Who Was Lindow Man?

Lindow Man is the name given to the remains of an iron Age man who was discovered in a peat bog at Lindow Marsh in Cheshire, England, in 1984. Like other peat bog bodies, the chemicals in the peat had acted on the body to keep it in a very good state of preservation, so it had not been subjected to the normal process of decay.

The archaeologists who studied the body concluded that the man had been knocked unconscious, had then been strangled by a leather thread and had had his throat cut before being thrown into the bog. He may have been a victim of human sacrifice as the Celtic people to whom the man belonged had a tradition of making offerings by throwing bodies into rivers and marshes.

Further investigation of the body revealed that the man's stomach contained a last meal of barley bannock which might have been given to him as preparation for being a sacrificial offering. Otherwise, his body was in remarkably good condition, even his nails were manicure, indicating that he may have been a high ranking Celt, maybe even a Druid prince.

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