Scottish Mummies pre-date Tutankhamun...

Well I don't know about you but I had no idea the bronze age Britons practised deliberate mummification.

Two skeletons from Cladh Hallan, on South Uist in the Western Isles Scotland, seem to have been deliberately mummified – and one was only buried an estimated five hundred years after he died, both of the skeletons provide evidence of mummification and post mortem manipulation of body parts. Perhaps these practices were widespread in Bronze Age Britain?

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Dating from around 1600 BC - 1300 BC and buried around 1120 BC the older mummy (the male) pre-dates Tutankhamun by several hundred years!

Cladh Hallan - the site of the excavations
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source

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What is even more fascinating however is this recent finding....

DNA tests on British prehistoric mummies revealed they were made of body parts from several different people, arranged to look like one person.

Prof Parker Pearson, an expert in the Bronze Age, theorises that these mummies could of played a role in ancestor worship.

He said as part of ancestral worship, the mummies probably would have been asked for spiritual advice to help the community make decisions.

The mummies appear to have been deliberately placed in a peat bog to mummify and then removed a year or so later only to be re-articulated and reburied several hundred years later......

In order for the bodies to have been found as articulated skeletons as they were, rather than piles of bones, some soft tissue preservation had to have taken place. Further tests showed that the bones had become demineralised, a process caused by placing a body in an acidic environment like a peat bog. The degree of demineralisation on the bones found showed that after death, the bodies had been placed in bogs for about a year to mummify them before being recovered.

link to the story

I wonder if some of the random hills in the UK could be ancient pyramids covered with vegetation now?

reply to post by Versa
That's absolutely fascinating. The idea that bog mummies were created to be removed at a later date has never been considered before and really opens up a lot of speculation indeed. In this light, the ones we've found across North Europe might not necessarily have been intended to stay in there.

I wonder if any of the bodies in this site have been found with evidence of cutting or injury prior to death? Most of the bog bodies that have been recovered died in fairly horrendous ways. It's been speculated that they were killed by three ways (threefold death) for example a limb would be severed, the throat cut and maybe a hook passed through a muscle.Nasty endings!

I'll be keeping an eye on this research so thanks a lot for posting.

This man was stabbed, choked and clubbed
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I wrote a thread ages ago that failed miserably, but remains my favourite. It's all about the 'mummies' and has some great pictures...Ancient Crimes and Sacrifices.

Originally posted by Kandinsky

I wrote a thread ages ago that failed miserably, but remains my favourite. It's all about the 'mummies' and has some great pictures...Ancient Crimes and Sacrifices.

thanks for the link, I'll be taking a look at it later, defiantly one of the more interesting subjects IMO Very interesting to note that so many are de-articulated...... That is very interesting given that the bodies in this thread have been made up of multiple corpses....

ETA it looks like a great thread! Ah... the mysteries of ATS, why one brilliant thread should fail while a two line comment about bunkum should soar is beyond me.

Very nice and interesting find. Most of the bronzeage mummies are bog-mummies, not mummified on purpose which make your find even more interesting.

reply to post by Kandinsky


Very nice thread you made about the bogmummies.

I like the first picture you post, It is a picture of the Tollund man found not far from where i live. As you said he's not mummified on purpose but murdered and "thrown" into a swamparea.

When somebody died in the Iron Age, the body was cremated in a funeral pyre, the ashes and the bones were placed in an urn and buried. However, this is not what happened to the Tollund Man or the other bog bodies which have been discovered. It is a strong indication that they were sacrifices to the gods.Source

reply to post by Kandinsky


I loved that thread! I remember it was one of the first ones I read when I joined ATS

I found it very cool and interesting. Those are the threads I loved on ATS when I joined and still do


OP very cool! Makes you wonder about so many things. I think our ancestors are much cooler and advanced in their own ways than we are lead to believe.

S&F!!

The one member who mentions the hills possibly being pyramids, now that would be interesting. I know some of the pyramids in China look like mounds yet they are pyramids

Originally posted by Mimir
Very nice and interesting find. Most of the bronzeage mummies are bog-mummies, not mummified on purpose.

These are also 'bog mummies' but they were removed from the bog after about a year.

I think what Kandinsky is pondering is how many of the bog mummies were also intended to be exhumed but for one reason or another remained in the bog.

Do they know that the limb being cut or the throat cut was the cause of death?
Perhaps they did it to bleed the body before mummification.

The 'mounds' close to here look like pyramids to me.
Picture of one:

Originally posted by Versa

Originally posted by Mimir
Very nice and interesting find. Most of the bronze age mummies are bog-mummies, not mummified on purpose.

These are also 'bog mummies' but they were removed from the bog after about a year.

I think what Kandinsky is pondering is how many of the bog mummies were also intended to be exhumed but for one reason or another remained in the bog.

And that is a very interesting idea.

You may be correct on that because they actually took the time to close he's eyes and mouth after the hanging. They also moved he's body to the bog instead of burning it. Most speculations say he's a offering to the god(s). The god of war was supposedly connected to the bogs and swamps. They are not sure which gods was worshiped, but a few hundred years later the God of War would have been Tyr of the Norse Mythology.

The museum storing The tollund man write about the godspeculations on their webpage, which is in Danish so I doubt you want to visit that, also most of the post is about the daily life in those days, not about the religions and gods Source.


reply to post by hadriana



The tollund man was most likely a war criminel or traitor, because those kinds of people were hung. A Italian named Cornelius Tacitus reports that desertion and treason was sentenced with hanging at that time. also Danish


Sorry about the foreign links, but they don’t have a English version of their webpages. Maybe google translate can assist you, if you want to confirm what i said.

reply to post by Mimir


ty for the links I think my parents had a book on the bog mummies (I think it was a book not an old nat geo) which I'll try to dig up when I go over there next

Ive got a good book on Norse Myths and Legends here on the shelf somewhere that I ought to read again... Don't the Norse myths appear at a much later date than these mummies? 800 AD-1100AD? Im sure though that the stories come from an earlier form of Norse mythology

Originally posted by CasiusIgnoranze
I wonder if some of the random hills in the UK could be ancient pyramids covered with vegetation now?

Yes....

Now we need to Google Maps it and see some locations and i'll set up a reason to visit where ever we Decide

Originally posted by CasiusIgnoranze
I wonder if some of the random hills in the UK could be ancient pyramids covered with vegetation now?

*gets google earth running* the race is on!

Originally posted by CasiusIgnoranze
I wonder if some of the random hills in the UK could be ancient pyramids covered with vegetation now?

I've suspected that many hills in the UK might be tombs, not necessarily strictly pyramids.

Silbury Hill in Wiltshire, England is of interest here.
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Silbury Hill may well have been a tomb, not for bodies, but for the souls of the dead. The English Heritage dig [2007], which cost £1m, tunnelled 85 metres into the 40-metre-high man-made hill, discovering that its Neolithic builders had incorporated hundreds of heavy sarsen stones into its matrix. Sarsen, the silicified sandstone still found in greatquantities in Wiltshire, was also used to build Stonehenge and Avebury [stone circles].

Source: www.hotspotsz.com...

Although Silbury does not appear to have had a tomb inside it, perhaps some of the other strange hills in the UK do. Candidates might include Dragon Hill, Uffington near the White Horse (chalk figure~1000B.C.). This site is also associated with death via myth.

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The Uffington Horse, Uffington 'Castle' and Dragon Hill are all located beside the ancient track called the 'Ridgeway'. Dragon Hill itself is an artificially levelled chalk outcrop below and immediately in front of the Uffington White Horse. Tradition claims the bare chalk patch on the top of the hill to have been caused by the blood spilled when St. George slew the dragon.

Source: www.ancient-wisdom.co.uk...

Don't you just love the ancient Britain stuff. So mysterious.

Oh yes, what do you think folks? Could sacred hills like Dragon Hill be tombs?

This video, taken from the White Horse, gives an impression of the site.


This short BBC video is also very good. www.bbc.co.uk...

Originally posted by Pimander
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The Uffington Horse, Uffington 'Castle' and Dragon Hill are all located beside the ancient track called the 'Ridgeway'. Dragon Hill itself is an artificially levelled chalk outcrop below and immediately in front of the Uffington White Horse. Tradition claims the bare chalk patch on the top of the hill to have been caused by the blood spilled when St. George slew the dragon.

Source: www.ancient-wisdom.co.uk...

Don't you just love the ancient Britain stuff. So mysterious.

Oh yes, what do you think folks? Could sacred hills like Dragon Hill be tombs?

It looks kind of similar to bryn celli ddu which did serve as a tomb...

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reply to post by Versa

In my opinion, a lot of these "hills" might be worth a second look. There is one in Derbyshire (not so far from me) that looks suspiciously man made. Unfortunately I don't have a picture. It isn't far from the Nine Ladies stone circle, Stanton Moor. I often camp up there. Nice place.
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Of course, we mustn't forget Glastonbury Tor. It is after all the supposed resting place of King Arthur. Although probably a load of baloney, these types of story do show an association of hills with the dead....

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Originally posted by Pimander
Of course, we mustn't forget Glastonbury Tor. It is after all the supposed resting place of King Arthur. Although probably a load of baloney, these types of story do show an association of hills with the dead....

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lol I dont know how I didnt bring up Glastonbury Tor, its a couple of miles down the road from me

ETA if I could star you twice for that I would That goes to show you often don't see what's under your own nose

reply to post by Versa


I've spent a fair few nights sleeping on and around Glastonbury Tor. The name of the actual tower is St. Michael's Tower. The name of St. Michael is found across SW England in association with hills and high places, probably replacing the name of a pre-Christian sky god/-ess.

Where you find chalk horses,in many cases local names or folklore often refer to dragons. I wonder if the horses were originally dragons?

I think the reason they mummified composite corpses may have been to create a kind of "totem", embodying each generation of the tribe, which would in turn point to ancestor worship, the mummy representing the corpus of the tribe as a whole, rather than one revered person.

reply to post by NocturnalPhantom

Indeed there is an important dragon line passing through Glastonbury - which happens to be named after St. Michael.

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What could it all mean?

Sorry. I'll let you get back on topic if you like. Just letting myself get carried away a bit. Naughty Pimander.

EDIT:

Originally posted by Versa
lol I dont know how I didnt bring up Glastonbury Tor, its a couple of miles down the road from me

ETA if I could star you twice for that I would

That goes to show you often don't see what's under your own nose

Well you can hardly say I didn't give you a nudge.

reply to post by Pimander

I live in Bristol and like to spend a lot of my spare time rambling and sleeping rough in the local countryside, and I pick up a lot of local legends and stuff as I talk to folk on my way. And these references to St. Michael, Dragons and underground tunnels, etc. are everywhere. We even have St. Michael's hill in the city centre. Didn't know about that line though, so thanks for that.

Next time I get a few weeks, I might try to follow its course. It seems to go through some interesting places.

reply to post by NocturnalPhantom

I've actually considered running a tour along the line either on foot or by coach/minibus. There is an incredible amount of heritage and history along there. Look it up for yourself. It includes Avebury, Bury St. Edmunds and lots more. It is truly incredible. I think the line points to the sunrise around May day too. Don't you just love a mystery?

Oops, here I go again. Slipping further from the topic. However, there is a link with death an burials so hopefully Versa can forgive me this time...