Irish Bog Bodies: What a load of crap

[atreides]

Irish Bog Bodies

Eamonn Kelly, keeper of Irish antiquities at the National Museum of Ireland, has developed a new theory about the bodies based on his discovery that nearly all of the Irish examples were placed in the borders immediately surrounding royal land or on tribal boundaries.

"These people may have been hostages or deposed kings or candidates for kingship who have been sacrificed to ensure a successful reign for a new king and this was done as part of a kingship ritual and as a fertility offering to the gods," he told Reuters.

"The king was held personally responsible for the success of the crops and so on -- if he couldn't guarantee the fertility of the land he risked being deposed," he added.

Do I even need to say how utterly ridiculous this sounds? First off, if you depose a king and you are a nasty bugger, you nod to your guards and they take him out to the bog and execute him, doi. Maybe the guy was a minister who peeved the king off, or tried to off him etc. There are at least 50 gajillion reasonable explanations for why someone would be taken to a bog and killed, none of them include fertility offerings. Also, Tacitus backs me up on this one. What if the King is particularly pathocratic? The people rise up, take him out to a bog, and off him, or conversely, the King is a good guy, and some psychopath power hungry bastard comes along and dethrones him, bog style.

The idea that this is a sacrifice for land fertility is incredulous and ridiculous, how did this guy make it through Uni?

 

[David]

2000 year old Irish Bog Bodies and Iron Age Hair Gel from Spain/France

Was reading an article this morning, the piece was promoting a TV documentary on ‘Bog Bodies’ there is a Spain/France connection… via Iron Age Hair Gel … Pine Fresh.. type of pine only found nearby in Spain and France

Below is a snippet from the article if interested and can be read at _www.independent.ie/lifestyle/csi-iron-age-2409988.html

Title ‘CSI Iron Age’

“The first thing that strikes you about one of Ireland's oldest murder victims is his beautifully manicured hands. This man, who once stood an impressive 6ft 6in tall, never did a day's manual labour in his life.

In fact, his fingerprint whorls were so perfectly preserved when his remains came out of the bog near Croghan Hill in Co Meath in May 2003 that gardai were called in to investigate a possible murder.

By the time radiocarbon dating revealed that he had lived well over 2,000 years ago (between 362BC and 175BC), archaeologists had already taken over -- but they still had a murder inquiry on their hands. And a brutal one at that.

Clonycavan Man, was slight -- possibly as small as 5ft 2in -- but his hair was gelled up in a style akin to a Mohican, adding inches to his height. "Naturally enough, he wanted to make himself look grander," Bog Bodies Project coordinator Isabella Mulhall has speculated. "It's a bit like someone wearing platform shoes."

His elaborate hairstyle showed not only that male grooming has an ancient history, but also that Irish men in the Iron Age sought out imported, luxury products: he used a type of hair gel made of resin from pine trees found only in Spain and France. This man was clearly an aristocrat who was privileged enough to be able to pay a lot of time and attention to his physical appearance.

Yet he too was cut down in the prime of life. He suffered three axe blows to the head -- one which displaced his nose -- a further blow to the chest and he was possibly disembowelled. Like his neighbour Old Croghan Man, he was dumped in a boggy grave on a territorial boundary”

Article on sott in 2006
http://www.sott.net/articles/show/117490-Irish-bog-bodies-help-unlock-secrets-of-Iron-Age

Edit added
From _http://www.herald.ie/national-news/mutant-gene-is-linked-to-8fttall-irish-giant-study-2485961.html

Mutant gene is linked to 8ft-tall Irish giant – study, article by John von Radowitz, Thursday January 06 2011.

A race of giants may have sprung from a mutant gene that first emerged around 1,500 years ago and causes uncontrolled body growth, scientists believe.
The "gigantism gene" was identified in the DNA of an 18th-century man known as the Irish Giant, who was said to stand at almost 8ft tall.
Copies of the same mutation have been found in living patients suffering from gigantism and other symptoms of over-growth.
Scientists writing in the New England Journal of Medicine said they suspect all inherited the gene from the same common ancestor who lived up to 66 generations ago. Around 200 to 300 people may be carrying the same mutation today.
The Irish Giant was Charles Byrne -- also known by his stage name O'Brien -- born in Littlebridge, Northern Ireland, in 1761. In the 1780s he found fame exhibiting himself as a curiosity or "freak" in London. Despite claims that he was more than 8ft tall, skeletal evidence shows he measured just over 7ft 7in.
Celebrity life eventually got the better of Byrne, who took to drink and died at his home in Charing Cross aged just 22.
After his death, Byrne's body was acquired by the 18th-century surgeon John Hunter, and his skeleton remains at the Hunterian Museum in London.
triggers
British and German scientists conducting the new research extracted DNA from two of the Irish Giant's teeth.
They discovered a mutant version of the aryl hydrocarbon-interacting protein gene, which matched those found in living patients from four Northern Irish families.
The gene variant triggers tumour growth in the pituitary gland at the base of the brain. Among its many functions, the gland releases hormones that regulate growth.
Pituitary tumours can cause tissue to grow abnormally, which may lead to gigantism -- as suffered by Byrne -- or acromegaly. Symptoms of acromegaly include thickened skin, enlarged hands and feet, distorted facial features and overgrown organs….

Although the tall guy in the bog and the guy from Northern Ireland may not be related but it sure looks like they might have experienced the same mutation, although everything may just be a mutation, clearly the DNA received something at some point, maybe related to dragons in the sky and the possibility of living over or near some mineral deposits that may have enabled the mutation to occur, cosmic gene therapy, maybe…

 

[8lelly8]

I think you'll find that Tacitus's ideas were based on punishments given to the Germanic people (hence it's title Germanica) and whilst useful in bog body discussions have no real relevance to your argument. Regardless of this your insights into the likelihood of boundary line and fertility offerings are questionable. Granted there are many reasons why a person may be carried out to a bog and killed, however with the cases that are mentioned from the writer in 2010, Old Croghan Man and Clonycavan Man both display physical traits which make them stand out. They are of high birth, using 'hair gel' so expensive and from a country so far away you would need to be both powerful and rich to obtain it, more than likely they were both Ancient Royalty. There is proven evidence that these bodies were buried in areas of importance, e.g. the boundary lines which begs the question why? To answer this consider the fact that bogs were considered liminal zones or areas of mystery and were very difficult to traverse, which would evoke a set of cultural beliefs which would include ritual ideas. As Kelly states it is the King's responsibility to ensure good crop fertility and the associated items that have been found with many other bogs not just Irish, show that ritual was indeed involved in the deaths of Bog Bodies. If the King failed at his job, then a sacrifice is needed. In the Bronze to Iron Age and later periods there was a significance to 'killing' items, making them unusable and dropping them in such places as bogs, ritual practice to appease the gods. Kelly's argument is both sound and uses extremely convincing evidence to prove his point. The idea that 'bog style' was a way of psychopaths dumping a body has no supporting evidence, every bog body found has some sort of importance to it, whether it be cause of death or deformity or any other number of reasons.

Next time articles are cited as rubbish, it may be wise to do some homework. I suggest Anne Ross for a sound folklore argument or even better Miranda Aldhouse Green. As a closing point I'd like to add the reason Kelly is so well respected and managed to get through University is that he read and understood articles and used evidence to back his ideas and reasoning's.

 

[Vulcan59]

Hi 8lelly8,

Welcome to the forum. :) We recommend all new members to post an introduction in the Newbies section telling us a bit about themselves, and how they found their way here. You can read through the many newbie introductions to get a feel for how others have done it. Thanks.

 

[Joe]

I think you'll find that Tacitus's ideas were based on punishments given to the Germanic people (hence it's title Germanica) and whilst useful in bog body discussions have no real relevance to your argument. Regardless of this your insights into the likelihood of boundary line and fertility offerings are questionable. Granted there are many reasons why a person may be carried out to a bog and killed, however with the cases that are mentioned from the writer in 2010, Old Croghan Man and Clonycavan Man both display physical traits which make them stand out. They are of high birth, using 'hair gel' so expensive and from a country so far away you would need to be both powerful and rich to obtain it, more than likely they were both Ancient Royalty. There is proven evidence that these bodies were buried in areas of importance, e.g. the boundary lines which begs the question why? To answer this consider the fact that bogs were considered liminal zones or areas of mystery and were very difficult to traverse, which would evoke a set of cultural beliefs which would include ritual ideas. As Kelly states it is the King's responsibility to ensure good crop fertility and the associated items that have been found with many other bogs not just Irish, show that ritual was indeed involved in the deaths of Bog Bodies. If the King failed at his job, then a sacrifice is needed. In the Bronze to Iron Age and later periods there was a significance to 'killing' items, making them unusable and dropping them in such places as bogs, ritual practice to appease the gods. Kelly's argument is both sound and uses extremely convincing evidence to prove his point. The idea that 'bog style' was a way of psychopaths dumping a body has no supporting evidence, every bog body found has some sort of importance to it, whether it be cause of death or deformity or any other number of reasons.

Next time articles are cited as rubbish, it may be wise to do some homework. I suggest Anne Ross for a sound folklore argument or even better Miranda Aldhouse Green. As a closing point I'd like to add the reason Kelly is so well respected and managed to get through University is that he read and understood articles and used evidence to back his ideas and reasoning's.

I think all of these theories are seriously flawed because they fail to take into consideration the evidence for major earth changes, cometary bombardment etc. The location of any remains cannot be assumed to be the result of human burial when you consider the effects of global upheaval. In short, all "historical records" are suspect unless these factors are part of the equation.