Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff from how Stuff Works, Hey, brain Stuff,
Speaker 1: Lauren voke obam here. Bogs are pretty awesome as far
Speaker 1: as sweeping mud fields of dead buried plants go. They
Speaker 1: store the energy of generations of plants in their mass,
Speaker 1: which can be harvested as pete. They're also havens for mummies.
Speaker 1: Artifacts buried beneath bogs, including human bodies, may be kept
Speaker 1: in astonishingly good condition for thousands and thousands of years.
Speaker 1: They've all got stories to tell, and today we'll look
Speaker 1: at the weird science that makes their preservation possible. Common
Speaker 1: in cool, wet parts of the world, bogs are water
Speaker 1: logged grounds that form when decaying plant matter, known as pete,
Speaker 1: accumulates in low lying areas. Bogs are usually found in
Speaker 1: cool climates and often in lake basins created by ice
Speaker 1: age glaciers that no longer get a steady flow of
Speaker 1: river or stream water over time. Mosses cover the heap
Speaker 1: like a blanket, and in most cases, this mossy layer
Speaker 1: is primarily made of am called sphagnum. Sphactum. Moss has
Speaker 1: the power to transform an entire landscape. Water or dirt
Speaker 1: trapped beneath sheets of it. Will be cut off from
Speaker 1: the normal supply of oxygen from the atmosphere. Also, sphagnum
Speaker 1: soaks up calcium and magnesium, which makes the underlying soil
Speaker 1: and water mildly acidic. Since bacteria and fungi find those
Speaker 1: conditions inhospitable, the dead vegetation decomposes at a phenomenally slow rate.
Speaker 1: Instead of breaking down right away, it lingers piling up.
Speaker 1: Over time, masses of the botanical waste gradually turn into pete,
Speaker 1: a soggy, mud colored substance. Pete can be used as
Speaker 1: animal bedding and as a fossil fuel, which makes it
Speaker 1: an important commodity in places like the Irish Midlands and
Speaker 1: in Scotland, where it's the traditional fuel for fires that
Speaker 1: dry out grain to make Scotch whiskey, imparting smoke and
Speaker 1: its flavors along with that heat. But two archaeologists, pete
Speaker 1: is a lot less valuable than the human corpses that
Speaker 1: sometimes come with it. Bogs have long fascinated humans, not
Speaker 1: just for their fossil fuels. The spongee oil has intrigued
Speaker 1: people as far back as the Bronze Age. Many people
Speaker 1: died in these bogs or were placed there after their deaths,
Speaker 1: and these bog bodies, as they're known, have been found
Speaker 1: all over the world. The wetlands of northwestern Europe, for instance,
Speaker 1: is a bog body hub. Hundreds of these corpses have
Speaker 1: turned up in Germany, England, the Netherlands and neighboring countries.
Speaker 1: In eleven pete harvesters working in Ireland accidentally ran over
Speaker 1: a Bronze age corpse with a milling machine. Dubbed the
Speaker 1: Castle Man. The harvester found all that was left of
Speaker 1: an adult male who probably died in his twenties. His
Speaker 1: body was riddled with injuries, including a broken arm and
Speaker 1: a nasty cut across the backside. Some of these may
Speaker 1: have been caused by the compressing weight of the bog
Speaker 1: moss above him or the blades of that milling device. Nevertheless,
Speaker 1: archaeologists have reason to suspect that the casual Man was
Speaker 1: a ritualized sacrifice victim. Other European bog bodies have displayed
Speaker 1: stab wounds, slit throats, and evidence of torture. Historians think
Speaker 1: that the local wetlands were once a hotbed for religious sacrifices.
Speaker 1: Carbon dating tells us the casual man perished about four
Speaker 1: thousand years ago, seven centuries before King Tuton Common was born.
Speaker 1: To date, he's the oldest European bog body on record
Speaker 1: with intact skin. That's right, the corpse of somebody who's
Speaker 1: been dead for four millennia still has its skin attached,
Speaker 1: and this isn't a fluke. Lots of bog bodies retain
Speaker 1: some or all of their original skin. The Taaland Man,
Speaker 1: a twenty three hundred year old corpse recovered from a
Speaker 1: Denmark peat bog in nineteen fifty, has skeletonized hands, but
Speaker 1: elsewhere his skin is so well preserved that little details
Speaker 1: like the wrinkles on his forehead are still visible. Although
Speaker 1: the Taaland Man's skin didn't rot away, the mummification process
Speaker 1: did change its appearance and texture. Like the casual man
Speaker 1: and lots of other bog bodies, he sports leathery, dark
Speaker 1: brown skin. Some of them also have preserved hair that
Speaker 1: was dyed red after death. This is most likely caused
Speaker 1: by a recently discovered polymer called sphagnum, which seeps out
Speaker 1: of dead sphagnum moss. If you think of leather, it's
Speaker 1: through a process called tanning that strengthens the bonds between
Speaker 1: some of the natural fibers in animal hides. As a
Speaker 1: tanning agent, sphagnan has the same effect on human skin,
Speaker 1: rendering it tough and tea colored. Sphagnan also binds with nitrogen,
Speaker 1: which bacteria need to survive, so by removing nitrogen from
Speaker 1: the environment, sphagnan helps prevent the spread of microorganisms that
Speaker 1: would normally be breaking down human and animal remains. And Furthermore, sphagnan,
Speaker 1: along with the acid that it turns into, pulls calcium
Speaker 1: right out of dead bodies. Bones get weakened in the process.
Speaker 1: Although sphagnan does a fine job of preserving skin, it's
Speaker 1: calcium thievery isn't great for skeletons. Mummies have been found
Speaker 1: in certain bogs with soft, extra flimsy bones that are
Speaker 1: about astarte's cardboard and that have been distorted by heavy peat,
Speaker 1: but that's assuming the decalcification process doesn't altogether eliminate bones.
Speaker 1: Lots of bog bodies have been found missing bones, and
Speaker 1: some of the mummies are totally boneless. The latter are
Speaker 1: basically human shaped bags of leatheries in wrapped around some
Speaker 1: pickled organs. Not all bogs are so hostile to bones, though,
Speaker 1: the water's acidity level varies from bogged bog and this
Speaker 1: impacts corpse preservation. Archaeologists have discovered that in really acidic
Speaker 1: peat bogs, the resident mummies have lots of skin and
Speaker 1: soft tissue and weak or non existent bones, But there
Speaker 1: are some boggy places with relatively alkaline water. Here the
Speaker 1: environment pretty much has the opposite effect on corpses. A take,
Speaker 1: for example, the Windover Archaeological Site, a peat bottomed pond
Speaker 1: in Florida that became the final resting place for dozens
Speaker 1: of Native Americans between seven and eight thousand years ago.
Speaker 1: Skeletal remains from a hundred and sixty eight people have
Speaker 1: turned up in the peat. A large deposit of crushed
Speaker 1: up snail shells lying under the pond supplies the water
Speaker 1: with magnesium and calcium carbonates That makes the water more alkaline,
Speaker 1: neutralizing the spagnum to an extent. Instead of mummified skin bags,
Speaker 1: the bog is rife with naked bones and skeletons a
Speaker 1: bear as they are on the outside. The ancient bones
Speaker 1: had a big surprise sides in store for scientists. Brain
Speaker 1: tissue was found in more than ninety of the windover
Speaker 1: pond skulls, making them extra fascinating fines by the way,
Speaker 1: bonus fact of the episode. Most carnivorous plants, such as
Speaker 1: sundews and pitcher plants grow in bog soils, which tend
Speaker 1: to be nutrient poor. Eating animal prey is a strategy
Speaker 1: that helps them obtain vital nutrients. Today's episode was written
Speaker 1: by Mark Bancini and produced by Tyler clayg for iHeart
Speaker 1: Media and how Stuff Works. For more on this and
Speaker 1: lots of other topics that aren't too bogged down, visit
Speaker 1: our home planet to stuff works dot com.