Читать книгу World History For Dummies - Peter Haugen - Страница 29

The watery peat bogs of northern Europe also made mummies. Tannins in the peat (partially decayed plant matter) and the cold water preserved bodies in such startlingly good condition that Danish villagers have sometimes mistaken a 2,500-year-old body for that of someone they knew only decades before.

Though discolored by the tannins, the mummies look much as they did when the people died. Some people may have fallen into the bogs, but many were killed and dumped there, perhaps as ritual sacrifices or as victims of another kind of execution. Some mummies of young women wear blindfolds, and other mummies appear to have been drowned alive. There are mummies with ropes around their necks, and some with slit throats.

Most of these peat-bog mummies have intact skin, hair, fingernails, and even facial expressions. And their jewelry and clothing sometimes look unsettlingly like something that could hang in your 21st-century closet.