The Old Croghan Man
Peat bogs are a squishy wetland made up of partially decayed plant matter and moss that has grown over underground pools of water. The moss keeps these underground water pockets very cold, acidic, and free of oxygen, which means that bacteria cannot decay matter like it does in other environments. Instead, things that are submerged in the bog, including human remains, baskets, metal tools, and in one case, butter, are instead preserved.
Sometimes, this preservation is so complete that the people who discover these bodies believe them to be the remains of recently deceased people—bog bodies are sometimes initially assumed to be murder victims, hidden in the bog to conceal a modern crime. Such was the case when workmen discovered the Old Croghan Man while digging a drainage ditch. Examination quickly revealed that the Old Croghan Man was not a modern person. He had certainly, however, been murdered.
The discovery of numerous other bog bodies, frequently killed in ritualized ways, tell us that human sacrifice was an accepted part of the Old Croghan Man’s culture. His people had no written language that we know of, so there is no way to know exactly why he was killed and put in the bog. It is believed, however, that he was a king, and his people may have sacrificed him in response to bad weather or poor harvests in the hope that his death would improve their circumstances, or at least remove an ineffective leader from power. During the Iron Age the bogs were seen as boundary spaces—gaps between the dense forests that covered most of the landscape. In these gaps, a king’s authority ended, and the only recognized ruler was the goddess of the wilderness.
If he was indeed a king, the Old Croghan Man likely symbolically married this land goddess during his coronation. This marriage would have given him power over parts of the natural world that his culture relied on for survival: the changing of the seasons, the weather, and the harvest. It is entirely possible that he knew what fate awaited him should a crop fail—he may have gone to his death willingly, having eaten a symbolic last meal before sacrificing himself in the hope that his death would improve the circumstances of the people he tried to lead. Then again, a wound discovered on his arm can be interpreted to mean that he tried to defend himself from his attackers. It's simply not possible to know for sure.
The Old Croghan Man is on permanent display at the National Museum of Ireland, where great care has been taken to reflect what is known about the Celtic culture in which he lived and died. But the fact remains that neither the Old Croghan Man nor the people who killed him could have predicted that his body would have been preserved for this long. There is debate as to whether the people of the Iron Age knew that the bog acted as a preservative—one discovery of a set of artifacts included almost perfectly-preserved butter. Is this evidence that the Celts knew that the bog would prevent food from rotting, and stored the butter in the bog as a kind of refrigeration? Or was the butter meant as a sacrifice as well?
There’s no way to know for certain, but even if we had a time machine and could go back and ask them, it would be impossible for us to explain the circumstances in which the Old Croghan Man now resides. Museums would have been unimaginable. Human sacrifice was likely a cultural norm, looking at dead bodies might not have been. Displaying the remains of this ancient person in its current context would seem very strange.
Before we had the technology to identify bog bodies as ancient humans, the common response to a discovery was to simply re-bury the body in a churchyard. At that time, this would have been a respectful response to the discovery of an unclaimed body. Almost everyone was Christian, and a church burial was a requirement for peace in the afterlife as well as for one’s eventual resurrection. That kind of burial isn’t an option for the Old Croghan Man and even if it was, it wouldn’t be appropriate. For one thing, he wasn’t Christian. For another, his body is useful for learning more about the history of early people in Ireland and for helping people connect with ancestors who lived such a long time ago.
Despite these considerations, many cultures around the world view burial as a sacred ritual of rest. What does it mean for the Old Croghan Man that he has been removed from the place where his people buried him? Would he perhaps be pleased to know that he is venerated once again, this time as an object of history and science rather than as a king? Does it even matter what he might have thought and felt? After all, he died a very long time ago, and there is still much to be learned about the world and about ourselves from the discovery of bog bodies like the Old Croghan Man.
