{"id":589,"date":"2006-01-08T00:38:00","date_gmt":"2006-01-08T00:38:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=589"},"modified":"2006-01-08T00:38:00","modified_gmt":"2006-01-08T00:38:00","slug":"589","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=589","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

Bodies in the bog<\/strong><\/p>\n

From the Daily Mirror<\/em>, headlined “Murdered 2,500 Years Ago”<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Tortured, maimed and disembowelled, the two savagely slaughtered bodies were a grisly sight for the Irish peat bog workers who unearthed them.<\/p>\n

One of the dead men was found in County Meath, Ireland. The other was discovered three months later, just 25 miles away in Co. Offaly.<\/p>\n

With soft flesh, fingernails, masses of red hair, teeth and eyeballs still intact, it seemed that the corpses had been freshly buried. And detectives thought they had stumbled across IRA victims. But when state pathologist Marie Cassidy saw the water-logged graves, she suspected the remains were much older than they seemed.<\/em><\/p>\n

Archaeologist Ned Kelly thinks that they were sacred victims:<\/p>\n

“My belief is that these burials are offerings to the gods of fertility by kings, to ensure a successful reign,” says Ned. “And that bodies are placed in the borders surrounding royal land or on tribal boundaries to ensure a good yield of corn [small grain–CSC] and milk.<\/em><\/p>\n

More from the Irish Times<\/em> here<\/a> and from the BBC here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It’s just one more piece of their tradition that today’s Celtic Reconstructionist Pagans have thrown overboard.<\/p>\n

(Thanks to Mirabilis.ca<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

Tags: Celts<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bodies in the bog From the Daily Mirror, headlined “Murdered 2,500 Years Ago”: Tortured, maimed and disembowelled, the two savagely slaughtered bodies were a grisly sight for the Irish peat bog workers who unearthed them. One of the dead men was found in County Meath, Ireland. The other was discovered three months later, just 25 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-589","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s6xQTg-589","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":6636,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=6636","url_meta":{"origin":589,"position":0},"title":"Rethinking Bog People","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"July 29, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"In college I had a work-study job in the library, and my favorite part was shelving books, because I worked alone, deep in the stacks, and if I found something interesting, I could skim it quickly and either check it out or come back for it. One day I rolled\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"archaeology\"","block_context":{"text":"archaeology","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=archaeology"},"img":{"alt_text":"bogpeople_thumb[2]","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/07\/bogpeople_thumb2-168x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":6110,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=6110","url_meta":{"origin":589,"position":1},"title":"Excavating Witches","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 17, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"It was the obligatory Halloween content over at Bones Don't Lie, but I had too much else on my plate to link to it then. The question is, how can you tell if a buried ancient skeleton was that of a witch (in the anthropological sense)? Does the mouth full\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"archaeology\"","block_context":{"text":"archaeology","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=archaeology"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":532,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=532","url_meta":{"origin":589,"position":2},"title":"Where to donate for earthquake\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 12, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Where to donate for earthquake relief\"California Yankee\" has a list of organizations helping victims of the Kashmir earthquake. Most accept online donations.Tag: Kashmir Earthquake","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":153,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=153","url_meta":{"origin":589,"position":3},"title":"Mutilation bad, murder ... well,\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 2, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Mutilation bad, murder ... well, OK I thought that the right-wing bloggers might have made this one up, but it's true. The Council on American Islamic Relations, a self-described civil-rights organization, issued a press release condemning the mutilation of the bodies of the four American civilians killed in Falujah, Iraq,\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1005,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1005","url_meta":{"origin":589,"position":4},"title":"The Heart Has Its Reasons–For Wanting a Beer","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 9, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Stories like this one about a heart transplant may seem like fodder for Fate magazine.But they do raise interesting questions about the whole body-soul split, which is basic to all those religious traditions that teach we are spirits temporary in bodies--or trapped in bodies, as some would have it.Was it\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1778,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1778","url_meta":{"origin":589,"position":5},"title":"What Does that Tattoo Say?","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"September 2, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"It is to laugh. A blogger who reads Chinese and Japanese tells tattooed victims people what those Asian characters really say\u2014if, indeed, they say anything. Such as green vegetable. Or not chi (qi) but rice. Or not \"beautiful\" but \"disaster.\" This must be the revenge of the Orient for our\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"weirdness\"","block_context":{"text":"weirdness","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=weirdness"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/589","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=589"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/589\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}