I caught an episode of Nova on PBS tonight concerning Irish bog bodies and it had me a little more than irritated with the lack of logic I saw with various explanations as to the how’s and why’s.
Here’s what we know from the hard evidence at hand: the bodies found were of well to do individuals, who had manicured nails, styled hair, a good diet and other signs of wealth. They were found almost void of clothing. A few trinkets were found near the bodies, but not much. The bodies showed signs of torture and brutal deaths – from garrot strangulation, to an ax in the face while the victim was kneeling. One even showed signs of a knife wound to the chest that he tried to prevent with his arm, which was wounded in the process. The bodies showed signs of having been staked down in the bog with plant bindings, as not to float. Some of the bodies were hacked apart first, then staked down in the bog.
That’s the hard evidence we have. The soft evidence backing up various theories presented include some medieval writings (centuries after the fact) describing religious rituals and some work from Tacitus, speaking of various religious practices of the Celts. However, none of this soft evidence, this hearsay, has any backing by the hard evidence found.
In spite of this, the theories postulated by the various investigators on this show, all surrounded unproved ideas that the Celts viewed the bogs as a limbo between the after-world and the living world. (Not even Tacitus spoke of this, so I have no clue where they got this romantic crap from.) Theories of ritual torture and sacrifice of the the wealthy as a spiritual offering for the good of the tribe abound. It was a ritual to appease the gods. It was a ritual to bring good crops. It was part of a festival held in the region. On and on and blather and blather. Druid this and Celtic that. No evidence actually supports any of these postulations, but its the conjecture of the hour, repeated over and over again.
I have another theory about these bog bodies and I’m going to use a little common sense and only the hard evidence to support it.
They were murdered for their money.
Bogs are not a fun place to be in. They are dangerous if you don’t know the territory and how to navigate it – and they are a great place to hide things. Keeping this in mind, bogs would be a great place for a gang of thieves to hide in.
Roads often pass near these bogs, more often than not. None of the bog bodies found so far have shown signs of being poor or otherwise bad off – well manicured, hair done up with French pine pitch (obviously imported), et cetera.
Thieves don’t rob poor people, as the take usually sucks. Robbing wealthy people is risky, because if they can finger you, what law there is in the land will come down on you like a ton of bricks.
However, if you kill your wealthy victim and stake his body down in the bog, where no one can find it, then there is no risk that they are going to be able to summon any kind of retribution for the crime against you. What trinkets they had which might be identified by others, as a tribal symbol or identifying standard – or that which is just useless to you, you dump in the bog with the body. Keep the rest.
As for the torture, well, criminals have never been known to have a little sport with their captives, have they? (Note: that was sarcasm for the humor impaired.) A man showing wounds of an attempt to defend himself from a knife to the chest, doesn’t appear to be much of a willing religious sacrifice either.
No religion needed. No rituals involved. These people were sometimes bound and tortured, always murdered and the bodies were dumped in the bog – because no one was going to go digging around in there in an attempt to find them.
It’s a simple theory and it only has hard evidence to back it up – but perhaps I should just bow down to the experts and go with their unsupported Celtic ritual sacrifice ideas, instead of thinking rationally about this?
On second thought, I’ll stick with Occam’s Razor.
Tags: bog bodies, logic, nova, pbs, peat bog
