Men from Weerdinge

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Men from Weerdinge
Geert Jannes Landweer's photograph of the men from Weerdinge, who were prepared to dry, shortly after their discovery in 1904

The weerdinge men (Dutch pair van Weerdinge ) are two bog bodies , the 1904 Weerdingerveen , one of the Netherlands the continental part Bourtanger Moores , were found near the town Nieuw-Weerdinge. The bog bodies are kept in the Drents Museum in Assen and shown in the permanent archaeological exhibition. For a long time they were known as the von Weerdinge (married) couple due to incorrect gender determination.

Find

The peat cutter Hilbrand Gringhuis came across the two bodies lying next to each other while working on June 29, 1904. One of the two bodies was lying on the arm of the other. He carefully uncovered the bodies and alerted the police. The two moor bodies were dug up and taken to the small morgue in the Nieuw-Weerdinger cemetery . Since the remains of the two men were only a few centimeters thick and very flexible, they were placed on top of each other, rolled up and packed in a box. The employees of the Provincial Museum of Oudheden in Assen, the forerunner of today's Drents Museum, learned about the find from a local newspaper. Landweer, a member of the museum commission, immediately traveled to Weerdinge, examined and photographed the find, and arranged for the find to be brought to the museum. After a brief initial examination, the remains were exhibited in the museum, which resulted in a sharp increase in visitor numbers. At first, the sexes of the two bodies could not be clearly determined. The almost intimate-looking found situation of the two men, who apparently lay in each other's arms, led to the assumption that this was a married couple, whereupon they were for a long time the couple or married couple von Weerdinge and popularly even as a man and woman Veenstra were designated. Veen is the Dutch name for bog.

52 ° 50 '48.1 "  N , 6 ° 57' 23.5"  E Coordinates: 52 ° 50 '48.1 "  N , 6 ° 57' 23.5"  E

Findings

The two bog bodies were found lying on their backs, with the left lying on the outstretched arm of the man lying close to him. No clothes or other belongings were observed on the bodies. The bodies of the two men have shrunk somewhat and, as a result of the pressure of the layers of earth above, flattened them to about two to three centimeters. The length of the man on the right was determined by Landweer to be 175 cm after the discovery, whereas its length after drying is only 134 cm. The body of the man on the left measures 126 cm after drying. Soft tissues, internal organs and hair were well preserved by the action of the moor acids , but the bones were largely dissolved. The skin layers are wrinkled due to drying and are light brown to dark brown in color. Forensic analyzes showed that both men had blood group 0 . The papillary ridges of the toes were so well preserved that the toe prints could still be dactylographically evaluated; these have a pattern type that is currently less common in Central Europe.

The left man

The left man's head is largely gone. Smooth cut edges on the remnants of the man's scalp and hair indicate that parts of it were cut off and removed after the salvage. During his lifetime the man was about 169 cm tall

The right man

The head of the right man is largely preserved with a loose tuft of hair. The remains show that the man had a stubbly beard. There is a large hole in his chest, with intestines protruding from it. These intestinal remnants could not have emerged from the man's body at this point. They probably come from the defective abdomen of the left man, which was probably accidentally inserted into the gaping wound on the right man after they were found. The man's genital area shows a clear defect which, due to the nature of the wound edges, was only caused after it was found, but not by peat cutting. Rather, it is assumed that visitors removed parts of the bog bodies at the site and took them with them, as happened, for example, with the girl from Yde . In addition, Landweer mentions in his report to the museum that he changed the position of the arms of the left bog body for his photography in order to make the picture less morally offensive to the public.

Follow-up examination

More recent investigations, in particular comparisons with the historical photograph of the find in front of Landweer's Weerdingen morgue from 1904 with the current condition of the corpses revealed numerous discrepancies and indications of manipulation of the find in its current form. Corresponding cuts from the peat cut on both bodies indicate that the man on the left originally lay about 20 centimeters below the man on the right in the bog.

Gender determinations

At first, the sexes of the two bodies could not be clearly determined. The almost intimate-looking found position of both bodies, which apparently lay in each other's arms, led, in accordance with the role model of the early 20th century, to the interpretation of a married couple of man and woman. The interpretation of the left corpse as a woman was apparently reinforced by the smaller body size compared to the right, the lack of external genitalia and a triangular defect in the genital area. This led to the assumption that this was a married couple and that the two bodies were referred to as a couple or married couple von Weerdinge and popularly even as Mr. and Mrs. Veenstra for a long time . Veen is the Dutch name for bog. Because of the supposedly conclusive evidence, the theory of men and women lasted a long time and was hardly questioned. Only in the course of more recent examinations of the remains of the corpses in 1988 were stubble found in the facial areas of both corpses, which together with the lack of bulges in the chest led to the correction of the gender of the left corpse as a man. This determination could be confirmed by means of a DNA analysis . A family relationship between the two men could neither be confirmed nor refuted due to the unfavorable preservation of the DNA.

Dating

The peat layer in which the two men lay was dated to the late Iron Age or the Roman Empire using pollen analysis . Radiocarbon dating ( 14 C dating) carried out in Oxford in the 1980s revealed a period of death between 40 BC and 50 AD. A more recent 14 C dating series of two skin and hair samples using accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) confirmed this dating .

Cause of death

Premortal cuts and punctures received before death indicate unnatural causes of death for both men.

Comparative finds

There is a similar find of two people sunk together in the moor, including the men of Hunteburg from the Großer Moor in the district of Osnabrück .

literature

  • Vincent van Vilsteren: A sex change in bog bodies: Investigations on the couple from Weerdinge and other bog body finds from the Drents Museum Assen, Netherlands . In: Alfried Wieczorek , Wilfried Rosendahl (eds.): Mummies: The dream of eternal life . von Zabern, Darmstadt 2015, ISBN 978-3-8053-4939-0 , p. 314-319 .
  • Wijnand van der Sanden : Mummies from the moor. The prehistoric and protohistoric bog bodies from northwestern Europe . Batavian Lion International, Amsterdam 1996, ISBN 90-6707-416-0 (Dutch, original title: Vereeuwigd in het veen . Translated by Henning Stilke).
  • Wijnand van der Sanden : Mens en moeras: veenlijken in Nederland van de bronstijd tot en met de Romeinse tijd . In: Archeologische monografieën van het Drents Museum . No. 1 . Drents Museum, Assen 1990, ISBN 90-70884-31-3 , p. 64, 83-86, 108-112 (Dutch).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Michiel Gerding: Het Drenthe boek . Ed .: Drents Archief. Waanders, Zwolle 2007, ISBN 978-90-400-8211-5 , p. 24, 103 (Dutch).
  2. ^ Wijnand van der Sanden : Men en moeras: veenlijken in Nederland van de bronstijd tot en met de Romeinse tijd . In: Archeologische monografieën van het Drents Museum . No. 1 . Drents Museum, Assen 1990, ISBN 90-70884-31-3 , p. 62, fig. 14 .
  3. ↑ Thomas Brock: Moor corpses. Witnesses of past millennia . In: Archeology in Germany, special issue . Theiss, Stuttgart 2009, ISBN 978-3-8062-2205-0 , pp. 98-99 .
  4. ↑ a b c d e f Vincent van Vilsteren: A sex change in bog bodies: Investigations on the von Weerdinge couple and other bog body finds from the Drents Museum Assen, Netherlands . In: Alfried Wieczorek , Wilfried Rosendahl (eds.): Mummies: The dream of eternal life . von Zabern, Darmstadt 2015, ISBN 978-3-8053-4939-0 , p. 314-319 .
  5. ↑ Johannes van der Plicht, Wijnand van der Sanden , AT Aerts, HJ Streurman: Dating bog bodies by means of 14 C-AMS . In: Journal of Archaeological Science . tape 31 , no. 4 , 2004, ISSN  0305-4403 , p. 471–491 , doi : 10.1016 / j.jas.2003.09.012 (English, ub.rug.nl [PDF; 388 kB ; accessed on June 2, 2010]).