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NARRATOR: From the depths of an Irish peat bog
emerges a mangled body from the distant past.
Behind it would be maybe the esophagus...
NARRATOR: It's one of hundreds of other eerily well-preserved cadavers
recovered from bogs across Europe.
Ancient people from a dark and mysterious era,
victims of unimaginable violence.
He was hanged.
MAN: He was decapitated
and cut in half.
NARRATOR: Centuries later,
these mysterious remains raise compelling questions.
WOMAN: You stand face to face with a dead man
from a period so far, far away.
NARRATOR: Who were they?
MAN: This is a man who did not engage
in any manual labor.
NARRATOR: And why were they buried in the bogs?
MAN: Normal people were burned
or cremated and put in an urn,
so this is highly unusual.
The bog body in my view is a king.
NARRATOR: Now an international team of experts
will subject this latest find
to a modern scientific investigation...
MAN: This is a young person's spine.
NARRATOR: ...following the forensic evidence and historical record
back in time to the world of the Celts...
a mystical society ruled by warrior kings,
queens and druid priests,
practitioners of a macabre and brutal ritual.
WOMAN: It's far more than just
sending somebody over to the next world.
He's drowned, he's burnt,
and in other references, he's stabbed.
NARRATOR: Why were they slaughtered?
Were they despised outcasts or revered sacrifices?
This is a 4,000-year-old cold case.
"Ghosts of Murdered Kings"-- right now on NOVA.
NARRATOR: A bog in Ireland's midlands.
Wet, spongy ground composed of peat:
a fossil fuel commonly burned in Irish homes and power stations.
A heavy-equipment operator spots something
sticking out of the bog in front of him.
When he stops to investigate,
he is confronted with a grisly sight.
It's a human body, flattened and distorted.
The brutalized corpse of a *** victim.
Within hours, a team of specialists responds.
They excavate the partial body of a man,
hoping to find clues about his identity
and how he ended up in the bog.
From the color and condition of his leathery skin,
it's clear that this person died centuries if not millennia ago.
And he's not the only one.
In recent years, many other ancient victims
have been found in Irish peat bogs,
joining hundreds of other bodies found in bogs
scattered across Northwestern Europe.
The bodies of these mysterious time travelers
have captivated the public,
and clues preserved in their flesh
hint at a dark era of strange, gruesome practices.
One of the most provocative of these cadavers is on display
in the town of Silkeborg in Denmark:
Tollund Man.
He was unearthed in 1950 by peat cutters
working in a bog outside the town.
Carbon dating revealed that he was around 2,300 years old,
the victim of a violent death.
During excavation,
it became very clear very quickly that he was hanged
because he still had a noose around his neck
very, very tightly,
and you can also see the furrows,
the groove around the neck at a very high position
that indicates he was hanged.
NARRATOR: Tollund Man's body was almost perfectly preserved by the bog,
and his still-vivid features offer archeologists
a rare chance to study pre-Christian Europeans.
Look here.
If you see his face, it's so fantastic.
And you see his wrinkles, you see his stubbled chin,
and so it's almost like a CV, but we can't read it!
NARRATOR: The body of another brutally executed man
was found just 11 miles from Tollund Man.
Pauline Asingh is an archaeologist
and curator of Moesgaard Museum,
home to Denmark's iconic Grauballe Man.
He, too, is over 2,300 years old
and remarkably preserved by the bog.
You stand face to face with a dead man
from a period so far away, and he looks like you.
And his nails are very well preserved.
His fingertips, you can still see the small lines in them.
You can see his beard when he was found.
You can see the pores in his skin.
It's fantastic.
NARRATOR: Grauballe Man's remains
also preserve a record of his mortal injuries.
He had a deep cut from one ear to another.
NARRATOR: Other European bog bodies show similar signs of violence.
Huldremose Woman, also of Denmark,
had cuts on her right arm, legs, and feet,
and may have been strangled.
The midsection of one of the Weerdinge Men
from the Netherlands
had been torn open, and his guts pulled out.
Yde Girl, also from the Netherlands,
was strangled and stabbed to death.
These well-preserved examples
show evidence of extreme violence.
Why were these people killed so brutally?
And will this most recent find in Ireland
also show signs of violence?
The forensic investigation begins when the body arrives
at the National Museum of Ireland in Dublin.
The team of scientists and archaeologists here
is led by Ned Kelly.
NED KELLY: This is a very, very, very important find.
And it's a big responsibility
to make sure we get the maximum information from this body.
We owe it to the man lying on the table.
NARRATOR: Ned has spent a lifetime
studying ancient Irish history and archaeology.
Both he and his team have investigated
previous Irish bog bodies, most notably, Clonycavan Man,
killed by three axe wounds that split his skull.
And Old Croghan Man,
who suffered a stab wound to his chest
and was decapitated.
All of the previous bog bodies
have been named for the towns where they were discovered.
Accordingly, Ned names this find after the nearby town of Cashel.
Now he and the team
must decipher the confusing mass of bone and soft tissue
to solve the mystery of Cashel Man--
to understand who he was and why he died.
The body was in a very unusual position,
and it took a while to work out what was what.
NARRATOR: The head is missing, destroyed by the peat harvester.
The torso is badly damaged as well,
and it's been compressed and misshapen
by centuries in the bog.
That looks like the front face of the vertebrae.
We've definitely got a good bit of tissue.
NARRATOR: It's hard to differentiate the tissues,
but they find what looks like a lung or heart.
There's all the ribs there.
That looks like the heart.
NARRATOR: As with any criminal investigation,
the first order of business is to determine the cause of death.
State pathologist Marie Cassidy will conduct her inquiry
as she would in the case of a modern death.
To begin, she visits the scene of the crime.
She speaks to Jason Phelan, the milling machine operator
who came across the body in Cashel bog.
I turned at the right time
and looked on the left hand side,
and I saw this piece,
and it was probably maybe six inches triangular.
And was it sticking up above the surface then?
It was penetrating maybe this high,
just above the surface in a triangular shape.
And I just went over and caught it like this, gently,
and when I gave it a tug,
two legs came up, gently out of the bog.
NARRATOR: Marie also examines the peat milling machine.
Its sharp, spinning blades were responsible
for slicing into the body's chest.
CASSIDY: What it means is that there is a tearing motion,
and that would account for the damage
that you see on the body
as it was photographed at the scene
because the surface skin had gone
and you're now looking into the guts, if you like,
of the body.
NARRATOR: Her examination will help to assess
which injuries were caused by a 21st century milling machine
and which could have been caused by a violent attack
thousands of years ago.
At this early stage of the investigation,
every clue is important.
CASSIDY: The more information you have,
the better the outcome, the better your opinion,
the better the information that you can give somebody.
So it's the same with the bog bodies.
All of these experts get together
and eventually, a story will come out.
NARRATOR: But thousands of years after death,
how detailed will that story be?
They need the help of modern medical technology.
In the lab, the team subjects Cashel Man's body to a CT scan,
a 3-D X-ray that will allow them to peer into the body
to identify bone and soft tissue
and perhaps shed light on who Cashel Man really was.
DOCTOR: This is a young person's spine.
MAN: How young, do you think?
Probably 20 to 25.
NARRATOR: The images from the CT scan help the team to understand
the orientation of Cashel Man's skeleton.
They can clearly see that his legs are drawn up to his chest
and his hands clasped around them.
He is lying on his right side,
but his head and left arm are missing,
most likely destroyed by the peat harvester.
The CT scan also reveals
two dramatic ruptures to Cashel Man's spine,
where the vertebrae have been moved severely out of alignment.
You can see there where the cord would be.
WOMAN: This is so bad.
I'm just thinking in terms of trauma...
Just about the middle of the chest,
it looks as if almost the spine has been cracked open.
NARRATOR: Could this injury be the cause of death?
A crippling blow to the back?
You can see a nice V-shaped appearance,
so that indicates major trauma.
NARRATOR: The team consults with forensic anthropologist Niels Lynnerup.
He has studied other bog bodies
and has determined that what look like injuries
are sometimes caused long after death
by something he calls bog trauma.
LYNNERUP: There are some substances in the bog
which actually helps in preserving the bog body.
At the same time, there are also other substances,
acidic substances which start degrading some of the tissues--
for instance, the bones become completely bendable.
They get basically like wet cardboard.
NARRATOR: Lynnerup believes that the most likely explanation
is that the powerful acids in the bog
softened the ligaments holding Cashel Man's spine together,
and the slowly increasing pressure of the growing bog
pushed the vertebrae out of alignment.
So what seemed at first to be a mortal injury
most likely took place centuries after Cashel Man died.
But examining the CT scan reveals something else
which could only have happened near the time of death--
a clean break to his right arm that shows no signs of healing.
To Marie Cassidy, it's the first clear evidence
that Cashel Man was the victim of some kind of violent attack.
There's good evidence that this person was injured
at or around the time of death.
We can see the bones very clearly, and this bone here,
the bone that runs down towards your little finger,
that's actually, about midway,
it's just been literally halved in two.
So that indicates major trauma.
So it's amazing.
We can actually start to recreate an incident
that he could have been involved in.
NARRATOR: And they find another clue:
a long, thin cut across his back.
KELLY: That was revealed by excavation.
It was down in the peat,
so I don't see how that particular cut
could possibly have been caused by the milling machine.
CASSIDY: Oh, I agree, it's remote from it.
LYNNERUP: It's definitely not the milling machine, then.
Something else.
NARRATOR: The cut suggests a slash with a very sharp blade.
That evidence helps clarify Cashel Man's broken arm,
which now looks to Marie like a defensive injury.
I mean, the injury to your arm looks like a true injury.
Yeah.
And if that's a true injury,
you have to think of a mechanism,
and the most likely mechanism
I would have thought in those days is
you're in the middle of a fight with somebody,
wielding something.
And therefore, it's quite likely that the death is trauma.
NARRATOR: But why?
Why were Cashel Man and the other bog victims
attacked so violently?
What do we know about the time and place
in which they lived and died?
(men shouting)
2,000 years ago,
Ireland and Northern Europe were home to the Celts,
a culture of fierce pagan warriors.
(child roaring)
Little is known of them-- they kept no records--
but from ancient Rome,
there are written accounts of savage tribes encountered
as the expanding empire's armies came into conflict
with the people of Western Europe.
Around 100 A.D.,
the Roman writer Tacitus described Celtic villages as
"fashioned with no regard to pleasing the eye"
and Celts who "ravage, slaughter and seize
under false pretenses."
To the Romans, there was a word for people like these:
barbarians.
It goes back to a classical term,
sort of a "barbaroi,"
meaning people who, in a sense, speak in languages
which are incomprehensible to the classical world--
"bar, bar, bar."
So that is the origin of it, but basically,
it had come to mean people who are not like us,
people who are different from us in the classical world
because they are not civilized, they don't write things down,
they don't have organized laws,
and they don't have organized structures,
so they're almost not quite human.
NARRATOR: Though Rome conquered much of Europe,
the Romans never managed to invade Ireland.
And today, historians caution that
many of these Roman accounts are little more than propaganda
meant to demonize an unvanquished foe.
You have to look at the Romans
as the imperialists that they were.
And the Roman world view
was of course that the Roman way of doing things was the best way
and indeed the only worthwhile way of doing business.
NARRATOR: But there's another source of information about the Celts
which provides another perspective.
In Ireland, we have a relatively huge volume
of very early literary and annalistic material,
mythological material that we can trawl through
to see if it provides any information
on the context of these bodies.
NARRATOR: These ancient myths and heroic tales
were part of an oral tradition,
passed from one generation to the next
until written down in the Middle Ages by Christian monks.
Their manuscripts paint a vivid picture
of the pre-Christian Irish past.
They describe the Celts as an ancient pagan society
ruled by kings, queens and druid priests.
They tell of struggles
between rival warriors and gods and goddesses
who could be fickle and unpredictable,
prone to meddling in human affairs
and requiring bloody rites to appease them.
These ancient stories lead Ned to believe
that the violent deaths
of two of Ireland's most famous bog bodies--
Old Croghan Man, who was stabbed in the heart,
and Clonycavan Man, whose head was split open--
were actually human sacrifices,
victims that belong to a long, grim roll call
of men, women, and children across northwest Europe.
Some may have been criminals or prisoners.
Most were brutally murdered, all buried in the bog.
Radio-carbon dating
of most of the hundreds of previously discovered bodies
places their dates of death between 500 B.C. and 200 A.D.,
during Europe's Iron Age, a time when ancient craftsmen
had mastered iron smelting to make tools and weapons.
The team fully expects that Cashel man too
will prove to be an Iron Age body from the same period.
So when they receive the radio-carbon dating report,
they are stunned.
This body is older.
Much older.
Cashel Man died 4,000 years ago,
more than 1,500 years before the other Irish bog bodies,
during the pre-Celtic Bronze age.
It's a complete surprise.
KELLY: It's much earlier than we anticipated.
That's very, very exciting.
It's probably the earliest fleshed bog body in Europe.
NARRATOR: Cashel Man lived at a time
before Europeans had learned to smelt iron--
before Tutankhamun ruled in Egypt--
making Cashel Man the oldest fleshed bog body in the world.
To Ned, it is tantalizing evidence
that depositing victims of violence like this in bogs
was a practice that began many centuries earlier
than previously thought.
To try to understand what was behind these strange burials,
the team turns its attention to Cashel Man's grave:
to the bog itself.
The bog is a complex ecosystem with a long history,
and the subject of extensive study
by wetland archeologist Ben Geary.
GEARY: Bogs are incredible places.
They have enormously long history.
They have been part of the landscape for millennia.
NARRATOR: Bogs develop where ground water is highly acidic.
Here, the ground is waterlogged and oxygen poor.
The conditions preserve dead, organic plant matter
which accumulates to form a carbon-rich, spongy material
called peat.
The same conditions that preserve the peat
also preserve the corpses
and even give them their strangely darkened color.
GEARY: When we see bog bodies,
the skin often looks like it's been heavily tanned,
like if somebody spent far too long
in one of those tanning booths,
and that's the result of the humic acid
which we have in bog water.
You can probably see that if we squeeze it,
you see the brown water coming out.
NARRATOR: The bogs act like time capsules.
And by cutting into the peat,
Geary can expose preserved layers going back millennia.
So we have around 2,500 years of peat accumulation here.
This is sphagnum moss.
And you can see that for a deposit that is maybe
perhaps 1,000, 1,500 years old, the preservation is remarkable.
NARRATOR: As dead matter accumulates, the bog slowly expands,
growing around one millimeter a year.
A single meter of peat can act as a time capsule
preserving a thousand-year record of plant life,
ancient artifacts and bodies.
Within bogs, we have this record,
this memory of the past--
of past environments, of past people and of past landscapes--
and we just don't have that
in any other environment on the earth.
NARRATOR: Details of those environments are captured in peat
down to the microscopic level.
Archaeologist Ellen O'Carroll takes core samples
that hold clues about the ancient landscape.
Her sample includes the area where Cashel Man was discovered
but also looks deeper, further back in time.
ELLEN O'CARROLL: Cashel Man was found at the top of the peat bog,
and he dates to 2,000 B.C.
So this is a record of the 700 years
before Cashel Man was deposited in the bog.
NARRATOR: By examining the contents of the core,
she begins to piece together a picture of the ancient landscape
and how it developed over the centuries.
O'CARROLL: At the bottom of this core, we have evidence
for a marginal forest where alder trees are growing.
You can see the wood remains in here,
and you can see the reeds just poking out here.
As you get up further,
you can see your areophrum or your bog cotton,
which is the white kind of cotton
you see growing on the bogs.
So what you can't see with the naked eye
and what I analyze back in the lab is your pollen.
You could fit 30 pollen grains on the top of a pin,
so they are so tiny, you need a microscope to identify them.
NARRATOR: Ellen's analysis of the pollen grains
will reveal what sort of vegetation was flourishing
around the time of Cashel Man's death.
There's a hazel pollen grain.
NARRATOR: The type of species she detects
may indicate the scale of human activity
in the area where Cashel Man was buried.
O'CARROLL: That's looks like an ash pollen grain.
NARRATOR: Ash and birch quickly grow after mature forest has been cleared.
Pollen from these two species dominate the samples,
indicating both ash and birch
were more prevalent than they would be
in an undisturbed wild forest.
ELLEN: The presence of ash indicates
that humans were around the area.
They were cutting down the forest.
Cashel Man died within the vicinity
of a community that was quite vibrant.
NARRATOR: Further analysis of the peat core
reveals more evidence of human activity--
microscopic traces of charcoal,
indicating fires were burnt in the area,
confirmation that Cashel Man
was buried close to a human settlement.
But what would this community have been like?
Billy MagFhlionn studies Bronze Age archaeology
by recreating the technology of that vanished world.
BILLY MagFHLIONN: What I try to do is look at the originals
and imagine how they would have been done
using similar types of technology
to what they had in the past.
NARRATOR: Billy demonstrates the smelting method
that pre-Celtic Bronze Age artisans used
to create everyday objects-- in this case, a small axehead.
What we're going to do is take these bits of bronze
and put them in the crucible and heat up the whole thing.
The idea is the metal will melt and turn to liquid.
NARRATOR: To make a high-quality casting,
the bronze needs to be heated to at least 2,000 degrees.
To achieve this temperature,
much hotter than the temperature of an open flame,
prehistoric bronzesmiths probably used bellows
to force air into an enclosed furnace.
Once the bronze is molten, he pours it into a clay mold...
(sizzling)
...then cools it by quenching in water.
Finally, he breaks it open to expose the solidified metal.
It'll clean up and polish very nicely,
and you'll be able to hammer a sharp edge onto it.
What really comes across is how refined they had their skills.
Sure, their technology is at a more basic level than ours,
but what they could do
with what were essentially more limited conditions
than what we have now was astonishing.
NARRATOR: Bronze Age technology and culture in Europe
provided a foundation
for the Iron Age Celtic civilization that succeeded it.
From Ireland and Britain in the west,
to Poland and the Black Sea in the east,
hundreds of diverse tribes flourished.
MIRANDA: The knowledge we have is of an immensely sophisticated
group of people.
We know of hierarchies of people, so political leaders,
religious leaders and other people-- so, in fact,
a highly stratified society.
But one without writing, so it's largely silent
and very difficult to get at.
MagFHLIONN: There would have been trading centers where you
would have had, you know, something approaching
an urban economy as well, so the idea of international trade,
and commerce and exchange were not foreign concepts.
But the backbone of the economy was agricultural production.
NARRATOR: To these Iron Age farmers, the land was sacred.
Among the hundreds of gods and goddesses mentioned
by Roman authors and depicted in Celtic art work,
female deities play a leading role,
bringing both fertility and abundance,
but also threatening drought and destruction if displeased
with humans.
Might these beliefs hold a clue to the motive
behind the bog body murders?
In the town of Derryville, just 30 miles from Cashel Bog,
a large excavation is providing intriguing new clues
to Iron Age weather patterns.
Scientists have long known that in times of heavy rainfall,
these bogs come to life and grow.
But during times of drought, the mix of plants
and other organisms changes.
In preserving a record of life in the bog,
the peat also preserves a record of environmental change.
One of the clues to understanding what conditions
were like thousands of years ago are these:
microscopic single-celled organisms
known as testate amoebae.
GEARY: Testates live on the bog surface.
And we know from modern studies of testate amoebae
what moisture preferences different species have.
So we can use knowledge of the present as key to the past.
NARRATOR: Some species of testate amoebae prefer wet conditions,
while others flourish when conditions are dry.
Ben Geary exploits this difference to describe
thousands of years of climate history.
GEARY: Now as bogs grow and change over time
depending on how wet or dry they are, of course,
this will be reflected by the composition of the communities
of testate that are living in the peat.
NARRATOR: Under the microscope, Ben identifies different species
of fossilized amoebae that lived thousands of years ago.
So this is another species of testate.
It's called arcella discoides.
This is an indicator of generally rather wet conditions.
This is Hyalosphenia subflava.
This is an indicator of comparatively dry conditions.
NARRATOR: For 20 years, scientists have been collecting peat samples
from a variety of bogs.
Now, by cataloguing the population density
of each testate species in those samples,
Ben creates a detailed record of the ancient Irish climate
as it changed over time.
There's been a huge amount of work done on different bogs,
different sites, in Ireland and indeed in northwest Europe
attempting to track changes in bog surface wetness
really over the last 5,000 years or so,
or maybe even longer.
NARRATOR: The data describes periods of bad weather
and difficult growing conditions that sometimes lasted decades
or longer.
GEARY: We tend to see that there is increasing evidence
for a climatic shift, a shift probably to a wetter
and colder environment around about
the Bronze Age-Iron Age transition.
So very broadly, around the time that we do get
increasing evidence of bog bodies appearing in wetlands.
NARRATOR: The most extreme shift towards a colder climate,
according to Ben's research, appears in the data
around 850 B.C., when rainfall increased
and temperatures sharply dropped.
It was one of the most significant climatic events
since the Ice Age, and it lasted hundreds of years.
But how would ancient people who worshipped
a goddess of fertility have dealt with what could have been
long periods of failing crops and hard times?
At the Derryville site, archaeologists have uncovered
another ancient link to the bogs.
It's a network of finely crafted tracks which once created a path
across the spongy ground.
Henry Chapman has been studying these hand-crafted walkways.
CHAPMAN: Now this one here is beautiful.
It's a wickerwork hurdle
so you can see it extending quite some way along here.
NARRATOR: Some Iron Age trackways in Europe may have been used
as roads for taking cattle safely over bog land.
But not all of them served that function.
None of the trackways uncovered at Derryville
traverse the entire bog.
Instead, each ends right where the marsh was at its wettest.
To some, this suggests that the wet, marshy area
was a destination rather than an obstacle.
But for what purpose?
One clue could be the wealth of valuable objects found
buried in bog lands and dating from all periods.
The scale and locations of these hoards lead historians
to believe that they are offerings placed in the bog
to appease ancient deities.
Archeologists call them votive offerings.
KELLY: A votive offering is simply a gift that is presented
by people to a god or a goddess
in return for some expected favor.
It's an offering that's been made on behalf of the community.
NARRATOR: One such offering excavated from an Irish bog
was a large container of butter,
a valuable commodity 2,000 years ago.
Ned Kelly believes it was an offering
to the goddess of fertility.
We're clearly dealing with material
that has been deposited for a reason,
and that reason, I believe,
was the protection of the cattle herds and to ensure
the continued supply of milk by the herds
and proper food resources.
NARRATOR: Thousands of other ancient artifacts have been excavated
from Irish bogs-- feasting cups,
cauldrons,
engraved millstones for grinding grain.
And these are also thought to be offerings
to the goddess of fertility.
Sacrifices like these hint at the sacred nature
of the bog lands of Iron Age Europe.
This evidence suggests the trackways at Derryville
were mainly built for ritual.
CHAPMAN: If it doesn't make sense in any sort of practical world,
then it's likely to be something which is a different
sort of practical, about belief systems.
It's allowing them to ask for things, to ask for help,
or to ask for thanks.
Those sorts of events which happen either at times
of conflict or at times when they require a good harvest.
It's those sorts of events which are what these things
are probably about.
NARRATOR: Trackways have allowed Celtic tribes to access the bogs
to commune with their deities.
But why deposit a body in the bog?
Archaeology in Ireland and in northwest Europe has shown
that typically, these people did not bury their dead.
Normal people were burned, cremated and put in an urn
or a pot or just a shallow pit, so this is highly unusual.
NARRATOR: Did the tribes of Ireland and Europe intend the bodies
themselves as offerings?
Were men, women and children murdered and then left
in the bog to appease the gods?
Was that Tollund Man's fate?
OLE: Why was he hanged?
Was he a criminal?
The way he was put to rest in the bog, lying in
a sleeping position on the one side.
Somebody must have closed his eyes and his mouth
because you don't look this peaceful if you're just hanged.
So I personally think that he was sacrificed
to a god or goddess.
NARRATOR: Do the Celtic bog bodies point to the widespread practice
of ritual ***?
Ned Kelly believes clues to this theory might be found
on one of Europe's most precious ancient artifacts--
the Gundestrop Cauldron.
KELLY: This is a rather elaborate cauldron made of silver
which was found in a bog at Gundestrop in Denmark.
NARRATOR: It dates to 200 BC: the same period as many
of the bog bodies.
Panels ringing the cauldron depict Iron Age deities.
One image shows a ritual performed in honor
of the goddess of fertility.
KELLY: There is a figure who is holding a victim over a cauldron.
This victim is either being drowned in the cauldron,
or perhaps he's had his throat cut,
it's an image of ritual killing.
And there are other images relating to ritual killing
on this object.
We have one image of a male deity holding aloft
two human victims who in turn are holding aloft two pigs
who are also to be sacrificed.
And on an image before me here, which shows the goddess,
lying at her breast are a human victim and a pig
who have been sacrificed.
So there are a number of references on this object
to human sacrifice.
NARRATOR: For Ned Kelly, the Gundestrop Cauldron offers clear evidence
of human sacrifice.
And this, for him, helps explain the mystery of the bog bodies.
This cauldron shows the context within which those killings
may have taken place in ancient Ireland.
And the context is ritual sacrifice.
NARRATOR: Were the bog victims ritually killed by their own people,
sacrifices to the goddess of fertility?
Were they the target of a macabre practice believed
to be associated with the ritual ***,
a practice called overkill?
Ned has led forensic investigations
into two other mutilated bog bodies.
And he believes that in Ireland, overkill was a real phenomenon.
First: Clonycavan Man.
KELLY: The first blow appears to be a blow in the face.
It broke his nose.
And he was then set upon around the head with an axe.
NARRATOR: Also, Old Croghan Man.
Forensic science revealed he too was the victim
of a gruesome ***.
He died as a result of a stab wound to his heart.
He was decapitated and cut in half.
And the other parts of the body disposed of elsewhere.
There was far more done to this body than needed
to be done to kill a man.
NARRATOR: Ned believes the extensive injuries to these bodies
are evidence of overkill
and that this extreme violence served an important purpose
within the ritual.
Very often that sacrifice is done with far more violence
than is necessary actually to kill.
As though the act itself conveys sacredness.
The more violent, the more complex the killing
in a way the more valuable the gift is.
It's far more than just sending somebody over to the next world.
It is highly ritualized.
It's spectacle, it's theater, it's a collective act
involving collective responsibility.
NARRATOR: The theory of overkill was developed following
the Danish bog body discoveries in the 1950s.
Today, it is hotly debated by experts as they continue
to study the bodies.
But even if there is a similarity in the way
the Danish and Irish victims died,
there is an important distinction between them
in how they lived.
This is some of his last meal, Grauballe Man's last meal.
And it has been eaten more than 2,000 years ago.
They found out that there were seeds of 66 different herbs.
It's not the best, it's animal food
or poor man's food.
And it's interesting because many of the other
Danish bog bodies has the same last meal inside
when they found them.
NARRATOR: Grauballe Man had the diet of a peasant.
But what about Cashel Man, who died at least
1,500 years earlier?
The team is eager to know what Cashel Man's final meal was.
Was it also a poor man's mix of seeds and grains?
To find out, they first need to find his stomach.
Professor Cassidy begins with a fingertip search
of his internal organs
but finds the stomach has entirely decomposed.
Other Irish bog bodies have offered richer clues
about social status.
Forensic archaeologist Andrew Wilson analyzed
hair samples taken from Clonycavan Man.
WILSON: Hair is quite a unique resource.
It locks both physical information
and bio-chemical information.
NARRATOR: Chemical traces for the food Clonycavan Man ate in the months
before his death made its way into his hair as it grew.
So we can tell something about the chemical information
that perhaps tells us about that person's diet.
NARRATOR: Tests of Clonycavan Man's hair, along with an analysis
of the contents of Old Croghan Man's stomach
indicate that both victims enjoyed a diet rich in protein,
an indicator that they were men were of high social status.
And there are other tell-tale signs.
The hair on Clonycavan's head offers a surprising piece
of evidence about who this Celtic man was and how he lived.
At the University of York, Dr. Joanne Fletcher
has been looking at Clonycavan's hairstyle.
FLETCHER: The more we were looking at the hair,
the more we realized there was no actual knot-work in there,
there was no plaiting, no actual intricate styling
of the hair itself, and yet the hair appeared to have been
set up on top of the head in a rather tall arrangement.
NARRATOR: To hold his hair in place, Clonycavan Man was using
some kind of Iron Age hair gel.
FLETCHER: When we did the analysis on the material from Clonycavan's hair,
we found out it was essentially a vegetable plant oil
mixed with a resin.
NARRATOR: Analysis showed that the resin came from a pine tree,
but from a species not native to Ireland.
It's resin from a tree that only grew
in Southern France and Spain.
Apparently, Clonycavan was wealthy enough to be able
to afford imported beauty products from abroad.
And there's further evidence of how Clonycavan styled his hair:
fragments of a hair tie.
FLETCHER: It's clear that this so-called hair tie,
the thing that had been used to keep the style in place,
had actually been attached, wrapped around the hair
to secure it on top or towards the back of the head
in some fashion.
NARRATOR: Fletcher offers a theory as to why Clonycavan wore
his hair on the top of his head.
FLETCHER: We know he was only 5'2", so the fact that he'd been
going to such lengths to increase his height
is sort of a twist on the old platform boots for short men.
You know, why bother with that when you can sort of pile
the hair up, fix it in place,
and this adds to the height?
NARRATOR: Fletcher's theory that Clonycavan enjoyed
"elevated status" does have historical precedence.
Roman author Tacitus wrote about the Celts
and described a particular hairstyle: the Swabian knot.
The style can be seen
on a German bog body known as Osterby Man.
According to Tacitus, elaborate hairstyles gave Celtic warriors
a larger stature on the battlefield
and also indicated social status.
From his hairstyle, imported hair products, and rich diet,
Clonycavan appears to be
a member of the Celtic upper class.
But why, of all people,
would high-born men have been chosen for sacrifice?
Searching through some of the country's
oldest literary records, Ned has found a clue.
The Annals of the Four Masters was compiled
by Christian monks in the 1630s.
But Kelly believes it reflects much earlier Irish traditions.
One account describes
the excessive violence used to *** a king
who is said to have ruled Ireland 1,500 years ago.
KELLY: We have a reference here
to the death of the High King of Ireland,
Murchadeach Mac Erca.
NARRATOR: According to the annals,
the king "was drowned in a vat of wine, after being burned
on the summit of the hill."
KELLY: The king is killed
in a number of ways: he's drowned, he's burnt,
and in other references he is stabbed as well.
This is referred to as the triple killing of kings.
NARRATOR: The triple killing of kings is a common theme
in the Irish Annals.
Some scholars doubt the relevance
of these medieval tales to the Iron or Bronze Ages.
But Ned believes that stories of royal inaugurations
may also hold the key to understanding the motive
for putting a king to death.
One account of a medieval ceremony describes
how the new king
was symbolically wedded to the land over which he was to rule--
in this case, the Province of Connacht.
"Fedlimid mac Aeda meic Eogain
had married the Province of Connacht"--
married the Province of Connacht--
"in the manner remembered by the old men
"and recorded in the old books;
"and this was the most splendid kingship-marriage
ever celebrated in Connacht down to that day."
NARRATOR: This symbolic marriage of the king to the land itself
made the king directly responsible for the success
of the harvest and came with potentially fatal consequences.
KELLY: If it fails, he will be held accountable
for failing to keep the goddess in a benevolent frame of mind,
and he will be replaced through his ritual killing.
NARRATOR: Ned believes that telltale signs on Old Croghan Man's body
suggest he too was high status.
KELLY: His hands have been perfectly preserved.
He has no calluses whatever on his hands.
This is a man who did not engage in any manual labor.
He had an armlet.
I believe that that armlet signifies
that he was a person of rank.
NARRATOR: Ned believes that Cashel Man, with his defensive arm wound
and slash along the back, is another sacrificial victim.
KELLY: My conclusions are that the body of Cashel Man
is that of an early Bronze Age king
who has been ritually killed because he has been deemed
to have been a failure in his kingship.
NARRATOR: Ned has a final clue that he believes could indicate
where Cashel Man was slaughtered
and why he was buried in Cashel bog.
It's a medieval map.
Like the Annals,
it may reflect traditions from centuries earlier--
in this case, the boundaries of Ireland's ancient kingdoms
and the inauguration hills on which tribal kings were crowned.
The map shows that Cashel Man and Old Croghan Man,
although separated by centuries, were both buried in bogs
at the foot of inauguration hills.
Ned believes this is a sign both men were deposed kings,
each buried in the shadow of the hilltop
on which they had once been crowned.
To find out more, he's exploring the hill
overlooking where Cashel Man was unearthed.
The map shows that the hill and the bog mark the boundary
of an ancient tribal kingdom, part of modern-day County Laois.
We're just here, Crook Locha.
The bog is over here, on this boundary.
You can see there's a boundary running around here.
NARRATOR: The hill's wide, flat summit overlooking the kingdom
made it a place of assembly
for ancient tribes performing kingship ceremonies.
Ned believes they came here both to crown their kings
and to remove them in murderous rituals, including Cashel Man.
He, in my view, is a king who was probably inaugurated
here on this hilltop.
And when his kingship failed, he was ritually killed,
and he's buried down there
in the boundary surrounding this inauguration hill.
It just cannot be coincidental.
NARRATOR: Since the discovery of Tollund Man and Grauballe Man
in the 1950s, experts have searched for clues
to explain the bog body phenomenon.
But despite the best efforts
of archaeologists, forensic scientists, and historians,
the motives behind these violent acts will never be known
for certain.
The only record left behind
are the hundreds of mysterious bodies unearthed
in Europe's wetlands where they had lain for so long,
marking eternity, buried in the bog.