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From Chapter
1 of Bodies from the Bog:
"On the last Saturday of April 1952, near the village of Grauballe, Denmark, a group
of men were digging in a raised bog they had partially drained. They dug past the upper
layer of peat moss into a rich layer of compact dark-brown peat perfect for fuel, their
shovels slicing brick-sized chunks. They stacked the peat on the surface. When it had
dried, it would be burned for heat in a fireplace or furnace.
"That
afternoon, though, the men made an unexpected discovery. About three feet below the
surface their shovels struck the head of a dead man. His eyes were closed, his face
partially flattened by the weight of the peat. His skin was as brown as the earth that
surrounded him. The peat cutters quickly reported their find to a local doctor who
wondered if it might not be a bog body, that is, a type of natural mummy: the preserved
body of a person who was buried in the bog perhaps thousands of years ago. A number of
such bodies had been found in Denmark, so the doctor called an archaeologist at the
Moesgård Museum of Prehistory in nearby Aarhus.
"The next morning Professor P. V. Glob arrived
at the site and examined the body of what has come to be called the Grauballe
Man...."
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