History’s Most Overlooked Mysteries…

Fascinating stuff from Live Science:

http://www.livescience.com/11361-history-overlooked-mysteries.html

My two favorite listed pieces are rather grim as they both involve ancient corpses: The Tarim Mummies and the Bog Bodies.

The Tarim Mummies were new to me upon reading the article.  The idea that a group of European people made it as far as Western China, lived their lives there, and were subsequently buried and mummified…is incredible.  Who were those people?  Why did they move so far from their home?  Why settle there?

As for the bog bodies, I had heard of them before.  Some of the more hair-raising stories involved people who were apparently tortured/killed in a cruel manner before their body (whether still alive or not) was thrown into the bogs.  Depending on the chemical composition of the bog they were thrown into, some of the bodies were remarkably well preserved and detailed the grim way some of them died.

If you’re intrigued with the bog bodies, you can find more information on it here:

http://archive.archaeology.org/online/features/bog/

This link, found in the one above, offers some of bodies found that were clearly victims of violence:

http://archive.archaeology.org/online/features/bog/violence1.html