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

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.

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.

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.

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.