How can peat bogs preserve bodies

Shortly after Tollund Man was discovered, the detective in charge of what was initially a missing persons investigation had the good sense to call in Peter Vilhelm Glob, who had recently been appointed professor of archaeology at the university in Aarhus, the nearest big city. Glob, as everyone refers to him, has stamped his name more deeply than anyone else on the riddle of the bog bodies. His book, The Bog People —to the bighearted Glob, they were people, not bodies—was hailed as a modest masterpiece when it appeared in It is sharp, authoritative and moving all at once, and it remains intensely readable.

Glob, who died in , succeeded not only in providing the scaffolding for our understanding of Tollund Man and his kin, but in restoring their humanity as well.

He conjured bog bodies back to life and made the world take notice of them. We can see the goddess paraded around, surrounded by fabulous animals, on the great silver Gundestrup cauldron, buried as a sacrifice in a Danish bog not far from where several Iron Age bodies were also found. And we know roughly the time of year when this occurred from the seasonal contents found in his stomach and that of other victims: barley, linseed and knotweed, among others, but no strawberries, blackberries, apples or hips from summer and autumn.

Well, better you than me! Could he drink milk? Was he prone to diabetes? What about arteriosclerosis? Lindow Man is the most intact of several bodies discovered in the Lindow Moss in Cheshire, England, during the s. Except, says Farley, he may not be quite the same Lindow Man she first encountered all those years ago.

Carbon dating puts his death somewhere between 2 B. He once stood around 5-foot His beard and mustache had been clipped by shears. His brow is furrowed in consternation. He was just 25 or so when he died, and he died a particularly horrible death. First, the physical evidence is inconclusive. Different fracturing patterns distinguish bones that fracture before death, when they are more flexible, from bones that fracture after death. It matters greatly, too, whether Lindow Man lived before or after the Roman conquest of Britain around A.

Among other sweeping cultural changes that came in with the Romans, human sacrifice was outlawed. It turns out, Tacitus never visited the regions he wrote about, but compiled his history from other contemporary accounts. All things considered, Lindow Man has gotten roped into a tidy, satisfyingly creepy meta-narrative of ritual killing.

We need to approach Lindow Man and the other bodies from Lindow Moss as individuals—as people. The scanner uses two rotating X-ray machines, each set to different wavelengths. In September , the museum ran a dual-energy scan on Gebelein Man, an Egyptian mummy from 3, B. The scan probed hitherto unseen wounds in the back, shoulder blade and rib cage. The damage was consistent with the deep thrust of a blade in the back. Gebelein Man, it appeared, had been murdered.

A 5,year-old crime had been revealed. In , peat cutters found Oldcroghan Man and Clonycavan Man in two different bogs. Both had lived between and B. This and other evidence led Kelly to propose the theory that the Celtic bog bodies were kings who had failed in their duties. The role of the king was to ensure milk and cereals for the people.

He fills this sacral role by a kingship-marriage with the goddess, who represents fertility and the land itself. While it seems improbable that a several thousand-year-old body can remain delicately preserved — often with its intestines, skin, nails, hair, stomach contents, and clothes in exquisite condition — it makes sense that the conditions are just right for body conservation.

Bogs harbor brown, soil-like, spongy deposits of peat, acidic water, and thick carpets of sphagnum moss. When a person dies and is deposited in a regular grave, bacteria and maggots feast on the flesh and tissues. This is what causes the body to decompose quickly.

But the conditions in a bog are unforgiving for these body-munchers. Bacteria and maggots generally need oxygen and, in the case of bacteria, a high pH to survive. Deep down in bogs, oxygen is scant and the pH tends to be low acidic. This, along with a naturally antimicrobial molecule found in dying peat moss, called sphagnan, provides the quintessential recipe for bog body preservation. When bacteria decompose dead bodies, they leach enzymes which then react with sphagnan.

This causes the pH within the area to drop, making it more acidic, which then kills the bacteria. The sphagnan also pulls calcium from bones, which leaves them with a bendy, rubbery consistency.

Archaeological excavations have also shown that some of the bog bodies from the end of the Bronze Age and Early Iron Age were placed in old peat-digging holes and that the bodies were held down with sticks or turfs.

The chemistry of the bog bodies Over a hundred bog bodies are preserved up until today because of the particularly good conditions of preservation in the peat bogs. Bog body from Neder Frederiksmose in Viborg county, as it lay in the peat bog. But his elevated status did little to save him. Other bog bodies displaying signs of violence may have been criminals, and their burials served as punishment.

Still others displayed physical deformities that may have marked them for sacrifice, either as figures of veneration or condemnation. In addition to the manner of their death, some bog bodies also contain valuable information about their lives and the societies they came from.

Because the bogs preserve not only skin, but also internal organs and sometimes even clothes, archaeologists have a wealth of material to analyze.

The Tollund Man, for example, had eaten a meal of porridge made with linseed, barley and a few other native plants before his death. He was also suffering from an infection of intestinal whipworms.

The Grauballe Man, by contrast, had likely dined on pork, as well as a barley soup. Clothes, too, give insights into ancient cultures.

Though many bodies are found naked, likely because whatever they were wearing degraded over time, items of clothing do sometimes survive. Tollund Man had a pointed cap of sheepskin and wool fastened by a hide thong. The Huldremose Woman, dated to about A. Archaeologists can sometimes even piece together where an ancient individual traveled during their life. A technique called strontium analysis compares the ratio of different isotopes of the element in a body to the ratio found in the surrounding environment.

Her trip took her to present-day Germany, Austria or France, based on strontium samples taken from her teeth. Additionally, some of her clothes were made from textiles sourced from far away. Collectively, the information bog bodies carry with them tells us that trade networks were active in Iron Age Europe, bringing in goods from far away. The people of the day had contact with other cultures, and sometimes even traveled to faraway lands themselves.