Bog People
First off, let me thank Andrew for making my blog “more readable.”
Second, thanks to Molly for bringing the topic of this post to my attention. I don’t know how I could have been so oblivious to its existence, especially since there was an exhibit at the LACMA or one of the LA museums all about bog people. This isn’t for the faint of heart but let me point out that its not much different from mummification (from the looks of it), and everybody likes mummies, right? Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson likes mummies. And Brendan Fraser! He even played an arguably mummy-like character in Encino Man!
- Surely you know what a bog is, but let me throw out a short definition for those who don’t: “a wetland type that accumulates acidic peat.”
- Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way: Such bogs (sphagnum bogs) are found in Northern Europe and the United Kingdom.
- Bog people are people that have been preserved in such bogs and (from the looks of things) were often members of the upper class. Easy enough.
- Bog bodies retain not only the skin but also the internal organs due to the acidity, cold temperature and lack of oxygen found in the water.
- The skeleton, however, dissolves due to the reaction of the acidity with the calcium phosphate that makes up bone.
- The oldest bog body dates back to 5500 years ago, placing the time (and region) in which a majority of these people lived as contemporary with Iron Age Celts.
- Hair, stubble, tattoos, and fingerprints have all been observed (and preserved) on these people.
- In some cases, scientists are even able to determine the person’s last meal!
- Here’s where it gets interesting: Most of the bog people appear to have been “brutally killed, stabbed, bludgeoned, hanged and strangled, more than once by all means.”
- Questions arise as to whether these people were punished for crimes they had committed or offered up as human sacrifices.
- The certainty of murder in some cases is glaringly obvious, as the victims had been decapitated and staked down to the bog floor.
- That being said, there is a good chance that some of these injuries may have been caused by the sheer weight of the bog on the body.
- The man pictured above was found with the rope used to strangle him still looped around his neck!
I’d like to go more into this point, so it deserves its own paragraph: facial reconstruction. Sometimes scientists studying the bog bodies use this technique to reconstruct faces and get an idea of what the person may have looked like. The shape of the skull is what makes this possible. What I’m getting at is I’d like to see what someone would reconstruct my face to look like based on my skull. I wonder what kind of hair they’d give me in the picture. What if I looked better there than I do in real life? Something to think about.