1.1 the Body in the Peat Bog
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1.1 The body in the peat bog n May 1950 at Tollund Fen, in Denmark, the SOURCE B Højgaard family were cutting peat for fuel. They foundI something strange. John Højgaard described The man lay on his right side as if asleep. He had been covered by 2.5m of peat. what happened then. He wore a pointed hide cap tied under Mother rolled up her sleeves and started digging into the chin. Round his waist was a hide where people were cutting peat. She said: “You can say belt. Otherwise, he was naked. He had what you want, but there’s something strange here.” Then no beard, only very short stubble on his she stuck her fingers in between the forehead and the cap chin and top lip. Then a small lump of peat was moved from beside his head. on a human head. This uncovered a rope that went round his The peat had preserved the body so well that the neck in a noose. peat cutters thought it was a boy who was missing from a nearby town. They called the police. The From The Bog People, written by P. V. Glob, the police asked if there were signs of recent digging. archaeologist the police took to investigate the body. There weren’t, so the police brought an archaeologist, in case the body had been there a long time. SOURCE A The head of Tollund Man, the body in the bog. 6 SOURCE C SOURCE D Scientific Report on the Body This man was found in a bog in Grauballe, near 1 Date of burial Tolland. His throat was cut. He died about 2,300 years ago. He was about 30 when he died. He was fit and Carbon 14 dating shows that the man healthy. His last meal was a vegetable soup made from died 2,300-2,400 years ago. over 60 different herbs and grasses. 2 Cause of death X-rays showed the man had not been hit on the head. His heart, lungs and liver were in good condition. He was not old. He was over 20 years old, because his wisdom teeth had grown. He was probably killed by the rope around his neck. The noose left marks around his neck. You could not tell if his neck had been broken because the bones were very crumbly. His tongue bone wasn’t broken, which suggests he wasn’t strangled. 3 His last meal Tests were carried out on his stomach SOURCE E and gut contents. The man’s last meal had been a soup The rope noose in made from vegetables and seeds. this photo was Some of the seeds, such as barley, had found around the been farmed. Others, such as linseed, neck of a man were wild. from Borre Fen, There were no traces of meat. near Tollund. His last meal People ate a lot of vegetable soup was a vegetable at this time, but there were two soup made from interesting things about this soup. spring seeds. The 1) It contained many different kinds of twisted metal neck wild and cultivated seeds. Some were ring was buried hard to find. So the soup was probably with him. These made for a special occasion. rings were often 2) All the seeds in the soup were buried in bogs as spring seeds. gifts to the Spring Goddess. 7 1.2 Measuring time eople have lived on Earth for millions of years. Timeline We divide this long period of time into blocks. PrehistoryP is the first one. Prehistory 2,000,000 years ago 2,500,000 years ago Prehistory is the period in the past before people first stone tools, in Africa could write. People began to write at different times in different parts of the world. So prehistory ended earlier in some places than others. In Egypt it was about 5,000 years ago. In the Netherlands it was about 2,000 years ago. Dividing prehistory The prehistoric period lasted a long time. We often divide it into smaller periods. One way to divide it is 1,000,000 years ago by what people used to make their tools and weapons. In Europe, people first made tools and weapons from stone. Later, they used bronze. Later still, they used iron. So we divide European prehistory into ‘Stone Age’, ‘Bronze Age’ and ‘Iron Age’. 5,300 years ago 350,000 years ago earliest writing first deliberate 30,000 years ago use of fire These ages started and ended at different times in cave art began different places. The ancient Egyptian Stone Age ended about 6,000 years ago. For Aborigines in Now Australia it ended about 200 years ago. Smaller blocks of time 300,000 years ago 250,000 years ago 30-10,000 We also talk about exact periods of time. The ones we hunter-gatherers people definitely living years ago in Europe in the Netherlands Ice Age most often use are: • millennium a thousand years • century a hundred years • decade ten years. first use of copper in Europe and Asia people living in towns, many people farming some farming first use of first use Europe bronze in of iron villages growing Middle East in Europe Latin numbers Latin numbers can be part of English words. ‘Cent-’ at Prehistory History the start of an English word often comes from the Latin for ‘a hundred’. It comes at the start of ‘century’. Some some farming, Middle East earliest writing 3,000 other words it begins are: ‘centipede’, ‘centigrade’ and years ago ‘centimetre’. one unit = 1,000 years 8 SOURCE A During the Ice Age, many prehistoric people lived in caves for warmth. There are caves in France and Spain that have prehistoric paintings of animals, handprints and patterns. Calendars What century Calendars are one way to measure time. They give each year a number. Most calendars are tied to a religion. The Muslim calendar dates is it? backwards (bh) and forwards (ah) from the date the Muhammad was We need to be careful when driven out of Mecca. talking about centuries. The ad and bc sixteenth century is not all the The most widely used calendar is the Christian one. This counts years beginning with ‘16-‘. It is backwards and forwards from when Jesus Christ was born. It counts 1500–1599. This is because the forward from his birth, putting ad in front of the number. (ad stands first century AD ends in AD 99. The for Anno Domini, Latin for ‘the year of Our Lord’). We can leave ad years from AD 100–199 are the out if the date is clearly ad. So we usually say the Vikings captured second century AD, and so on. The years BC work in the same Walcheren in 837, not ad 837. way. The letters bc stand for ‘before Christ’. bc dates are counted back from the birth of Christ, so they get bigger the further back in time you go. Something that happened in 10 bc happened a year before something that happened in 9 bc. Some people want to use ad/bc dates, without referring to Christ. They call bc ‘bc Common Era’ (bce) and ad ‘Common Era’ (ce). Timeline 900 BH 800 BH 700 BH 600 BH 500 BH 400 BH 300 BH 200 BH 100 BH 0 100 AH 200 AH 300 AH 622 BH MUSLIM DATING SYSTEM BH AH 300 BC 200 BC 100 BC 0 100 AD 200 AD 300 AD 400 AD 500 AD 600 AD 700 AD 800 AD 900 AD BC AD CHRISTIAN DATING SYSTEM 622 AD This shows how the Muslim and Christian calendars label the same time period. 9.