One of the most recent Irish
bog discoveries was unearthed in February 2003. Peat cutters near
Clonycavan, County Meath (near Dublin) discovered a well-preserved and
quite horrific partial upper body (lacking forearms and hands as well as
the lower abdomen) that has come to be called Clonycavan Man.
Police investigators
originally thought that the man had been murdered, and his body recently
buried in the bog, by members of the Irish Republican Army. Pathologists
and archaeologists, however, realized that the body was much older than
that. In fact, later tests revealed that the man died between 392 BC and
201 BC.
His death was particularly
grisly. He had been hit on the head three times, perhaps with an axe, so
hard that it was split open, revealing his brains. He had also been hit
in the chest, and he was disemboweled as well. (Note that one of the Weerdinge
Men had been also disemboweled.)
What
fascinated scientists, however, was his hair. Swooped high on his head,
perhaps to make up for his short stature (scientists estimated that he
was 5 feet two inches tall), his hair contained gel (vegetable oil mixed
with resin) imported from an area of near the border of Spain and
France. His face was reconstructed by scientists from the University of
Dundee.
