New Bog Body discovered
Thanks in abundance to Keats’ Telescope for pointing out this discovery in the German press which I haven’t seen in the UK yet. My Google-assisted and poor translation of one of the stories follows:
Hand of Nienburg girl. Photo by dpa.
The puzzling moorland girl
An alleged murder victim becomes a sensation: A recently discovered moorland corpse is 2,500 years old.
Nienburg/Hannover. A “Teenager” more than 2,500 years old was found near Nienburg in Lower Saxony. The body of the young girl is almost completely preserved. Not for around 40 years as such a spectacular find been recovered in Europe according experts. The body is one of the oldest ever corpses found in north German moors. The researchers expect important new explanations about the way of life of humans approximately 2,500 years ago.
The cause of death is unclear
Still, how the young woman came to death in the moorland is unclear, said the director of the excavations, Alf Metzler, yesterday. Court-medical investigations have shown no use of force. “It is supposed she sank in the moorland and then drowned or suffocated”, said the archaeologist of the National Office for monument protection of Lower Saxony. Why the woman would go at all into the moorland he can only guess, said Metzler. “Humans, who lived near the moorland knew how dangerous it was. Perhaps she was escaping or made a mistake.”
Peat-worker Uchte found a bone when cutting peat. He assumed a crime and notified the police. From the bone find came “a sensational discovery” said archaeologist Henning Haßmann. The alleged murder victim was a prehistoric find. The corpse of the girl is nearly complete. Even hair had been conserved in the moorland.
Corpse is still being examined
It could be the most important discovery in Lower Saxony since the find of a moorland corpse in the Bourtanger moorland in Emsland. There in November 1900 the body of an adult of man had been found while peat cutting. Since the moorland water had coloured his hair red, he was called “red Franz”. He died in the third or fourth century. He belongs beside the “girl of Windeby” from Schleswig Holstein as one of the most well-known finds of its kind.
The moorland corpse found now is to be displayed from Thursday for two weeks in the federal state museum in Hanover. Afterwards it is to be extensively scientifically examined (dpa).
It would appear to be another of these amazing bog bodies that crops up across northern Europe like Tollund Man or Lindow Man. Contacting the police is standard procedure as these things look recently buried even when they’re tens of feet down. In the case of Lindow, a man finally confessed to the murder of his wife after a woman’s head was found on the moorland on the back of his house.
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