9. Mummified Bog Bodies represent human sacrifices to ensure the protection of the land.
Around 2000 mummified Bog bodies have been found from prehistoric Northern Europe, some as much as 6000 years old. Interestingly, unlike the Bronze Age mummies, most if not all of these bodies bear the signs of deliberate, violent death. Some died from blows to the head, while others were strangled or had their throats cut. After death, all were deposited in a peat bog- and left there. Lindow man, one of the best examples from Britain, was discovered in the Lindow Moss, a peat bog in Cheshire in 1984. Well groomed, well built and healthy, Lindow man met his end sometime between 2 BC and 199 AD- and it wasn’t a pretty one.
After being forced to his knees, his assailant hit Lindow Man on the head hard enough to render him unconscious. His attackers then garroted him and cut his throat for good measure. This elaborate death corresponds with what Anne Ross; an expert on Iron Age religion calls the Triple Death- a sacrificial ritual of the Celts. ‘ Although no accounts of human sacrifice in Britain exist, Roman writers do record instances from Europe. Julius Caesar accusing the Gauls of burning their human sacrifices alive in wicker effigies, while Strabo’s describes how the Celts ‘used to strike a human being, devoted to death, in the back with a sword, and then divine from his death struggle.
So was Lindow man a human sacrifice? Some experts say not, dismissing his death as an elaborate murder and the garrote about his neck as the remains of a necklace. However, Lindow Man’s injuries match a pattern exhibited by too many other bog bodies for his death to be a random event-especially as there are other bodies on Lindow Moss who died in similar ways in the same period.
One suggestion for the death of Lindow man and his companions was that they were particular individuals chosen to halt Roman encroachment upon the northern tribal lands. It could be that the manner of their death and preservation of their bodies in situ in the peat bog was a way of ensuring their spirits stayed put as guardians of the land.