University of Manchester Archeologist Melanie Giles will be setting out to investigate one of ancient histories most brutal murder mysteries tonight on Channel Five.
A rash of brutal killings in the country’s peat bogs, two thousand years ago including the death of Worsley Man, will be investigated using technology more akin to modern CSI programmes.
These ancient victims, dozens in number, have been uncovered in bogs throughout Northern Europe for centuries, with the most recent unearthed only last winter.
The remains are often astonishingly well-preserved; flesh, faces, fingernails, stomach contents and even hair have been mummified by the oxygen-free peat bogs in which the bodies were originally deposited.
Worsley man, who is on display at the Manchester Museum, was discovered in 1958 in a Salford peat bog, is thought to have lived around 100 AD around the time of the first Roman settlement in the area.
Speculation about his death has previously included robbery or human sacrifice and scans have the man was bludgeoned over the head, garrotted then beheaded at around the age of thirty.
Many of the victims investigated in the programme are strikingly similar, men in the prime of their life who have suffered hideous violence, they have been garrotted, their skulls smashed in, their throats slit and several have been decapitated before their burial in peat bogs.
The programme seeks to ask just who were these poor unfortunate people? Who killed them, why, and why with such brutality? And why place the corpses in peat bogs? These are questions that have puzzled archaeologists for decades, but Melanie is determined to answer them.
This film unravels like an episode of CSI, as Melanie scours the bodies and crime scenes hunting for clues. As in all good crime dramas, the answer is elusive and there’s a shocking twist in the tale, provided by the extraordinary results of a CT scan of Worsley man’s head.
,What Melanie discovers not only explains the killings, it also reveals a shocking truth about our ancestors and their brutal actions in times of crisis.
Murdered-Bodies in the Bog-Tonight (23rd May) Channel Five 7.00pm
