During excavations at a Bronze Age site in the Cladh Hallan site on the southern island of Uist in 2001, archaeologists made a discovery that looked like two well-preserved skeletons. The bodies showed signs of being preserved in the peat bog for some time before being transported for burial.
Peat is produced by the decomposition of organic matter, which is largely composed of plant materials such as moss. Particularly when sphagnum moss accumulates enough to form a swamp in wetlands, layers of peat create acids that are incredibly good at preserving corpses.
“These plants acidify the soil while simultaneously depriving the region of nutrients by secreting a compound that binds to nitrogen,” Carolyn Marshall said in her Ted talk about the skeletons known as “Lindow Man” or the “Frankenstein skeleton.” Besides, these conditions make it impossible for most microbes to function. Since there’s nothing to break them down, dead algae piles up and prevents oxygen from getting into the marsh. The result is a naturally closed system. Any organic matter that goes into the peat bog just stays there. Lindow Man is one of them. somebody.”
Bones found at the site contain clues that Cladh Hallan’s Bronze Age inhabitants deliberately placed the bodies in peat bogs to preserve them. It was previously unknown that this method took place in Bronze Age Britain.
2 skeletons, 6 people…
DNA tests show that the skeletons found in the swamp came from six different people. Neither of them were siblings. Isotropic dating indicates that the female skeletons date from the same period, while male skeletons are hundreds of years old.
One of the skeletons was put together between 1260 and 1440 BC. Another is dated between 1130 and 1310 BC. While there is an intersection, “Statistically speaking, they appear to have been combined at different times,” says archaeologist Mike Parker-Pearson of the University of Sheffield.
There are several theories as to why bodies were assembled and preserved in this way thousands of years ago.
“Maybe the head of one of the skeletons fell off, so they put the head from another skeleton on it,” Brown explains. Another theory is that they left the corpses of their ancestors as a mark on the land they owned to show ownership of the land. “The fact that different ancestral body parts are combined may indicate that different families merged by marriage and inherited land,” Parker-Pearson says.
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