careful arrangement of the body and the fact that his eyes and mouth had been closed.

Around 500 bog bodies have been found in Denmark, although there have been no new finds there since the 1950s. Huldremose Woman, found in a bog near Ramten, Jutland, in 1879, was discovered with two skin capes, a woollen skirt, a scarf, and a hair band. Examination of the body revealed the gruesome details that her arms and legs had been repeatedly hacked, one arm being cut completely off, before she was deposited in the peat. The woman met this brutal death sometime between 160 B.c. and A.D. 340.

In 1952, near Windeby in Schleswig-Holstein, northern Germany, two bodies were found in a small bog. The first turned out to be male who had been strangled and then placed in the bog, the body held down by sharpened branches stuck firmly into the peat around him. The second body was that of a young girl of about 14 years of age, dating to the first century A.D. The girl had been blindfolded with a strip of cloth before being drowned in the bog, her body secured by a large stone and branches from a birch tree.

Location of the Yde Girl find.

A more recent find from northern Germany, from Uchte, Lower Saxony, was at first thought to be the body of a teenage murder victim. But when scientists reexamined the body in January of 2005 it was identified as a young girl aged between 16 and 20, who had been deposited in the bog in about 650 B.C. She subsequently became known as the Girl of the Uchter Moor. Even her hair had been preserved, though archaeologists weren't sure whether it was originally blonde or black, as the peat turns all hair reddish.

The earliest recorded find of a bog mummy anywhere in Europe is that of the Kibbelgaarn body in the Netherlands, unearthed in 1791. In the 19th and 20th centuries there were hundreds of discoveries made in Holland. In 1987, the Drents Museum in Assen commenced a project for the systematic research into the bog bodies in their collection, revealing fascinating

and vital information about their age, sex, physique, diet, diseases, cause of death, and clothing.

In England, due to the wide variety of bog environment encountered, bodies in many different states of preservation have been discovered. The most famous of these come from Lindow Moss near Wilmslow in Chesire. The circumstances of the discovery of the first body are very curious indeed. In 1983, police in Macclesfield, Cheshire were investigating a man named Peter Reyn-Bardt for the murder of his wife, Malika, 23 years earlier. During the investigation, men working at a peat extraction site adjacent to Reyn-Bardt's garden discovered a well-preserved skull, subsequently identified as coming from a female aged between 30 and 50. Confronted with this evidence, ReynBardt confessed to the crime and was convicted of murder on