The Bog Bodies of Europe

schwit1 writes: It's a regular occurrence in Europe for dead bodies to be found in peat bogs. The bogs preserve the bodies, providing scientists a window into the past. However, many of the bodies exhibit one mysterious tendency: violent death. "Since the 18th century, the peat bogs of Northern Europe have yielded hundreds of human corpses dating from as far back as 8,000 B.C. Like Tollund Man, many of these so-called bog bodies are exquisitely preserved-their skin, intestines, internal organs, nails, hair, and even the contents of their stomachs and some of their clothes left in remarkable condition. Despite their great diversity-they comprise men and women, adults and children, kings and commoners-a surprising number seem to have been violently dispatched and deliberately placed in bogs, leading some experts to conclude that the bogs served as mass graves for offed outcasts and religious sacrifices. Tollund Man, for example, had evidently been hanged." It's a fascinating combination of history, archeology, and forensics.

Comments

Funny, I do the same thing with my backup tapes

[sinij]

Funny, I do the same thing with my backup tapes. I store them in the bog.

Re:Funny, I do the same thing with my backup tapes

[KGIII]

I have been joking with girlfriends, for years, that I will someday be forced to kill them and bury them in a swamp. Now, if a police man asks me about it, I can just say it is a cultural thing and that he is racist for asking.

Hanged in 8,000 B.C.

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it's kinda interesting that people were being hanged way back in 8,000 B.C.. The practice seems pretty anachronistic for that time period.

Re:Hanged in 8,000 B.C.

[Camel Pilot]

Tollund Man who was hanged is only about 2000 years old.

Re:Hanged in 8,000 B.C.

[Anonymous Coward]

Anachronistic? All you need is a cord of some sort and a tree branch.

For that matter, the sort of hanging that supposedly guarantees a broken neck and thus a quick exit for the party being so honoured is a very recent innovation; before then, it usually brought about death by strangulation.

Re:Hanged in 8,000 B.C.

[Infiniti2000]

It's still a little anachronistic. It's not as direct as a knife in the chest or an axe across the neck. With little in terms of civilization, hanging seems anachronistic. I'm not the GP, but I agree and would love to read some comments from anthropologists familiar with that time period.

Re:Hanged in 8,000 B.C.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's fast, efficient, and not messy. It also makes for a great public spectacle to serve as a warning to others. It doesn't seem strange to me at all. I'm sure they had mastered cordage well before they had perfected metalworking to the point they had sharp axes, knives, or swords. Before then you were probably looking at stoning, bludgeoning, or burning someone to death.

Re:Hanged in 8,000 B.C.

[Anonymous Coward]

How about wikipedia?:

The Vikings practiced hanging as human sacrifices to Odin. The act was supposed to honor Odin's own sacrifice by hanging himself from the Yggdrasil.[18] The exact extent of the practice is questioned, however, due to the biased nature of the sources.[19] It is likely hanging was reserved as a capital punishment for non-believers, since the ultimate punishment for Vikings was banishment. In Europe, there would be some cases where a person would willingly be sacrificed and placed into a lake or bog as an attempt to please their gods. Many of the remains of these sacrifices, known as bog bodies, have been found, naturally mummified thousands of years after they died.

Re:Hanged in 8,000 B.C.

[AthanasiusKircher]

It's still a little anachronistic. It's not as direct as a knife in the chest or an axe across the neck. With little in terms of civilization, hanging seems anachronistic.

First off, "little in terms of civilization" is a very relative thing. Northern European tribes during this period may not have been Rome, but they had complex metalworking and tools and a very developed culture.

Death in many societies is very ritualized, particularly if deliberate. Even so-called "primitive" societies often have very complex religious rituals in general. Assuming this death was deliberate (as most hangings are), why would anyone assume that it would have to be "as direct as a knife in the chest or an axe across the neck"? If they had metal tools to do those things, they had a society advanced enough to have all sorts of complex ritualistic behavior -- which, to put it another way, is behavior that's not strictly "necessary" or efficient, but serves important cultural purposes.

Re:Hanged in 8,000 B.C.

[r1348]

It's not as anachronistic as the Grauballe Man, who apparently ate corn porridge between 290B.C. and 310 A.D.. In Europe. Corn.

Re:Hanged in 8,000 B.C.

[tomhath]

the word "corn" in that context could mean any cereal grain, probably oats or barley.

Re:Hanged in 8,000 B.C.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not as anachronistic as the Grauballe Man, who apparently ate corn porridge between 290B.C. and 310 A.D.. In Europe. Corn.

Europeans would refer to what Americans improperly call "corn" as maize (hint: it was "Indian corn" at first). Europeans use the term "corn" to mean almost any grain-based foodstuff, like barley, oats, rye, wheat, and suchlike.

Re:Hanged in 8,000 B.C.

[Anonymous Coward]

Scandinavia had trade going with Greece a long time before that.
Links between Mycenaeans and Scandinavia

When talking about this small amount of bodies one can not really make any claims about society as a whole. The people involved could very well have had access to whatever technology was available in southern Europe.

Re: Hanged in 8,000 B.C.

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually many Europeans would call it corn as well which is why the early American settlers called it corn because the pilgrams came from Europe...duh. the name corn really means small nugget or something like that such as peppercorns. But thanks for trying to act again like Europeans are so superior to Americans which of course is very far from being true. All people are stupid in their own way.

Re: Hanged in 8,000 B.C.

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you from Tumblr? You seem to be offended, and decided the statement you responded to contained many things it didn't actually contain. He said "they would call it maize, and call lots of grains corn". Only an offended SJW from Tumblr would decide that he insulted anybody by stating two simple facts.

Re:Hanged in 8,000 B.C.

[therealbev]

2K years ago = Jesus. I'm pretty sure they could tie knots by then.

Re:Hanged in 8,000 B.C.

[jc42]

An explanation I've seen from linguistic sources is that "corn" or "korn" is the general term in the Germanic languages for "the most common grain hereabouts".

The term causes well-known problems for historians, because you can't know what grain it refers to without knowing what the people at that time and place were eating. People are always misinterpreting the term to mean whatever grain is most common in their own diet, and not asking about what the writer of a text might have thought it meant.

I was expecting homicides

[SeaFox]

I don't mean old ones, I mean I was expecting that this would be a story about the bogs becoming a popular dumping place for murderers.

Re:I was expecting homicides

[Roger W Moore]

I thought they used concrete for that now? I guess we will find out for sure a few thousand years when archaeologists are exploring the ancient ruins of what is now Chicago.

Re:I was expecting homicides

[Anonymous Coward]

Uhm no. You really don't want a victim of your crime being well preserved.

Re:I was expecting homicides

[Anonymous Coward]

Depends.. You don't want it to be found before you are dead. If it's safer to hide than to disintegrate then hiding is a better option.

Re:I was expecting homicides

[Alwin Henseler]

Who cares, as long as the body won't ever be found again. Or until (long) after the murderer has died as well... Buried deep in a swamp is as good as any other method for that.

Not to mention people back then didn't have cars for transportation, chemicals to dissolve a body, etc, etc. And perhaps didn't even care much, like many murderers even today. So a swamp, nearby? Convenient dumping ground, regardless for what reason victims were killed.

Re:I was expecting homicides

[TWX]

Also may not really require any appreciable work. Digging a hole is a lot of work; I've helped when we had the rather unpleasant task of burying several large dogs that died in a house fire, digging a large hole down the better part of six feet with hand tools takes quite some time even with a few people taking turns, and afterward it's obvious that a hole was dug and filled-in.

It kind of makes you wonder how many modern instances of this occur, either in bogs or in other wetlands that might lend themselves to the clandestine disposal of bodies.

Remember to KISS

[peragrin]

Keep it simple stupid.

Violent deaths found in peat bogs. Guess what the easiest way to murder someone is to lure them to a swamp, bog, other dArk remote area and kill them there. It makes great dumping grounds.

It is a universal truth. Like prostituion, thievery, and taxes.

Re:Remember to KISS

[Anonymous Coward]

Violent deaths found in peat bogs. Guess what the easiest way to murder someone is to lure them to a swamp, bog, other dArk remote area and kill them there.

Not the easiest and not the most common.
The summary mentions hundreds of humans over ten thousand years. That is an insignificant amount of the people that have been murdered over this time.

What is special is that the bodies in the bogs have been preserved, the ones dumped in a ditch haven't.

Re:Remember to KISS

[Jason Levine]

Or kill them where ever you happen to kill them and then transport their body to the nearest bog to dispose of the evidence.

Re:Remember to KISS

[peragrin]

It is called decomposition. That is what is special. Kill someone in a swamp or peat bog and the boy will mummify instead of rotting.

I thought it was pretty basic. I guess decomposition is beyond your ability to understand.

Re:Remember to KISS

[Carewolf]

Keep it simple stupid.

Violent deaths found in peat bogs. Guess what the easiest way to murder someone is to lure them to a swamp, bog, other dArk remote area and kill them there. It makes great dumping grounds.

It is a universal truth. Like prostituion, thievery, and taxes.

But to then feed them shrooms, hang them, and then carefully place them in a ritual position, before throwing them in?

Re:Remember to KISS

[serviscope_minor]

Keep it simple stupid.

RTSS

Read the summary, stupid.

Guess what the easiest way to murder someone is to lure them to a swamp, bog, other dArk remote area and kill them there.

by hanging them. Right.

Re:Remember to KISS

[rogoshen1]

It's like you've never had to pull someone out of a bog.. with a rope.. tied around their neck.. Trust me, it's a super, super common procedure in Northern Europe.

Looks like...

[Anonymous Coward]

... They got bogged down. (Sunglasses ON)

Hunter-Gather Homicides

[Anonymous Coward]

The murder rate in hunter-gatherer societies is known to be rather high. (They don't have police, after all.) In his book The World Until Yesterday, Jared Diamond states that the per-capita murder rate for the !Kung people is three times the rate in the United States, and 30 times the rate of countries such as Canada, the UK, and Germany.

Re:Hunter-Gather Homicides

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah yes, the simple life, unspoiled by Government.

Re:Hunter-Gather Homicides

[peragrin]

When the fastest easiest way to get complex resources is to kill someone and take their stuff then yea murder will happen. Humans are lazy. We like the easy way. Even if it is mined.

Re:Hunter-Gather Homicides

[Krishnoid]

The murder rate in hunter-gatherer societies is known to be rather high. (They don't have police, after all.)

I'm sure having evolved to be so tasty is also another contributing factor.

Re:Hunter-Gather Homicides

[Anonymous Coward]

That insinuates the US murder rate is ten times the rate of Canada, UK, and Germany. A claim that is patently absurd and easy to refute.

Re:Hunter-Gather Homicides

[Anonymous Coward]

That insinuates the US murder rate is ten times the rate of Canada, UK, and Germany. A claim that is patently absurd and easy to refute.

According to Wikipedia, the murder rate in the US (per year per 100000 inhabitants) is 4.7. This is about five times higher than the murder rate in the UK (1.0) or Germany (0.8). See

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate

So, you are right. Ten times is too high--it's more like five times.

Re: Hunter-Gather Homicides

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL, it is.

Re:Hunter-Gather Homicides

[TWX]

It also doesn't account for missing persons, some of whom might have been killed and are simply never found. The entire San population, which includes the !Kung and numerous other tribal groups is only 90,000. If the !Kung are say, 20,000 strong and are heavily studied then perhaps there are basically few missing persons by our society's standards, so our missing-and-murdered numbers and our known-murdered numbers are more level with their murdered numbers.

Re:Hunter-Gather Homicides

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah yes, the simple life, unspoiled by Government.

Libertarians. People who think guns will protect them and then get backshot.

uh oh.

[Anonymous Coward]

they're onto me and my time-traveling serial killing scheme.

Like concrete in the 20th century

[Anonymous Coward]

They WILL find Jimmy Hoffa, a few hundred years from now.

It was just a violent time

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

The stone age tribes that survived without contact into 20th century were are very violent. The Kalahari bushmen, the Fore people of the Papua New Guinea, and the ones from Brazil were all very very violent. The New Guinea highlanders had routine chronic war. The casuality rate is not as high as the battles of civil war or WW I and II. But warfare week after week after week takes its toll, and an obscenely large fraction of the population died due to wars.

So it was just a very violent time. The article asks the question but does not even begin to answer it.

Re:It was just a violent time

[Tailhook]

Now now. You know better than that.

Violence is unique to modern times, caused primarily by guns, white racists and cops. If it weren't for corporations, Christian fundies and global warming the world would be at peace, just as it was before the advent of all these inhumane capitalist ideas.

Re:It was just a violent time

[Anonymous Coward]

This theory (mentioned in Pinker's The Blank Slate, among other places) has been challenged pretty substantially.

The problem with looking at groups in the Kalahari and the Amazon is that you can't just assume that they represent how people lived 10,000 years ago. They live NOW, and they are subject to very different conditions than people were back then.

In particular, they are severely pressured by the expansion of modern humans into their territory. Even those that are "uncontacted" (usually not really the case even for those with that label) are pressured by the waves of other groups pushed out of their own territory.

So, life MIGHT have been very violent back then, but you can't just collect data from modern-day "primitive tribes" and extrapolate because your assumptions might not be valid.

Re:It was just a violent time

[Anonymous Coward]

There is North Sentinel Island, whose tribe actively and violently repels any incursions onto their shores, so much that the Indian government has banned anyone from trying to land there.

Violence also ebbs and flows as well. When populations rise, more people want the same resources, so will fight each other for them, until something like a plague or a drought causes so much damage to the tribes that they wind up focusing on trying to continue existing. The only reason Europe isn't still under the feudal system is because the Black Plague caused the nobility to have too few backs to break to keep themselves in power. That, plus the fact that farms and gardens could do something other than barely keep serfs alive.

History seems to prove that post-apocalyptic society sucks... but post-post apocalyptic society is usually where renaissance-like movements and human welfare wind up at their zenith. Just because the people in charge just can't massacre the proles to show they mean business, as there are none to kill off. A microcosm of that was Europe post WWII. 1946 was a tipping point, and it took a generation or two, but Europe at the present time is enjoying the world's best prosperity due to a relatively low population. Once population goes up, the standard of living will drop, and they will join the world with the Iron Law of Wages holding firm. The US is having that happen right now.

Re:It was just a violent time

[PolygamousRanchKid]

But warfare week after week after week takes its toll, and an obscenely large fraction of the population died due to wars.

This could be good for a primitive society . . . less mouths to feed.

Re:It was just a violent time

[Camel Pilot]

We can look at archaeological artifacts (ie Otzi, Kenniwick Man,Cave 7 in Utah, Herxheim village, etc) and also we can look at early contact histories. For example read Samuel Hearne's diary and prepared to be horrified at the violent nature of just post-prehistoric human cultures.

Re:It was just a violent time

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

In the modern era, almost all the productive lands have been taken up by the farmers, and the next quality lands were are taken by the grazers. All productive sea shores and rivers were also taken by sedentary fishing tribes. So yes it is incorrect to draw lessons from most of the stone age hunter gathers.

But the New Guinea high lands were isolated, and it is quite a productive land. They were stone age people, but had domesticated pigs and chicken, had agriculture and were quite large in population. They had fragmented into some 6000 tribes, each with its own language and perpetual warface with the neighbors. So it would be correct to draw lessons from Papua New Guinean highlanders. And they were unquestionably violent.

Re:It was just a violent time

[AthanasiusKircher]

So it was just a very violent time. The article asks the question but does not even begin to answer it.

Precisely. Despite modern fears about violent crime, etc., just about every historical attempt to estimate violent crime and violent deaths over the centuries has concluded that modern violence happens at a rate FAR LESS than the past.

The summary mentions:

a surprising number seem to have been violently dispatched and deliberately placed in bogs, leading some experts to conclude that the bogs served as mass graves for offed outcasts and religious sacrifices.

Yeah... maybe... maybe not. It could just be that the number isn't as "surprising" as it seems. Most people tend to know about the past through narratives written by the upper classes usually about the upper classes, i.e., people who generally tried to present themselves and their people as "civilized." But the majority of people were in the lower classes in the past (mostly unrecorded) and led lives that would be considered horrific to modern people, including high rates of violence.

Re:It was just a violent time

[AthanasiusKircher]

So, life MIGHT have been very violent back then, but you can't just collect data from modern-day "primitive tribes" and extrapolate because your assumptions might not be valid.

Absolutely true. But then we have these people called "historians" who have this knack for looking at actual written records of the past.

And -- well, at least for just about all of written history, it's pretty clear that things were a heck of a lot more violent in most societies than they are today. Many people love these myths and nostalgia for some "golden age" of the past where men were knights in shining armor paying homage and respect to sweet maidens.

The reality for most peasants (and even many noblemen) was nothing like that -- violent crime from murder to rape was many times anything seen in modern societies.

Re:It was just a violent time

[AthanasiusKircher]

But warfare week after week after week takes its toll, and an obscenely large fraction of the population died due to wars.

This could be good for a primitive society . . . less mouths to feed.

"Less mouths to feed" = fewer men to protect you in war.

And fewer men to protect you in war = neighboring tribe comes in, slaughters all the men, and kidnaps and rapes the women, adding "more mouths to feed" to their own tribe, which allows them to win more battles.

There's a good reason why almost all human civilizations developed complex rituals and laws governing sexual relationships, child-rearing, etc. -- the survival of a society traditionally depended on their ability to reproduce and raise more "mouths to feed" to fight wars when necessary.

Re:It was just a violent time

[argStyopa]

HUMANS are violent creatures.

What's so strange is the constant "conventional wisdom" assumption that violence, crime, and brutality are somehow "modern evils", when in fact we're living in the most sustained peaceful and violence-free times ever, both on the macro (globally & interstate) and micro (interpersonal) level. Of course, this doesn't change how bad it is PERSONALLY to people confronted/victimized by violence, but the % of population globally at risk of violent death is a fraction of what it used to be historically, and likely that was already a fraction of what it was pre-historically.

And while I know this is going to catch flames: This is even more true if one is female; as much as it seems that everything is a source of complaint today, it's by FAR the best time ever in history to be a woman.

Re:It was just a violent time

[Anonymous Coward]

The Danish bod bodies accumulated at much more rapid rate at the time when the climate changed to moister and colder direction. Harvest would have suffered and the people might have hoped a salvation from their fertility and agriculture related gods. War and cannibalism are always present as well, even in our times (the great 19th century hunger), when the food is running extremely low.

Re:It was just a violent time

[swb]

Just look at the ancient world. Greece and Rome especially were extremely violent, deadly violence was a form of mass entertainment in Rome and Rome was almost constantly fighting and expanding its territory if not engaging in civil war. The battles themselves were often vicious, resulting in mass killing of armies or civilians. 350,000 people died in the sack of Carthage. The Romans lost an entire army of 12 legions, 80,000 men and likely more from support labor in one battle in one day during the Cimbrian war. Even outside of warfare, Rome was a violent city with only a nominal notion of civil protection.

My sense is that as modern and sophisticated as a society as Rome was was still very violent, it only seems reasonable that earlier civilizations that were smaller and less structured and sophisticated were as or even more violent.

Re:It was just a violent time

[dryeo]

There has been the odd matriarchal society where being a women was pretty good, at least relatively. Even recently heard of a chimpanzee tribe, living in the savanna instead of jungle, that was matriarchal and the females had it much better then the average chimpanzee female.
As for violence in general. I'd guess that it ebbed and flowed depending on population vs resources with low violence after a population crash and high violence when the population out grew resources. Of course resources also varied with eg a drought leading to way more violence.

Re:It was just a violent time

[Anonymous Coward]

This theory (mentioned in Pinker's The Blank Slate, among other places) has been challenged pretty substantially.

The problem with looking at groups in the Kalahari and the Amazon is that you can't just assume that they represent how people lived 10,000 years ago. They live NOW, and they are subject to very different conditions than people were back then.

In particular, they are severely pressured by the expansion of modern humans into their territory. Even those that are "uncontacted" (usually not really the case even for those with that label) are pressured by the waves of other groups pushed out of their own territory.

So, life MIGHT have been very violent back then, but you can't just collect data from modern-day "primitive tribes" and extrapolate because your assumptions might not be valid.

Correct - because even amongst "modern" practitioners of "ancient" lifestyles cannibalism is no longer practised. Go back a relatively short period of time in human history and it was very common - but like wiping out mega-fauna, denied by most "researchers".

Oh and murder, like theft, is just the human animal conforming to the second law of thermodynamics. That law still applies but advanced technology changes the equation (we need a larger society more).

Re:It was just a violent time

[Anonymous Coward]

There has been the odd matriarchal society where being a women was pretty good, at least relatively.

What is now called Scotland, prior to St Fergus (hence Fergus-son to signify that the father is where the name comes from) and his army converting the natives (baptism - where if you change religion they don't push you back under). Many older civilizations were matriarchal - things were still rough if you were a woman (it took the pill to change that).

Matriarchy makes sense when you're a farmer - you know who your mother is, your father not so much. Inheritance is critical because it means dividing property.

Modern matriarchal societies include parts of Ethiopia - the men fight and guard the cattle - and get beaten by "their" woman if they fuck up. (and they all seem pretty happy).

Re:It was just a violent time

[argStyopa]

"they all seem pretty happy"
The sort of patronizing crap that allows westerners to sleep at night.

Tell you what: we'll take 100 of those "pretty happy" people, and ask them if they want to stay there or move to the United States, vilified as the worst cesspool of racism, sexism, violence, etc and see if they stay in their "pretty happy" situation or move to the US.

I bet you 99 choose to move. Because I think you're confusing happiness with acceptance.

One man's WTF is another mans love interest..

[geekmux]

"Hey, did you hear they used to burn people at the stake due to fears of witchcraft because religious beliefs?"

"Yeah, WTF is up with that?!?"

(Meanwhile, on another continent...)

"Hey, did you hear they used to brutally murder people and throw them in a bog as sacrifice because religious beliefs?"

"Yeah, that's really interesting."

What's mysterious?

[Chris Mattern]

It's obviously a good place to hide a body, since they aren't being found for centuries, or even milennia.

Viking wankers

[PopeRatzo]

So much for the notion that Northern Europe was the birthplace of the Master Race. When these douchebags were crushing skulls and dumping people in peat bogs, down Mediterranean way, they were already engaged in seed and animal stocking (lentils, almonds) and obsidian trade with Melos.

In the Fertile Crescent, they had already devised incised "counting tokens" (the precursor to the modern day quantum computer).

Re:Viking wankers

[Intrepid imaginaut]

Why did you feel you had to go there? Are you trying to say the people of the Fertile Crescent are the real master race? One could just as easily point to the disarray in the Middle East at the moment and draw the opposite conclusion. Neither perspective has value.

Re:Viking wankers

[Carewolf]

So much for the notion that Northern Europe was the birthplace of the Master Race. When these douchebags were crushing skulls and dumping people in peat bogs, down Mediterranean way, they were already engaged in seed and animal stocking (lentils, almonds) and obsidian trade with Melos.

In the Fertile Crescent, they had already devised incised "counting tokens" (the precursor to the modern day quantum computer).

True, but who other than Nazi wankers would ever claim that? Nordic civilization is specifically interresting because it is so young and we actually have outside historians documenting before the Scandinavians started writing anything down themselves.

Re:Viking wankers

[twotacocombo]

The Viking Age didn't begin until roughly 800AD. These "wankers" were not vikings in any sense of the word.

Re:Viking wankers

[Anonymous Coward]

already devised incised "counting tokens" (the precursor to the modern day quantum computer).

Man I love that, and will shamelessly borrow (steal) it. *shakes head* precursor to the modern day quantum computer *lol for real*

Re:Viking wankers

[Anonymous Coward]

Pulsar, the inventor of the calculator watch (the precursor to the modern day quantum computer)....
Babbage, the inventor of the first computer design (the precursor to the modern day quantum computer)....,
Atari....QC

So many uses, yet so little time left before the end of the work day.

Re:Viking wankers

[PopeRatzo]

Why did you feel you had to go there?

Look up. See that little thing flying way above you? That's a joke.

Re:Viking wankers

[PopeRatzo]

True, but who other than Nazi wankers would ever claim that?

The "White Culture" warriors are a surprisingly big movement in Northern Europe. You'll find educated, young, otherwise sophisticated Nords who believe that there is some worldwide conspiracy to deny the fact that the Northern Europeans were the first humans. There's a very popular podcast dedicated specifically to this, called "Red Ice".

I was in Finland and Sweden last year and was shocked at how much currency these beliefs have gained in Scandinavia. If you scratch the surface (and I did) you will also find generous helpings of racism and anti-Semitism among these folks, so maybe you're right, it's mostly Nazi wankers.

Re:Viking wankers

[Anonymous Coward]

Jokes are supposed to be funny.

Re:Viking wankers

[PolygamousRanchKid]

The problem these days is, that Islamic and Greek folks say such wacky things these days . . . and are serious about it . . . that it is hard to recognize it as a joke.

But build on your joke . . . Vikings were not wankers. They raped and pillaged so much, that they had no time for a wank, or a five-fingered shandy, or to polish the bishop's hat, or to relax in a gentlemanly manner, etc. . .

Re:Viking wankers

[Intrepid imaginaut]

You're a moron ready to kick off a race war on the basis of bog mummies. People like you are the joke.

Re:Viking wankers

[PopeRatzo]

You're a moron ready to kick off a race war on the basis of bog mummies.

You really think I could kick off a race war? Now who's the joke?

Re:Viking wankers

[Intrepid imaginaut]

“Verily, I have often laughed at the weaklings who thought themselves good because they had no claws”
~ Nietzsche

Re:Viking wankers

[Anonymous Coward]

Jokes are supposed to be funny.

Yeah - and "people" are supposed to have a sense of humour. Even when they do it tends to match their intelligence - that'd be two reason you don't find it funny. The other, more likely, reason is you're sick of being the butt of everyone's joke - but still, you don't get "it".

Murdered People Thrown in Bogs... Whodathunk?

[Anonymous Coward]

Certainly psychologically humans haven't changed much over the last several of thousands of years. If somebody wants to dispose of a body discreetly nowadays, they dump it in a swamp, so is it that strange that our ancestors would dump bodies in bogs?

Here's an idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe we could place the muslim immigrants in the bogs, so in a few hundred years scientist can see what human garbage of the time looked like.

Re:Here's an idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Your opinion will not be popular here but thank you anyway. In this morass of leftism it is always nice to find a brother in Christ.

Re: Here's an idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes because Jesus was well known for referring to certain groups of dispossed people as human garbage

If Jimmy Hoffa surfaces...

[kimgkimg]

If Jimmy Hoffa surfaces... then you'll have your answer. Bogs were a convenient body dump.

Hudson

[WoodburyMan]

In 2,000 years historians and archaeologists will be scratching their head wondering why there were so many "Ritual Sacrifices" of cement shoe'd people at what is now the bottom of the Hudson..

Not the greatest tourist attraction?

[morethanapapercert]

Actually I'd find a bog museum or learning centre, with bodies on display, maybe a glass wall where you can watch researchers working on the remains would be fascinating. Sure, it's not the usual Eiffel tower, Big Ben, Windsor Castle etc tourist spots you think of when planning a trip to the EU. However; not having to deal with the usual swarms of tourists would also be part of the allure for me.

Re:Not the greatest tourist attraction?

[GNious]

While I don't think you'll be allowed to watch researchers working on the various remains anywhere, you can visit Tollundmanded at Silkeborg Museum:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re:Not the greatest tourist attraction?

[Anonymous Coward]

When my Parents moved back to Ireland, they bought an old renovated cottage on a rather large chunk of land.
One day, they were digging in the "Lower Forty"; Dad wanted to plant Taters in the boggy soil.
They uncovered a large heavy roll of tarred canvas, partially rotting away at the ends.
Inside were half a dozen muskets, half a dozen swords, and various bits to enable a touch of Treason, all in remarkably good shape.
They delivered the bundle to the local Gardai; it turns out that this isn't uncommon. The Irish have been stashing Arms in Bogs for centuries, just in case.
The swords and muskets immediately began to rust. The solution before restoration? Put them all in a barrel of Kerosene.
Dad was allowed to keep one sword, (Dulled by the Gardai; we wouldn't be wanting to have any accidents, would we?), which he hung over the Mantlepiece.
All the rest went to the National Museum in the Colllin's Barracks. Or at least to its basement.
Hint: All the really good stuff is always kept in the Basements, just in case.

Ritualized warfare in New Guinea

[Anonymous Coward]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BzqwOBneC4

Take a look at this and you will get the picture

Much Inaccuracy

[Toad-san]

Be sure to read this NatGeo article which corrects some of the misconceptions and mistakes history passed on to the first linked article:

http://ngm.nationalgeographic....

Re:Much Inaccuracy

[Reziac]

Question: were these spots bogs when those people died?

Re:Much Inaccuracy

[RockDoctor]

Answer : it varied considerably. There was a considerable expansion of boggy ground (more specifically peat bogs ; there are others) from ... hmm, I've packed that book away, going from memory ... the middle of the second millennium BCE (i.e. 1500 BCE and thereabouts). In the West of Scotland, at low altitudes. The same is true (with some variance of dates) in Western Ireland, but whether the same climatic/ agricultural effects spread into other parts of NW Europe in the same period is a disputed question.

It certainly appears that some of the victims were drowned, but whether that was in standing water, and peat accumulation didn't start until a millennium or two later. The taphonomy of bodies in bogs is simply not well known. It is rather difficult to carry out experiments that take several centuries, and trying to speed things up by heating up the test pieces may introduce changes in the chemical reactions involved.

Someone (else) around here uses a signature like "it's not as simple as that."

( IANA-archaeologist ; but I am a geologist, and I have done volunteer work on archaeology sites, and have done a moderate amount of reading up on this and related subjects. )

Re:Much Inaccuracy

[Reziac]

Thanks. It's an interesting question. I suppose the best we can do is case-by-case on each bog body, and educated guesswork at that.

I do suspect the religious interpretations are overblown, tho (Digging the Weans made a good point!) and in most cases it was just throwing a body in the nearest hole as the easiest way to get rid of it -- no mess, bother, effort, or stink.

BTW your sig made me look at birds a whole different way. :)

Re:Much Inaccuracy

[RockDoctor]

I do suspect the religious interpretations are overblown, tho (Digging the Weans made a good point!) and in most cases it was just throwing a body in the nearest hole as the easiest way to get rid of it -- no mess, bother, effort, or stink.

Archaeologists are careful to shy away from "religion". It's "ritual" if there's no good reason to do it *that* way instead of /this/ way. For example, a flint mine has good mechanical reason to be a shaft with radiating passages at the level of the flint horizon, but no good reason to have a niche in the wall at the eastern side of the base of the shaft ; so the mine is a mine, but the niche is "ritual".

If you're killing someone - to steal their goods and clothes (remember - hand woven fabric is ALWAYS expensive) - then sticking a knife in them or knocking them on the head is adequate. But many of the "bog bodies" have been stabbed in several places, AND clubbed, AND had their throats slit AND their hands tied behind their backs. It's a process that is called "overkill". The application of multiple wounds, any one of them rapidly lethal, isn't necessary, and that excessive wounding is why many of these people were thought to have been ritually murdered. That is an old argument ; the more recent discovery of traces of hallucinogens, particular herbs (not very tasty ones) in stomach contents adds to the level of "overkill".

throwing a body in the nearest hole as the easiest way to get rid of it

Most people spend most of their time in settlements. If this is the "nearest hole", then there should be evidence of settlement "near" to the bodies (on a statistical level). Since the bodies are frequently being found in hectares of peat being stripped for horticulture, or feeding into power stations (in Ireland), then searching for nearby settlement is relatively easy and they are not found. So we can add the location (a long way from the settlement) to the list of events that are part of the "ritual".

They're a fascinating subject. And they do a wonderful job of showing just how hard archaeology is.

Re:Much Inaccuracy

[Reziac]

And given that "evidence", my first thought isn't ritual; it's highwaymen. A long ways from civilization, overkill, target someone who is, um, relaxing with herbs and less likely to fight back. Where's the key to the lockbox? tie him up and club/cut him til he tells you... Which has humanity seen more of, out a long ways between here and there -- ritual murders, or highwaymen? so which seems more likely??

Yeah, goes to show how it ain't easy... but I think there's too much assumption made that "ritual" (religion, whatever) is a good explanation for what may have been perfectly mundane in its day, but that moderns simply wouldn't think of. Niche in the mineshaft wall? where else are you going to set your oil lamp while you turn the donkey, or put a light so your crew can see the junction from afar?

Re:Much Inaccuracy

[RockDoctor]

Where's the key to the lockbox? tie him up and club/cut him til he tells you...

Lockboxes - of the portable variety - are several millennia in the future from these bodies. OK - maybe as little as one and a half millennia, for the more recent of them.

Until very recently, few people travelled alone. If they had significant valuta, then they'd also have companions (free or slave) travelling with them. For protection, cooking, fucking and actually carrying the loads.

Not enough money to run your own troop of thugs? Then you band up with other travellers going your way. Did you have the joys of "doing" Chaucer's 'Canturbury Tales' for Eng.Lit? Think for a second about how little comment is made of the fact that these strangers are travelling in company together, mostly for safety.

And now ... in a world where the roads really are that dangerous (and they were pretty dangerous - I cite Chaucer's social commentary-en-passant again), then a man who was foolish enough to get stoned while out on the road deserved to get his throat cut. That's why a common theme in ancient tales (all through the Odyssey, for example) is the importance of hospitality to travellers, but simultaneously the importance of the guest obligations of good behaviour to the host.

Which has humanity seen more of, out a long ways between here and there -- ritual murders, or highwaymen? so which seems more likely??

Probably ritual murder. We're talking about a pre-coinage and minimal metal age, so if someone is carrying valuables, then they're probably going to be carrying as much as they physically can. Which means they're carrying as much as you can. Which rather changes the equation of theft.

How are you going to turn the goods into value? There isn't money. Perhaps you can take them to someone and swap the bundle of goods for a cart load of grain ... which you've then got to somehow get home to your family. OK, maybe the robbed goods are metal - bronze or copper, say. So you rob the guy, take the goods, and then ... the only person who is going to be interested in these goods is likely to be your local chieftain or lord. And when you try to sell them to him, since the only possible way you could have gotten them was by theft, then he's as likely to take them from you, then have you ritually murdered as an example to other possible thieves.

I'm not painting the times as being a paragon of lovely interpersonal relations. Life was nasty, brutish and short. But there were still very strong sanctions against theft, if only because very, very few people ever moved more than a few miles from where they were born. That's why strontium-oxygen isotope analysis is helpful for identifying the relatively rare people who did move more than a few miles.

Outlawry - being outside the law - may sound terribly romantic. But not many people took that path, and those who did tended to end up being caught, then killed under slow torture in the market square pour encourager les autres. I was looking at some Assyrian carvings recently showing how they dealt with people who broke the rules, including the rules against theft. They peeled the malefactors. Slowly. And completely. Becoming a thief was something you thought about carefully.

You use the term "highwayman". They came in with the availability of guns (you'll only find out that you're trying to rob a better swordsman than you once, in the minutes before your painful death), cash money (effectively untraceable), and enough social mobility that you could turn up in a new town and NOT be automatically detained as a runaway serf. It might have been different in your country, but it was only in the last 6 or 7 hundred years that it was legal for most people to leave their village, and real freedom of movement is much newer than that. (My wife was over 35 before she was able to buy a long-distance bus or train ticket without showing her internal passport.)

Anyway, my install of LOv5 has finished, so I'd better get on with some work. [Bloody corporate software is still stopping it from working.]

Re:Much Inaccuracy

[Reziac]

Yeah, I was being haphazard, but point being -- I think archeology has generally been too quick to assign non-mundane explanations to whatever is not immediately recognised as something we moderns also do. It's like we look back thinking the ancients were all godstruck and therefore must have mystified everything and worked up from there. But generally it's the other way around -- first something is practical, then a reason gets worked out to make it the norm, and it gets adopted as ritual rather than ritual being the source.

Re:Much Inaccuracy

[RockDoctor]

I think archeology has generally been too quick to assign non-mundane explanations to whatever is not immediately recognised as something we moderns also do.

You might get that impression from the representations of archaeology on the like of Discovery Channel. It makes a more dramatic story. The reality is quite different.

For an example, a site I was working on exposed over a period of a summer of work a sequence of soil deposits consisting, from surface down, of rare flakes of stones associated with activities in a nearby (5m away) cave ; below that a layer of white quartzite cobbles of size 5-15cm (the cave and surrounds were in limestone ; the nearest quartzite outcrops were 2-3 km away to the east and south-east ("pavements" of quartzite pebbles are common surrounding megalithic sites in this area and of this period, for example at the Clava Cairns. Below that was the "natural" - undisturbed sub-soil, but it's surface was scratched with parallel grooves known as "ard marks" (an ard is a primitive human-powered plough, and elsewhere in the area is clearly seen to be a sign of the first arrival of agriculture). Critically, at this site there is no intervening ploughed-soil layer between the ard-marked sub-soil and the layer of cobbles, so the ground seems to have been ploughed but not cultivated before being covered with white stones brought from some distance away. This was on a flat-laying area of ground of about 10m by 8 beside the entrance to the cave, in which a series of drystone and corbelled walls indicate several stages of repeated activity.

Now, feel free to come up with a description of this site that doesn't include "ritual" activity. I spent a week on the site (exposing the ard marks - why do they change orientation in different parts of the excavated area?), and lunch break activities between lounging in the sun (on Skye! a rarity), swatting midges (on Skye, a normality), admiring the wonderful views of Bla Bheinn (mountain range to the west and NW, on Skye normally invisible in the rain), watching eagles soaring over the site (on Skye - are they the recently re-introduced Sea Eagles? I'll get my binoculars from my tent), and spending hours discussing what the possible motivations for the original builders could have been. We couldn't come up with anything that didn't involve "ritual", but feel free to try. Oh, almost on the last day, I noticed (with my geological eye, these archaeologists couldn't spot a gneiss if you hit them on the head with it)that despite the site having been swept down to bedrock by glaciers from the north-west, one and only one of the metre-scale boulders scattered around the site was gneiss, whose nearest outcrop is around 10km to the SE. Feel free to come up with a non-"ritual" reason for carrying around a half-ton of rock 10km (by sea, in a canoe) to 30km (over land) from a source location to besides a cave entrance. If you saw it in the edited version on Discovery, there would be about a half-second pause of consideration, whereas the reality is more like several hundred hours of thinking by multiple people bringing different perspectives to the question.

Archaeology doesn't go much for "haphazard".

Scotch?

[psyclone]

Is this why peaty scotch whiskey tastes so good?

Re:Scotch?

[Farmer Tim]

Laphroaig is people!!!

evidence

[eyenot]

It's probably because unlike open water, bodies don't resurface in bogs. The heavy vegetable matter, debris, muds and so on hold the bodies down so they don't get noticed later on.

well we had to

[Anonymous Coward]

put our criminals and traitors somewhere before we rediscovered America.

Hardly news ; but why NW Europe only?

[RockDoctor]

Not denying the interest of the subject, but the cited article didn't really introduce any new science. Perfectly fine summary of what is a complex and subtle subject, but not a news article.

A question occurs to me : while bog bodies are reasonably well known from Ireland, parts of Scotland and rarely in England ; common again on the North European plain (The Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, Poland, Sweden), and this distribution is in large part a reflection of the distribution of peat accumulation and recent excavation, I am not aware of any reports of similar bog bodies from North America. Neither accidental bodies (travellers getting mired and dying) nor ones with complex, multiple injuries suggestive of "ritual" murder. As far as I know. And does anyone on Slashdot know differently?

I don't know much about the archaeology of Native Americans, but by analogy with other "stone age" societies, I'd be slightly surprised if there were no evidence of ritual human sacrifice, and I'd be more surprised at the absence of even accidental deaths (travellers). Given the presence of recent glaciation and a similarly temperate climate, I'd also be pretty surprised if there were no extraction of peat for both fuel and horticultural use (which is how most bog bodies are found in Europe). So I just find the absence of reports of bog bodies in North America to be surprising.

Any North Americans with a working knowledge of your archaeology that knows more on the subject?