Preserved bodies tell the tale of ancient 'bog people'

Friday, April 28 2006, 05:30 PM EDT

Contributed by: Kate McLaughlin

ANCIENT TRIBE

She was a 16-year-old girl who died a violent death. Her body was left in a bog.

She is called Yde Girl, named after the region in what is now the Netherlands where her body was found.

After workers discovered her remains in 1897, a local newspaper article made mention of the find under the heading "miscellaneous," which said the corpse "could have been lying there for at least a dozen years."

In fact, Yde Girl had been lying in that bog for almost 2,000 years. She's one of six bog bodies displayed alongside hundreds of stunningly well-preserved prehistoric artifacts in "The Mysterious Bog People," a new exhibit running through Sept. 10 at The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County.

"This exhibit is not telling the history of one tribe of people," said Jaap Brakke, of the Netherlands' Drents Museum, who is chief curator of the international traveling exhibit. "What we are showing is the story of the inhabitants of northwestern Europe dating back as far as 12,500 B.C. all the way up to medieval times."

PRIMITIVE WHEEL

The exhibit creates an eerie environment of dark passageways winding past showcases that are set in sections of recreated peat bogs. Music, of the mysterious, blood-curdling sort, wails from unseen speakers. Giant swaths of sheer, gauzy fabric hang from the ceiling like an early spring mist rising out of the bogs. The trove of bodies and artifacts on display all are excavations from the peat bogs of northwestern Europe, primarily Germany, Denmark, the Netherlands and Great Britain.

The bogs are naturally occurring swamp areas, which, during spring and autumn, get misty due to changes in air temperature. This weather phenomenon, Brakke said, led the ancients to believe the bogs were sacred places. When inhabitants of the area needed a little good luck from the gods, they'd leave things of great value in the holy places as ritual offerings, an early version of the modern-day custom of tossing coins into fountains.

"For many years, the rain was pouring down and the crops failed," Brakke said. "So first the people would start offering the gods food, and then tools and other things of value. When everything failed, the elders would decide to make the ultimate offering. There is no written history of what happened there, but what we do have is a record of human sacrifice."

All the bog bodies show signs of violent, physical trauma, such as stabbing or strangulation. In the case of Yde Girl, it was both.

She lived sometime during the early first century, and after being stabbed and strangled. her body was left in the bog. The rope that choked her still hangs around her tiny neck, below her partly open mouth, revealing a single tooth still stuck in her lower jaw.

The oldest body on display is that of a man believed to have lived around 1,200 B.C. His remains were found along with some of his clothing and a pair of wooden stakes, which had been jammed into the bog in an "X" formation over his body, so he wouldn't float away. On his chest, is a squiggly mass of brown material that looks like a pile of leather cord. It's actually his intestines, so well-preserved that experts were able to determine that his last meal was porridge.

The peat bogs' astounding preservative powers are the result of their high acid content and oxygen-free environment. And though bodies preserved by the bogs are an archaeologist's dream, to the common observer they are more like a nightmare, grisly and haunting.

Some of the skulls are frozen in open-mouthed screams befitting their violent end. All the bodies look like big black bags made of shriveled-up old leather that are morbidly human-shaped, complete with bony hands and tiny feet with perfect little toenails.

The nonhuman artifacts fared much better in the bog and appear practically unused. Crude tools from the earliest times, such as an ax and a harpoon, both made from moose antlers, look clean and untouched. A meticulously carved red flint dagger is in pristine condition, as is one of the oldest carved wooden wheels in Europe. Made in 2,700 B.C., the wheel looks like it might work just fine today.

There is also a collection of bronze brooches and cloak clasps and strands of beautiful amber beads, strung with tin and gold. There are many blankets, clothes, shoes, pots, bowls, coins and braids of real hair. There are also a couple of bronze lurs - long, valveless horns considered to be the "pipe organ of the Bronze Age," made about 1,100 B.C.

"The lurs to me are the top items (in the exhibit), because the quality of the bronze casting is so very fine," Brakke said. "For me, it's way over the top. And they are very rare. There are far more bog bodies than lurs."

Since the early 16th century, peat from bogs was regularly mined for fuel. The bogs are now protected, but archaeologists have been extracting artifacts and bodies from the swampy areas for years. Brakke said hundreds of bog bodies have been found, but there are only about 35 bog bodies now on record in museum collections.

Advances in forensic science technology - similar to the techniques used on the popular TV series "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation" - have reinvigorated the study of bog findings and have proved invaluable in enabling archaeologists and scientists to extract information and reconstruct the prehistoric past more completely than ever before.

Advances in facial reconstruction, for instance, enabled experts to reconstruct Yde Girl's face in the mid-'90s. Spectrographs have helped determine the original color of fibers, all of which turn red or brown in the high-acid bogs. Endoscopes enable researchers to explore inside the bog bodies, and CT scans help in body reconstruction.

DNA analysis is playing a part as well, Brakke said, although the technology isn't far enough along to get a full DNA picture yet because bog bodies are too polluted to extract pure genetic material.

"They will eventually be able to do those tests," Brakke said. "And then we will be able to prove migratory patterns of northwestern Europeans. Another new field of study is determining where certain ore is from. Is it from the East or the West? Those findings will help establish trade routes and patterns."

There is a large room in the exhibit that illustrates the various forensic techniques employed in the study of the bog people. It also includes an interactive backroom laboratory called "B.S.I.: Bog Scene Investigation," where visitors can play the part of forensic scientist.

Several stations are set up with bones, skulls, tools and fibers. Instructions posted on the wall explain how visitor-scientists can analyze the various items and make determinations. For instance, station No. 1 features a faux pelvic bone and visitors are invited to determine the gender of the bone's owner. According to the posted information, if the pelvic bone belonged to a woman, the opening would be "large, heart-shaped and wide." If it were a man's, the opening would be "small, Mickey Mouse-shaped and constricted."

Although technology has breathed new life into the study of the bog people, much is still unknown.

"What we know is something like 4 percent or 5 percent of the whole story," Brakke said. "There is no written history. Nothing. Do we know the language? No. Did they interrelate through Europe? We don't know. We can speculate, but we don't know. All that will stay a mystery."

Â© Copley News Service

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