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This documentary features the discovery and forensic analysis of Cashel Man, the oldest fleshed bog body found in Europe. Radiocarbon dating places his death around 2000 BC, at the dawn of the Bronze Age.....
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00:004,000 years ago, the dawn of European civilisation, and the birth of a macabre and brutal ritual.
00:17Today, hundreds of prehistoric bodies unearthed from the boglands of Northern Europe.
00:23Their deaths intrigue historians. Were they all murdered? And why?
00:33Now a brand new find could hold the key. It's another ancient body, found preserved in an Irish peat bog.
00:43The skeleton is distorted, the muscle and skin badly torn.
00:49An international team of experts face a challenge as they seek to solve an ancient mystery.
00:56The horrific killing of hundreds of our ancestors in one of prehistory's darkest eras.
01:04Who were these victims? And why did they die?
01:11This is a 4,000 year old cold case. The body in the bog.
01:19A bog in Ireland's midlands, where heavy machinery is used to industrially harvest peat.
01:26A fossil fuel used in Irish homes and power stations.
01:31In August 2011, a heavy equipment operator spotted something sticking from the bog in front of him.
01:39When he stopped his machinery, he realised it was the remains of a human body.
01:46Flattened and distorted.
01:55One thing was clear. This was not a modern corpse.
01:59Since the year 2003, peat harvesting in Ireland has uncovered six other bog bodies like this one.
02:06Bringing the total number of Irish finds to over a hundred.
02:09These mysterious corpses have captured the imagination of the Irish public, fascinating young and old alike.
02:17And today, peat workers are trained to recognise them and follow carefully developed protocol.
02:24So immediately, a call went out to archaeologists at the National Museum of Ireland.
02:31Within days, their excavations had revealed the body of a man.
02:36What secrets will his corpse reveal?
02:40The body is brought to a lab at the National Museum in Dublin for forensic investigation.
02:48Leading the team of archaeologists and scientists is Ned Kelly.
02:52He spent a lifetime studying ancient Irish history and archaeology.
02:57And has investigated the other Irish bog bodies.
03:01They are part of an ancient legacy.
03:03The 300 preserved corpses found in bog lands across North West Europe.
03:11To historians, these finds offer the chance to look our prehistoric ancestors in the face.
03:17Forensic science offers experts clues to diet, lifestyle and social status.
03:23And shines precious light on a dark era for which there are few records.
03:30This is a very, very, very important find.
03:34And it's a big responsibility to make sure that, you know, we get the maximum information from this body.
03:42We owe it to the man lying on the table to tell his story for them.
03:46Ned Kelly has named him Cashelman, after the townland where the body was found.
03:51Now he and the team must solve the mystery of Cashelman and explain why he died.
03:58Their first task is to decipher the confusing mass of bone and soft tissue.
04:03The body was in a very unusual position and it took quite a while to work out what was what.
04:10The head is missing, destroyed by the peat harvester.
04:14The body is compressed and misshapen by millennia in the bog.
04:18And badly damaged by the heavy machinery when it was discovered.
04:26Despite the mangled condition, it could contain a wealth of clues about Irish prehistory that could also explain the mystery
04:34of the entire European bog body tradition, if the team can decipher the evidence.
04:41The first questions to answer are, how did this person end up in the bog? And what was the cause
04:47of death?
04:49Investigations into previous bog bodies revealed they were murdered.
04:53Could this also be true of Cashelman?
04:57State pathologist Professor Marie Cassidy is joining the team to find out.
05:01It's a good bit of tissue. There's an organ there.
05:04And it's either lung or heart. That definitely has to be long.
05:08There's all the ribs there. And that looks as if that could well be the heart.
05:16Professor Cassidy is on her way to investigate the scene where Cashelman was found.
05:22She's more used to solving modern homicides.
05:25But the intensity of industrial peat harvesting in Ireland means bog body finds are a phenomenon Professor Cassidy has become
05:34familiar with.
05:37All of the bog bodies that we've had have been turned out to be ancient remains. The typical features would
05:44be the peaty discolouration of the skin. You can't miss that. Very often they're squashed or compacted because of the
05:51weight of the peat they're under. Now you don't see that with modern bodies.
05:54Even though the body is likely to be ancient, Professor Cassidy treats this like a modern investigation.
06:00As forensic pathologists, our training is to go one step at a time really. You start off with the body
06:08being found, what information is available.
06:11Her first step is to speak to the person who found the body, Jason Phelan, a milling machine operator who
06:17works on Cashelbog.
06:18I turn at the right time and look on the left hand side and I saw this piece. It was
06:23probably maybe 6 inches triangular.
06:26And was it sticking up above the surface then?
06:28It was penetrating maybe this height just above the surface in triangular shape.
06:32I got out and I checked it and I just went over and kind of caught like this gently and
06:36gave a little bit of a tug.
06:37And when I gave it a tug, two legs came up gently out of the bog which were crossed.
06:43Professor Cassidy also examines the peat milling machine.
06:46Its sharp spinning blades were responsible for tearing into the body's chest.
06:53What it means is that there is a tearing motion and that would account for the damage that you see
06:59on the body as it was photographed at the scene.
07:03Because the surface skin had gone and you're allowed looking into the guts, if you like, of the body.
07:09Professor Cassidy's investigations will help her assess which injuries were caused by a 21st century milling machine and which could
07:17have been caused in a prehistoric attack.
07:24Next, the team subject Cashelman's remains to a CT scan.
07:29It reveals details of the bone and soft tissue and sheds light on who this man really was.
07:38This is a young person's spine. How young do you think?
07:44Probably 20 to 25.
07:47The images from the CT scan allow the team to identify the orientation of Cashelman's skeleton.
07:53He is lying on his right side.
07:56His legs are drawn up to his chest and his hands are clasped around them.
08:02But his head and left arm are missing, destroyed by the peat harvester.
08:08The CT scan also reveals a further detail.
08:12Cashelman's right arm has been cleanly broken.
08:16For Mary Cassidy, it's the first clue to the cause of Cashelman's death.
08:22There's good evidence that this person was injured at and around the time of death.
08:29So we've got an injury, we've got one arm remaining that we can identify and we can see the bones
08:34very clearly.
08:35And this bone here, the bone that runs down towards your little finger, that's actually about midway,
08:40it's just been literally halfed in two.
08:42And that's usually an indication of a direct blow, what we would call probably a defensive injury.
08:47So he's maybe been fighting with somebody, whatever weapon they've been using,
08:51he's put up his arm to block a blow and the impact's got on the outer side of his arm
08:56and caused this fracture.
08:58So that indicates major trauma.
09:00So amazing, so we can actually even, we're starting to recreate an incident that he could have been involved in.
09:07The CT scan also revealed two dramatic fractures to Cashelman's spine, where the vertebrae have been left severely out of
09:17alignment.
09:17You can see there where the cord would be, compromised there.
09:21This is so bad.
09:22I'm just thinking in terms of trauma.
09:24The vertebrae appear to have been torn out of alignment.
09:28Is this a clue to a frenzied beating, a horrific murder, or something else?
09:36At the National Museum, the team disagree.
09:40Ned Kelly is open to the idea of a violent attack.
09:44But Deputy Pathologist Dr Michael Curtis is not convinced.
09:48Now, is that the sort of thing that would result from being sort of hit on the spine with a
09:53pickaxe handle,
09:54or from somebody jumping up and down on the small yard back?
09:57I mean, they don't look to be fractured to me.
09:59No, they're just malaligned.
10:01Malaligned, disarticulated, but they do not appear to be fractured.
10:03I don't like that for a blow with an emblem.
10:06No.
10:07No.
10:08It doesn't look as if it's a blow.
10:11So that would have been more localized?
10:13Yeah, and you'd probably have fracture as well.
10:16This is more dislocation.
10:18If Cashelman's spine was not broken when he died, then what killed him?
10:22While the forensics team continues to scour the body for clues, Ned Kelly turns his attention to his area of
10:30expertise,
10:31Ireland's unique literary record.
10:34It offers a key to the past that's found nowhere else in Europe.
10:39Unlike other countries in Europe where bog bodies are found,
10:43in Ireland we have a relatively huge volume of very early literary and analytical material,
10:54that we can trawl through to see if it provides any information on the context of these bodies.
11:02As in most of prehistoric Europe, Ireland's ancient history was not written down.
11:07Instead, it was passed from generation to generation via the spoken word.
11:13But, uniquely, Ireland's oral history was finally recorded in a series of annals,
11:19written by early Christian monks working between 1000 and 1600 AD.
11:27This is real history, this isn't speculation, so it's a very good starting point to look back on what may
11:34have preceded it.
11:35Ned Kelly is hoping these sources will shed light on the mystery of Cashelman.
11:40Could he also belong to the grim roll call of men, women and children brutally murdered, then buried in the
11:48bog?
11:53300 such bodies have been found across Northwest Europe.
11:58They date mainly from 500 BC to 200 AD, Europe's Iron Age.
12:05Professor Miranda Green is an expert in the culture of this period, and its bog body legacy.
12:11The thing which links them all together is their bog deaths, but they were killed in different ways,
12:17some by trauma, some by garrotting, some by drowning.
12:21They have suffered extreme violence.
12:23These are adult people, one woman and one man, from Borremerse in Denmark.
12:29The woman particularly had had a very savage end, she'd been scalped and her face taken off.
12:37And the man had been hit hard on the head and then garrotted with a rope that is still visible
12:43around the neck here.
12:45This is the body of a young girl from Eda in the Northern Netherlands.
12:49She was put in the bog at the age of 12.
12:54Her hair was cut off and placed by her side, and then she was garrotted.
13:00So, this is the fate of this poor girl.
13:04The evidence is really quite special.
13:07We can see stomach contents.
13:08We know what people ate just before they were killed.
13:10We know how they met their deaths.
13:12We've even got looks of terror on people's faces.
13:15So, you've really got a freeze-framing of people who clamour for our attention as individuals.
13:25Over 2,000 years later, the reasons for these deaths are a mystery.
13:32But one thing common to all of the bodies is the bog.
13:39Dr Ben Geary is a wetland archaeologist.
13:42He studies the history and formation of bogs.
13:46Bogs are incredible places.
13:48They have an enormously long history.
13:51They've been part of the landscape for millennia.
13:54Bogs are made up of dead plants.
13:57But their unique chemical composition, which is highly acidic,
14:02kills the bacteria that cause decomposition.
14:05Meaning that organic matter is preserved in a form known as peat.
14:10By cutting into the bog, Dr Geary can expose the layers of preserved peat going back millennia.
14:17We've got around about 2,500 years of peat accumulation in the section here.
14:23This is sphagnum moss, and you can see for a deposit that's maybe, you know, perhaps 1,000, 1,500
14:29years old,
14:30and the preservation is remarkable.
14:32Bogs are waterlogged.
14:34Rainfall is collected and stored in the peat.
14:37This oxygen-poor environment offers ideal conditions for the preservation of organic matter.
14:44And that essentially equates to the slowing down, almost the complete halting of the usual process of biological decay.
14:51As dead matter accumulates, the bog slowly expands, growing around one millimetre a year.
14:58Meaning that today, a single metre of peat can contain a record of 1,000 years of history.
15:04Preserving plant life, ancient artefacts and bodies.
15:11Within bogs, we essentially have, you know, we have this record, we have this memory of the past,
15:15the memory of past environments, past peoples and past landscapes.
15:19And we just don't have that in any of the environment on the earth.
15:23The unique properties of the bog have preserved hundreds of bodies across north-western Europe.
15:30In Denmark alone, around 200 have been dug from the country's boglands.
15:36Paulina Singh is an archaeologist and the curator of Musgard Museum, home to one of the most famous Danish bog
15:45bodies.
15:48Graubelmann was discovered in 1952.
15:51He is around 2,300 years old, but he's been remarkably preserved by the bog.
15:58You stand face to face with a dead man from a period so far, far away, and he looks like
16:05you.
16:06And his nails are very well preserved, his fingertips, you can still see the small lines in them.
16:13You could see his beard when he was found. You could see the pores in his skin. It's fantastic.
16:21Graubelmann's preserved remains clearly reveal that he too was viciously murdered.
16:26He had a deep cut from one ear to another.
16:33It's a savage wound. But there's more. A broken leg and a fractured skull.
16:40More injuries than were necessary to kill him. It leaves historians asking why.
16:49Silkeborg, less than 30 miles from where Graubelmann was discovered.
16:53And where the museum holds another famous body.
16:59In 1950, Pete Cutter's working on a bog outside the town unearthed Tollandmann.
17:06He too lived around 2,300 years ago. He too was murdered.
17:12During excavation, it became very clear very quickly that he was hanged.
17:20Because he still had a noose around his neck very, very, very tightly.
17:26And you can also see the furrows here groove around the neck at a very high position that indicates that
17:33he was hanged.
17:35Tollandmann's head has been remarkably preserved by the bog. And his remains still tantalize archaeologists.
17:43Look here. If you see his face, it's so fantastic. And you see his wrinkles, you see his stubble chin.
17:51And so it's almost like a CV. But we can't read it.
17:58One thing scientists have been able to read is the contents of Tollandmann's gut.
18:04It showed he had eaten a porridge of barley and linseed the day he died.
18:09Similar to Graubelmann, whose stomach was also preserved.
18:14This is some of his last meal. Graubelmann's last meal.
18:20And it has been eaten more than 2,000 years ago.
18:25They found out that there were seeds of 66 different herbs.
18:30It's not the best. It's animal food or poor man's food.
18:35And it's interesting because many of the other Danish bogbodies has the same last meal inside when they found them.
18:44Could Cashelman's stomach reveal his final meal?
18:48The team in Ireland first need to locate the stomach.
18:51But identifying it in the jumble of soft tissue is not easy.
18:56They start by trying to locate his esophagus.
18:59I think if he's got a trachea behind it, it would be maybe his esophagus behind it.
19:04In which case, you've got a portal of entry to his GI tract.
19:08If you could core out a bit, like a little core biopsy or something.
19:14The trouble is then you're actually going down into what you can't see underneath.
19:18Except it's minimally invasive.
19:19Oh yeah, but I think in some respects it's probably better to treat this as an archaeological excavation almost.
19:28Professor Cassidy decides the safest way to look for the stomach is with a fingertip search of Cashelman's internal organs.
19:35But her efforts are in vain.
19:37She finds the stomach has entirely decomposed.
19:41What's this stomach?
19:42No, because the stomach's going to be, it would have been in this area here.
19:46So the stomach's well gone.
19:47There's just nothing there. This is all very ratty looking.
19:51It's a disappointment.
19:53Without the stomach, the team will never know Cashelman's last meal.
19:58But, carbon dating has revealed when he died.
20:02And the results are a shock to everyone on the team.
20:05The body is over 4,000 years old.
20:081,500 years older than the team expected.
20:12For Ned Kelly, it's a remarkable discovery.
20:15This body goes back to the early Bronze Age.
20:18It's much earlier than we anticipated.
20:23That's very, very exciting.
20:26It's probably the earliest fleshed bog body.
20:30Cashelman walked these bogs in Ireland centuries before Tutankhamen lived in Egypt.
20:36Making this the oldest fleshed bog body, not just in Europe, but the world.
20:42It shows the bog body tradition stretches right back into our darkest prehistory.
20:49But it's not just the body that holds the clues to Cashelman's story.
20:53At the bog where the body was found, the layers of peat could also conceal ancient evidence.
21:01Archaeologist Dr Ellen O'Carroll has come here to look for it.
21:05She's taking a peat core sample, and hoping the record of vegetation preserved within it will offer an insight into
21:12Cashelman's world.
21:16This is our peat core.
21:18You're 50 centimeters of peat, which represents about 700 years of environmental history.
21:25At the bottom of this core, we have evidence for a marginal forest where alder trees were growing.
21:31You can see the wood remains in here, and you can see the reeds just poking out here.
21:38As you get up further, you can see your eriophrum or your bog cotton, which is the white kind of
21:44cotton you see growing on the bogs.
21:47So what you can't see with the naked eye, and what I analyzed back in the lab as well, is
21:51your pollen.
21:52You can fit 30 pollen grains on the top of a pin, so they're so tiny you need the microscope
21:58to identify them.
22:00Dr O'Carroll hopes her analysis of the pollen grains will reveal what vegetation was most prominent around the time
22:08of Cashelman's death.
22:11Now that looks like ranunculus, I think, which is a buttercup.
22:20It's kind of got a globular grain surface.
22:24There's a hazel pollen grain.
22:27The variety of species she detects may indicate the scale of human activity in the area where Cashelman was buried.
22:35That looks like an ash pollen grain, Braxinus.
22:41Ash and birch quickly grow after mature forest has been clear-felled.
22:46Pollen from these two species dominate the samples, indicating both ash and birch were widespread.
22:53It's a sign of intense human activity in the area where Cashelman was buried.
23:00The presence of ash indicates that humans were around the area, they were cutting down the forest.
23:06Ash is often used as an indicator of humans interacting with the woods and cutting them down.
23:11The rise in the ash and the birch curves and the expectation of the woodland indicates that Cashelman died within
23:16the vicinity of a community that was quite vibrant.
23:19Further analysis of the peat core reveals more evidence of human activity.
23:26Microscopic traces of charcoal, indicating fires were burnt in the area.
23:31Confirmation that Cashelman was buried close to a busy community.
23:36But what would this community have been like?
23:39Dr Billy McGlynn has studied Bronze Age archaeology.
23:43It's allowed him to recreate the technology of this vanished world.
23:47What I try to do is look at the originals and imagine how they would have been done using similar
23:54types of technology to what they had in the past.
23:57Dr McGlynn has recreated an ancient method of casting objects from bronze.
24:02It shows the skills and scientific knowledge Cashelman's tribe would have mastered to produce even an everyday object like an
24:10axe.
24:11What we're going to do is take these bits of scrap bronze and put them in the crucible here and
24:15heat up the whole thing.
24:16The idea is that the metal will melt and turn to liquid.
24:19To make a high quality casting, the bronze needs to be heated to at least 2,000 degrees.
24:25To achieve this, prehistoric bronze smiths figured out an ingenious system of bellows.
24:33You'd be starting the next stroke before the first one is finished, so there's a constant flow forward of air.
24:38It looks simple enough, but it needs a little bit of coordination.
24:45Once the bronze is molten, it is poured into a clay mould.
24:50This method of casting gave Cashelman's people the ability to mass-produce essential items, like weapons and tools.
25:02It will clean up and polish very nicely, and be able to hammer a sharp edge onto it.
25:10It is industrial production.
25:11What we saw here was the final step in a very long process, where metal has to be produced.
25:17First you would have to prospect for the metal, find out where the ore is, then you would have to
25:20mine it.
25:21Then you would have to extract the metal from the ore in the process of smelting.
25:26But what really comes across is how refined they had their skills.
25:30And sure, their technology is at a more basic level than ours, but what they could do with what were
25:37essentially more limited conditions than what we have now, was astonishing.
25:43But who were these ancient metal workers?
25:47And what was their civilisation like?
25:49They left no written records.
25:53The accounts we do have come from the Romans, as they expanded their empire across Europe.
25:59The writer Tacitus described tribes living in villages, fashioned with no regard to pleasing the eye, and who ravage, slaughter
26:08and seize under false pretenses.
26:11To the Romans, there was one word for people like these, barbarians.
26:17It goes back to a classical term, sort of a barbaroi, meaning people who, in a sense, speak in languages
26:24which are incomprehensible to the classical world, bar, bar, bar.
26:27So that's the origin of it.
26:29But basically it had come to mean people who are not like us, people who are different from us in
26:35the classical world, because they're not civilised, they don't write things down, they don't have organised laws, and they don't
26:42have organised structures.
26:44And so they're sort of almost not quite human.
26:47But historians now believe these Roman accounts are highly subjective, and don't reveal the true nature of Iron Age Europe.
26:55You have to look at the Romans as the imperialists that they were, and the Roman worldview was, of course,
27:05that the Roman way of doing things was the best way, and indeed the only worthwhile way of doing business.
27:13Nearly two centuries of archaeology has revealed the truth about a complex European society. The Gauls, the Celts, the Germanii,
27:23and the Gots. These were confederations of hundreds of diverse tribes, organised to protect their interests from the advance of
27:32Rome.
27:32The knowledge we have is of an immensely sophisticated group of people. We know of hierarchies of people, so political
27:41leaders, religious leaders, and other people. So in fact a highly stratified society, but one without writing, and so it's
27:48largely silent and very difficult to get at.
27:51There would have been trading centres where you would have had something approaching an urban economy as well. So the
27:57idea of international trade and commerce and exchange were not foreign concepts. But the backbone of the economy was probably
28:05agricultural production.
28:08To these farming people, the land was sacred, and studies of ancient European iconography shows that, as with the Greeks
28:16and Romans, fertility deities were central to their belief systems, and may be the key to explaining the bog body
28:24phenomenon.
28:27Derryville, just 15 miles from Cashel Bog, and a huge excavation is revealing prehistoric craftsmanship on a massive scale. That
28:35may also unlock the ritual beliefs of the Iron Age.
28:40Archaeologists have uncovered a network of finely crafted trackways. They hint at the belief systems central to Cashelman's culture. Dr.
28:50Henry Chapman is an expert in interpreting wetland archaeology.
28:53Now this one is beautiful. It's a wicker work hurdle. So you can see it extending quite some way along
29:00here.
29:02Some Iron Age trackways in Europe may have been used as roads for taking cattle safely over bog land, but
29:08not all of them.
29:10At Derryville in Ireland, none of the trackways that have been found actually cross the entire bog.
29:17Instead, each ends right in the centre, where the topography indicates the marsh was at its wettest. Why? One clue
29:28could be the wealth of valuable objects found buried in bog lands.
29:31The scale and locations of these hordes lead historians to believe they're not buried treasure, but votive offerings to ancient
29:41deities.
29:43A votive offering is simply a gift that is presented by people to a god or a goddess in return
29:54for some expected favour.
29:57It's an offering which has been made on behalf of the community.
30:01One such offering excavated from an Irish bog was a large pail of Iron Age butter, a valuable commodity 2
30:09,000 years ago.
30:10Ned Kelly believes it was an offering to the goddess of fertility.
30:15There's far too much of this butter for it to have been simply buried and overlooked.
30:21We're clearly dealing with material that has been deposited for a reason.
30:27And that reason, I believe, was the protection of the cattle herds
30:31and to ensure continued supply of milk by the herds and proper food resources.
30:41It may sound extraordinary, but evidence to support this theory can be found within living memory in modern Ireland.
30:49We know that butter continued to be deposited in a votive manner up into the middle of the 20th century
30:58at least.
30:59And we can trace that tradition back through the deposits in the bogs and in the lakes of Ireland.
31:06Other ancient artefacts associated with fertility have been excavated from Irish bogs.
31:12Cauldrons, feasting cups, millstones for grinding grain, and these are also thought to be offerings to the goddess.
31:22Sacrifices like these hint at the sacred nature of the bog lands of Iron Age Europe.
31:28And to Dr Chapman, this evidence shows the trackways at Derryville were not about economics, but ritual.
31:36If it doesn't make sense in any sort of practical sort of world, then it's likely to be something which
31:42is a different sort of practical,
31:44you know, something about belief systems. It's allowing them to ask for things, to ask for help or to ask
31:49for thanks.
31:49Those sorts of events which happen, you know, either at times of conflict or at times when they require a
31:54good harvest.
31:55It's those sorts of events which are what these things are probably about.
32:00Trackways may have allowed Cashelman and his tribe to access the bogs to commune with their deities.
32:07But why deposit a body in the peat? Archaeology has shown that, typically, these people did not bury their dead.
32:14Normal people were burned, cremated and put in an urn or a pot or just a shallow pit. So this
32:26is highly unusual.
32:27Could the bog bodies themselves have been offerings? Were these men, women and children deliberately murdered, then buried in the
32:36bog to appease the gods?
32:38The way that he was put to rest in the bog, like lying in a sleeping position on the one
32:44side.
32:45Somebody must have closed his eyes and his mouth because you don't look like this peaceful if you're just hanged.
32:54So I personally think that he was sacrificed to a god or a goddess.
32:59Could our ancestors have practiced ritual murder?
33:04Paulina Singh has studied Graubalman's diet, his injuries and the local archaeology.
33:10She has used this evidence to piece together his final moments.
33:14It's led her to believe Graubalman died as part of a sacrificial execution.
33:21A ritual in which the whole community was involved.
33:25When they walked through the old fields.
33:30And when they reached the bog there, then somebody hit him on his left shin bone.
33:42And then he fell on knee.
33:45And when he was laying on his knees, somebody caught him from ear to ear.
33:51Very deep.
33:55And the blood will flit from his neck here to the bottom.
34:03So they give a life from this world, from our world to the underworld.
34:09Could bog bodies really be evidence of the widespread practice of ritual murder?
34:16Could Cashelman also have been sacrificed?
34:20Ned Kelly believes clues to this theory might be found on one of Europe's most precious prehistoric artefacts.
34:27The Gundestrop Cauldron.
34:29This is a rather elaborate cauldron made of silver, which was found in a bog at Gundestrop in Denmark.
34:39It dates to 200 BC, the same period as many of the bog bodies.
34:45The cauldron is decorated with panels depicting Iron Age deities.
34:50One image shows a ritual being performed in honour of the goddess of fertility.
34:56There is a figure who is holding a victim over a cauldron.
35:02This victim is either being drowned in the cauldron, or perhaps he's had his throat cut.
35:07It's an image of ritual killing.
35:10And there are other images relating to ritual killing on this object.
35:15We have one image of a male deity holding aloft two human victims,
35:20who in turn are holding aloft two pigs who are also to be sacrificed.
35:27And on an image before me here, which shows the goddess lying at her breast,
35:35are a human victim and a pig who have been sacrificed.
35:39So there are a number of references on this object to human sacrifice.
35:44For Ned Kelly, the Gundestrop cauldron offers an eyewitness account of human sacrifice,
35:51straight from the Iron Age.
35:53And for him, this crucial evidence helps explain the mystery of the bog body murders.
36:00This cauldron shows the context within which those killings may have taken place in ancient Ireland.
36:09Was Cashelman ritually killed by his own people as a sacrifice to the goddess of fertility?
36:17His extensive injuries may offer further evidence to support the idea,
36:22and the macabre practice known to historians as overkill.
36:27Very often that sacrifice is done with far more violence than is necessary actually to kill,
36:32as though the act itself conveys sacredness.
36:39The more violent, the more complex the killing, in a way the more valuable the gift is.
36:44It's far more than just sending somebody over to the next world.
36:48It is highly ritualised, so it's spectacle, it's theatre,
36:52it's a collective act involving collective responsibility.
36:58The conservation lab at the National Museum of Ireland.
37:03The forensics team is considering whether Cashelman's injuries could be evidence of a ritual overkill,
37:09but there's still disagreement.
37:11Deputy State Pathologist Dr Michael Curtis believes a weapon, such as an axe,
37:16could not have been responsible.
37:19I find it hard to believe that it's displaced the vertebrae without fracturing them.
37:23If it's impacted them enough, it has to be the sharp edge.
37:29If the sharp edge has gone in sufficiently to displace the vertebrae, why are they not fractured?
37:34This trauma to the spine may not, in fact, be an injury at all.
37:39The theory of overkill was developed following the Danish bog body discoveries in the 1950s.
37:47But modern research by forensic anthropologist Dr Nils Lindrup is rewriting that theory.
37:53He's joining the team in Ireland and doesn't believe the injuries to Cashelman's spine were caused by a weapon at
38:00the time of death.
38:01If that was an injury that was physically induced, what sort of damage would you expect to see on those
38:09vertebrae?
38:10There is no sign of trauma, I mean, in terms of fracturing of the vertebral bodies,
38:16or fracturing of the posterior aspects of them.
38:19Okay.
38:20I can only recall seeing that.
38:21Massive trauma.
38:22Yeah.
38:22Traffic accidents.
38:24It falls from a height.
38:25Yeah.
38:26Even, for instance, by kicking somebody, you know, in the back wouldn't.
38:29No, never.
38:30Never.
38:31No.
38:31Dr. Lindrup has an entirely different explanation for the rupture to Cashelman's spine.
38:37Bog trauma.
38:38It all starts with the chemical composition of the bog.
38:42There are some substances in the bog which actually help preserving the bog body.
38:48At the same time, however, there are also other substances, acidic substances, which start degrading some of the tissues.
38:54For instance, the bones.
38:55The acidity can be so strong that the bones come completely bendable.
39:01They get basically like wet cardboard.
39:03Dr. Lindrup's explanation is that the powerful acids in the bog where Cashelman was found softened the ligaments, holding his
39:11spine together,
39:12and that this effect was intensified by the increasing pressure on the body as the bog grew above it.
39:18The bog is undergoing a continuous development.
39:21It may actually grow in height.
39:23At some point in time, there might even be sort of, it may sink a bit.
39:26You get this active environment.
39:28And this environment can directly, indirectly, put a pressure on the bog body.
39:34Dr. Lindrup believes the weight of the bog is responsible for pushing the softened vertebrae in Cashelman's spine out of
39:42alignment over thousands of years.
39:45We've seen something like that in Danish bog bodies.
39:47Right.
39:47And I think it's because when the ligaments sort of degrade a bit or get a bit more soft, then
39:55they can start, depending on how the body is lying, sort of come out of alignment.
39:58To me, it seems post-mortem.
40:01Dr. Lindrup questions whether overkill was a real phenomenon, but Ned Kelly has led cutting-edge forensic investigations into two
40:10other mutilated bog bodies, and believes they offer compelling evidence to suggest that, in Ireland, overkill really did take place.
40:20The first was the body known as Cloney Cavan Man.
40:24A blow in the face broke his nose, and he was then set upon around the head with an axe.
40:31This is old Crocken Man.
40:33Modern forensics reveal that he too was the victim of a gruesome murder.
40:38He died as a result of a stab wound to his heart, probably with an iron-aid sword.
40:48He was decapitated and cut in half, and the other parts of the body were disposed of elsewhere.
40:55There's far more done to this body than needed to be done to kill the man.
41:01Ned believes the extensive injuries to these bodies are evidence of overkill, and that science backs him up.
41:09I would have to conclude, based on the evidence that I've been presented with by the pathologists in relation to
41:16the Irish bog bodies, is that these are bodies that have multiple injuries.
41:23So you have to interpret that.
41:25Now, whether you call it overkill, or what you call it, is just a matter of semantics.
41:32Further evidence on Cashel Man's body may show he too suffered a violent death.
41:37The first clue is a long, thin cut to his back.
41:42That was revealed by excavation.
41:45Yeah.
41:46It was down in the peak, so I don't see how that particular cut could possibly have been caused by
41:51the milling machine.
41:52Oh, I agree. I agree. It's remote from it.
41:55No, it's definitely not the milling machine then. It's something else.
41:57The thin cut suggests a slash with a very sharp blade.
42:03Meanwhile, the clean break to the arm is a definite defensive injury, typical of someone deflecting a blow.
42:11For Mary Cassidy, the evidence suggests Cashel Man's death was violent.
42:20I mean, your injury to your arm looks like a true injury.
42:23Yeah.
42:24And if that's a true injury, then you have to think of a mechanism.
42:28And the most likely mechanism I would have thought in those days is you're in the middle of a fight
42:32with somebody wielding something.
42:35Yeah.
42:35And therefore it's quite likely then the death is trauma.
42:41Forensic science has at last confirmed that Cashel Man was murdered.
42:49And it can also reveal how these men lived.
42:54Dr. Andrew Wilson analyzed hair samples taken from the bodies of Cloney Cavan Man and Old Crocken Man.
43:01Hair is quite a unique resource.
43:04It locks both physical information and biochemical information.
43:08So we can tell something about the chemical information that perhaps tells us about that person's diet.
43:15By studying samples of hair, Dr. Wilson is able to unlock the dietary record hidden within the structure of each
43:24strand.
43:24With hair, you've got that incremental growth, roughly a centimetre each month.
43:29And if you've got long enough hair surviving, therefore, you can build a complete timeline of the final months of
43:37the individual's life.
43:39Tests revealed both Cloney Cavan Man and Old Crocken Man enjoyed a diet rich in protein.
43:46This indicates both men may have been of high status.
43:51Cashel Man's head was destroyed by machinery.
43:54But the team did find his scalp, flung several yards away by the peat harvester.
44:01We've got samples from Cashel Man's scalp, roughly 18 to 20 millimetres in length.
44:08Which, in itself, is representing roughly two months of hair growth.
44:13Dr. Wilson places these prehistoric hair samples into a scanning electron microscope.
44:19The intense magnification reveals the structure of the hair.
44:23While isotope analysis deciphers the unique chemical signatures left in Cashel Man's hair by his diet.
44:30Those signatures tell us that we're dealing with an individual who has most of the food groups.
44:35That's dietary protein, so in the form of meat and dairy, as well as cereals.
44:41And that's not dissimilar to the bog bodies that we've looked at before.
44:45So Old Crocken Man, Cloney Cabin Man.
44:47The evidence of a protein rich diet suggests Cashel Man may have been of high social status.
44:53Like the two other Irish bog bodies.
44:55So who were they?
44:58Ned Kelly is at the National Library of Ireland, where he's searching through some of the country's oldest literary records.
45:07And he's found a clue.
45:09The Annals of the Four Masters was compiled by Christian scribes in the 1600s.
45:15But it records oral accounts of Irish history dating from as early as 2200 BC.
45:24One such account describes the excessive violence used to murder an ancient Irish king.
45:30OK, we have a reference here to the death of the High King of Ireland.
45:37More could talk more care.
45:40According to the Annals, the king was drowned in a vat of wine after being burned on the summit of
45:46the hill.
45:48The king is killed in a number of ways. He's drowned, he's borne, and in other references he's stabbed as
45:57well.
45:57This is referred to as the triple killing of kings.
46:01References to the triple killing of kings occur throughout Irish folklore.
46:06Could such a killing explain the extensive injuries to the Irish bog bodies and show they were kings?
46:12If so, evidence from further Annals may explain why they died.
46:18An account of an inauguration ceremony describes how the new king was symbolically wedded to the land over which he
46:25was to rule.
46:26In this case, the western province of Connacht.
46:29And Huilfaelim Mok É Mok Óon had married the province of Connacht, married the province of Connacht in the manner
46:39remembered by the old men and recorded in the old books.
46:44And this was the most splendid kingship marriage ever celebrated in Connacht down to that day.
46:51This symbolic marriage of the king to the land itself made him directly responsible for the success of the harvest
46:59and came with potentially fatal consequences.
47:04If it fails, he will be held accountable for failing to keep the goddess in a benevolent frame of mind.
47:12And he will be replaced through his ritual killing.
47:19Could these fragments of history show Cashel Mann was a murdered king?
47:25Evidence from the body of old Crockenmann supports the idea and suggests to Ned this man was certainly of high
47:32status.
47:35His hands have been perfectly preserved.
47:37He has no calluses whatever on his hands.
47:40This is a man who did not engage in any manual labour.
47:44He had an armlet.
47:46I believe that that armlet signifies that he was a person of rank.
47:51While Ned searches the literary record for clues to explain Cashel Mann,
47:56science may be on the verge of a bold new theory to explain all 300 bog bodies
48:02and reveal the powerful larger force that spread across Iron Age Europe.
48:09The Derryville dig, just 30 miles from where Cashel Mann was found,
48:14and where ancient trackways led prehistoric tribes to the wet heart of the bog to practice their darkest rituals.
48:29Scientists working here have long known that rainfall feeds the bogs, causing them to grow.
48:35Now they're asking, could rainfall also be the key to ritual murder?
48:42The peat has preserved not just human remains, but also microscopic fossilised amoeba.
48:51And scientists believe these could throw light on the bog body murders.
48:56They're known as testate amoeba.
49:01Testates live on the bog surface, and we know from modern studies of testate amoeba what moisture preferences different species
49:10have.
49:10So we can use knowledge of the present as a key to the past.
49:15Modern science has revealed which testate species flourish when it's wet, and which ones thrive in dry conditions.
49:23Environmental archaeologists like Dr Ben Geary now believe this simple fact could open the door to thousands of years of
49:30climate history.
49:31By analysing samples of peat, he is able to extract fossilised testates that lived thousands of years ago.
49:39As bogs grow and change over time, depending on how wet or dry they are of course,
49:46this will be reflected by the composition of the communities of testates that are living in the peat.
49:52Under the microscope, Dr Geary is able to identify the different types of testate amoeba.
50:00So this is another species of testate. It's called Archella discoides.
50:06This is an indicator of generally rather wet conditions.
50:10This is Hyalasthenia subflava. This is an indicator of a comparative dry conditions.
50:16By analysing peat samples, Dr Geary is hoping to identify which species of testate, wet or dry, are the most
50:23dominant.
50:24This work could reveal the weather patterns faced by ancient tribes thousands of years ago,
50:30and offer an insight into the challenges posed by climate to these prehistoric farming communities.
50:37Meanwhile, at the National Library, Ned Kelly has found another clue to help him explain Castleman's death.
50:45It's a medieval map.
50:48Like the annals, it records information from thousands of years earlier.
50:53In this case, the boundaries of Ireland's ancient kingdoms.
50:58And the inauguration hills on which tribal kings were crowned.
51:03The map shows Castleman and Old Crockenman were buried in bogs at the foot of inauguration hills.
51:12Ned believes this is a sign both men were deposed kings,
51:17each buried in the shadow of the hilltop on which they had once been crowned.
51:22To find out more, he's exploring the hill overlooking where Castleman was found.
51:29There's a wonderful view back here across the bog.
51:34Castle bog, you can see that's the bog there in the middle of which Castleman is.
51:44The map shows that the hill and the bog mark the boundary of an ancient tribal kingdom, part of modern
51:51-day County Leash.
52:05The hill's wide flat summit overlooking the kingdom made it a place of assembly for ancient tribes performing kingship ceremonies.
52:15Ned believes they came here to crown their kings and to decommission them in murderous rituals.
52:24And what I'm proposing is that the bog body down here in Castle bog is also associated with kingship ritual.
52:34He, in my view, is a king who was probably inaugurated here on this hilltop.
52:41And when his kingship failed, he was ritually killed and he's buried down there in the boundary surrounding this inauguration
52:49hill.
52:49It just cannot be coincidental.
52:55Ned's theory is that Castleman was a Bronze Age king.
53:01Faced with a failing harvest.
53:04Murdered by his tribe and sacrificed to appease the goddess of fertility.
53:17This theory could at last explain the mystery of the prehistoric bodies buried in Irish bogs.
53:25But not those from the rest of Europe.
53:28It may work in a sense for places like Ireland where you have this early medieval evidence.
53:33But it doesn't work for the majority of bog bodies found, for example, in Schleswig-Holstein in Denmark and in
53:40the Netherlands and elsewhere in Britain.
53:43In Europe, archaeologists have found the bodies of men and women, boys and girls.
53:49Clearly, these can't all have been kings.
53:52Could a common theory ever explain them all?
53:57Experts have scrutinized archaeology, ancient history and the bodies.
54:04Now, the bog itself may provide an answer.
54:08And reveal the powerful force that grew the bog lands, but reigned chaos on ancient Europe.
54:17Dr Ben Geary has spent years studying how bogs are formed and fed by rainfall.
54:23And how the record of this rainfall is preserved in the form of microscopic fossilized testate amoeba.
54:31So, basically, if we're identifying a large amount of the discoides in that sample, that indicates that that is a
54:38relatively wet environment represented by that sample.
54:42If we're seeing a relatively great proportion of the dry indicators, of course, that shows the opposite. It shows a
54:47relatively dry surface.
54:49For 20 years, scientists have been collecting data from sites like Derryville.
54:55Their goal? To use testate amoeba to track changes in the wetness of these bog lands and reveal prehistory's changing
55:03climate.
55:05There's been a huge amount of work done on different bogs, different sites in Ireland and indeed in North West
55:11Europe, attempting to track changes in bog surface wetness over time and then to relate that to climatic shifts really
55:18over the last 5,000 years or so or maybe even longer.
55:21This work is at last unlocking the climate record preserved in Europe's bog lands.
55:28And the data has revealed an insight into the dramatic changes in climate faced by prehistoric tribes thousands of years
55:35ago.
55:36We tend to see that there is increasing evidence for a climatic shift, a shift probably to a wetter and
55:43colder environment around about the Bronze Age, Iron Age transition, so very broadly around the time that we do get
55:50increasing evidence of bog bodies appearing in wetlands.
55:54This research reveals a dramatic fluctuation in Europe's climate around 750 BC, when rainfall increased and temperatures dropped.
56:04It lasted hundreds of years, probably the most significant climatic event since the Ice Age.
56:12Now, could this evidence of a climate shift to a wetter, colder Europe explain the bog bodies?
56:20If you imagine in prehistory, when people don't have the advantage of satellite based information, those sorts of things, they
56:27don't have that record.
56:28So when things change and they continue to get wetter and colder, they don't know why, but it's affecting their
56:34economics.
56:35European Iron Age tribes were dependent on farming. For a society like this, a colder climate with more rain could
56:44have meant disaster, destroying their harvests and leaving them facing starvation.
56:50Those things are where people have to respond in some way. And if the way you respond to that, you
56:56feel impotent, you have to do something.
56:59And that's when belief systems, ritual activities probably take place.
57:03Did the Iron Age tribes see their harvests devastated by climate chaos and interpret that as the work of angry
57:13deities?
57:14And was there solution to march living sacrifices into the soaking bogs of Europe to murder them and appease their
57:22gods?
57:23In terms of the ceremonial, prehistoric ones that we think are ritual killings, those ones, it's entirely possible that they
57:33are related to changing environment, people responding to the things which they can't control.
57:37Could this controversial theory answer prehistory?
57:42Could this controversial theory answer prehistory's darkest mystery and explain the bog body phenomenon across Europe?
57:49We know it was the rain that grew the bogs.
57:52But did the rain also drive our ancestors to commit murder in order to ensure their own survival?
58:02Thousands of years later, are these bodies their unfortunate victims?
58:07All murdered.
58:09All sacrificed.
58:12All buried in the bog.
58:25Exploring 40 years of space travel with NASA, triumph and tragedy in just a few moments here on BBC4.
58:32And this has been a dream.
58:44Indeed, the lag would have gone through.
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