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Science

The Bog Bodies of Europe 99

Posted by Soulskill from the not-the-greatest-tourist-attraction-in-europe dept.
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.
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The Bog Bodies of Europe More

The Bog Bodies of Europe

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  • Funny, I do the same thing with my backup tapes (Score:3)

    by sinij ( 911942 ) on Friday August 07, 2015 @02:27PM (#50271041)
    Funny, I do the same thing with my backup tapes. I store them in the bog.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by KGIII ( 973947 )

      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.

  • 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.

    • 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.

  • 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.

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

      • 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.

    • 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?

    • 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.

      • 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.

  • Hunter-Gather Homicides (Score:2, Informative)

    by 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.

    • 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.

    • 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.

  • It was just a violent time (Score:5, Informative)

    by 140Mandak262Jamuna ( 970587 ) on Friday August 07, 2015 @02:42PM (#50271109) Journal
    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 (Score:4, Funny)

      by Tailhook ( 98486 ) on Friday August 07, 2015 @03:37PM (#50271413)

      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: (Score:1)

      by 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

      • 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 (Score:5, Interesting)

        by 140Mandak262Jamuna ( 970587 ) on Friday August 07, 2015 @04:41PM (#50271717) Journal
        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 (Score:4, Interesting)

        by AthanasiusKircher ( 1333179 ) on Friday August 07, 2015 @05:05PM (#50271891)

        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: (Score:2)

        by swb ( 14022 )

        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 Cim

    • 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.

      • 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 "

    • 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 t

    • 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 u

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dryeo ( 100693 )

        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 wit

  • "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."

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

  • 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).

    • 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.

      • Why did you feel you had to go there?

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

        • 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. . .

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

          • 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?

    • 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.

      • 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 Scandi

    • The Viking Age didn't begin until roughly 800AD. These "wankers" were not vikings in any sense of the word.
  • If Jimmy Hoffa surfaces... then you'll have your answer. Bogs were a convenient body dump.

  • Hudson (Score:3)

    by WoodburyMan ( 1288090 ) on Friday August 07, 2015 @03:50PM (#50271489)
    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..
  • 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.

  • Much Inaccuracy (Score:3)

    by Toad-san ( 64810 ) on Friday August 07, 2015 @04:07PM (#50271583)

    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.... [nationalgeographic.com]

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Reziac ( 43301 ) *

      Question: were these spots bogs when those people died?

      • 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.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Reziac ( 43301 ) *

          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. :)

          • 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

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by Reziac ( 43301 ) *

              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" (reli

              • 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

                • Re: (Score:2)

                  by Reziac ( 43301 ) *

                  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 ritua

                  • 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 [high-pasture-cave.org] 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 activ

  • Is this why peaty scotch whiskey tastes so good?

  • evidence (Score:4, Informative)

    by eyenot ( 102141 ) <eyenot@hotmail.com> on Friday August 07, 2015 @06:16PM (#50272317) Homepage

    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.

  • 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 rece

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