A Mesolithic Slave Executed In Neolithic Denmark?
Modern genetics reveal a murder-mystery drama set in the bogs of prehistoric Scandinavia
The grey Atlantic shoreline was the same as ever, the day they took him away. Grim, cold, harsh. He has been born and raised amongst its rocky piers and endless shoals of fish, spent a happy childhood catching crabs and accompanying his father into the mountains for the summer - how he had loved the taste of the secretive little waterfalls with their hovering birds and shimmering rainbows, a sweet clear water like no other. Like all his age he had learnt to swim underwater with his eyes open, even in the deepest sea, and master the fast kayaks which gave them access to the sealing beaches at calving time. The people to the south didn’t bother them much, sometimes bringing around pots of sour milk and asking for furs, honey, children. These last two summers though had been different and a few families had been caught on the sand, a man at sea watching as his younglings were bundled away, himself bound up like a bear cub and taken in one of their boats, roaring at his fate. Then it was his turn, an ordinary day like any other, and a quick crack on the head whilst he was out retrieving an arrow. When he came to, he was being carried by an older man into a settlement of houses which smelt of seal fat and burnt soil. A few nights of cold porridge on the damp earth, guarded by snarling dogs with a dozen or so others from his people, and then off again in another procession of boats. He had struggled of course, and received enough bruised ribs in return. Every night he tried to picture the route home, following the coast towards the whales and less salty water, but it was getting harder to imagine the journey. Eventually he was sold to a family who kept pigs and spoke a language he couldn’t understand. He hated their mushy food and dirty homes, and he hated the way they stared at the earth, crumbling bits of it between their fingers every day, tasting it. He longed for the sea. Even as he raked and shovelled and carried and sweated, he thought of nothing but the sea, the tangy ozone of the winter waves, the call home of the gulls on a bright morning. Then one day he was too tired to work, too sick of the gritty grains grinding through his stomach, too heartbroken for the world he had lost - they came that night and took him again, fed him a queer soup of bitter leaves and dressed him in simple clothes. A chant? A frenzied clapping? He couldn’t see straight, staggering like a wounded doe. Someone pushed him on his knees, the ground was wet, threatening to swallow him whole. He felt his world explode in a single moment of infinite pain, and then silence overtook him. The sea…. The sea.
In 1915 a Danish peat cutter uncovered the body of an adult male, along with a wooden club and some pig bones. No doubt it wasn’t the first ancient thing he had discovered, since the bogs and peat marshes of northwest Europe were, and still are, brimming with archaeological finds. This skeleton was dubbed the Vittrup Man, a moniker to sit comfortably alongside the Tollund Man, the Koelbjerg Man and the Lindow Man. Bog bodies are an unusually popular archaeological artefact, no doubt due to the morbid combination of their leathery faces and typically violent deaths. The Vittrup Man was not considered to be anything special, until a Finnish conservation expert noticed one day that his skull was unusually archaic looking. The resulting flurry of work that came from this observation was published in February this year, under the title - Vittrup Man–The life-history of a genetic foreigner in Neolithic Denmark.
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