Man from Windeby

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The Windeby man , officially the bog corpse Windeby II , was discovered on June 9, 1952 in the north of Schleswig-Holstein near the village of Windeby in the Domslandmoor, which today belongs to the municipality of Eckernförde . This bog is often incorrectly referred to in the specialist literature as the Domlandsmoor .

The Windeby man is in the care of the Schleswig-Holstein State Museum Schloss Gottorf .
Location: 54 ° 27 ′ 6 ″  N , 9 ° 49 ′ 31.7 ″  E Coordinates: 54 ° 27 ′ 6 ″  N , 9 ° 49 ′ 31.7 ″  E

Finding

The skin and scalp hair were completely preserved, but flattened by the peat layer above. Except for a few smaller pieces, the bones were dissolved by the moor acids . The bog body rested on its back in a peat pit 2.25 × 1.3 meters in size. The forearms were crossed over the chest, the legs slightly bent at the knees. No remains of clothes were found. Above the man there were eight crooked birch sticks as thick as an arm, which had been stuck into the ground next to the body and held it in place. A hazel rod tied around the man's neck suggests that it was used to strangle him before he went to bed in the moor.

The age of the man could not be determined exactly, but a clue is given by individual light, probably gray hairs in the otherwise dark head of hair. A 14 C dating carried out in the 1990s resulted in a rather unrealistic dating to the late Mesolithic , the 6th to 7th millennium BC. A more recent 14 C dating of a sample from the hazel rod wrapped around the neck revealed a time of death in the period between 380 and 185 BC Chr.

Speculation

Shortly after the discovery, the Windeby man was publicly associated with the bog body of Windeby I , found three weeks before him and only five meters away , in which an executed adulteress and her lover were suspected. Because of the popular attractiveness of these conjectures, these speculations persisted for decades. The archaeologist Michael Fee examined all available sources and refuted these speculations in 1979. In a genetic analysis carried out in the early 2000s, the alleged girl von Windeby turned out to be around 16 years old, who also turned out to be around 300 years younger than the man due to 14 C dating.

Varia

Both finds impressively show how differently the conditions in the moor can influence the conservation of bodies. Both bog bodies were only five meters apart. However, the body of the boy Windeby I was much better preserved than that of the man. The boy's corpse lay further away from the edge of the moor, where it was much better preserved.

literature

  • Michael Fee : Moor corpses in Schleswig-Holstein . Ed .: Association for the Promotion of Archaeolog. Landesmuseums eV, Gottorf Castle. Wachholtz, Neumünster 2002, ISBN 3-529-01870-8 .
  • 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).
  • PV Glob : The sleepers in the moor . Winkler, Munich 1966 (Danish: Mosefolket . Translated by Thyra Dohrenburg).

Individual evidence

  1. ^ PB Diezel, Walter Hage, Herbert Jankuhn , E. Klenk, Ulrich Schaefer, Karl Schlabow , Rudolf Schütrumpf , Hugo Spatz : Two bog body finds from the Domlandsmoor . In: Praehistorische Zeitschrift . No. 36 . de Gruyter, 1958, ISSN  0079-4848 , p. 186, fig. 1 .
  2. ^ Wijnand van der Sanden: C14 dating of bog bodies from Lower Saxony and Schleswig-Holstein . In: Lower Saxony State Association for Prehistory (Ed.): The customer NF No. 46 , 1995, ISSN  0342-0736 , pp. 137-155 .
  3. ^ Michael Fee: Moor corpses in Schleswig-Holstein . Ed .: Association for the Promotion of Archaeolog. Landesmuseums eV, Gottorf Castle. Wachholtz, Neumünster 2002, ISBN 3-529-01870-8 , pp. 47 .
  4. ↑ Diezel, Hage, Herbert Jankuhn, Klenk, E. Schaefer, Karl Schlabow, Schürtrumpf, Spatz: Two bog body finds from the Domlandsmoor . In: Praehistorische Zeitschrift . No. 36 . de Gruyter, 1958, ISSN  0079-4848 , p. 118-219 .
  5. ↑ Michael Fee: The Windeby Children's Grave - An attempt at rehabilitation . In: Institute for Pre- and Protohistory of the Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel (Ed.): Offa. Reports and Communications on prehistory, early history, etc. Medieval archeology . tape 36 . Wachholtz, 1979, ISSN  0078-3714 , p. 75-107 .

Web links

  • Anne Hartmann, Antonia Hillrichs: Voices from the moor. In: Knowledge & Discover. ZDF , July 21, 2004, archived from the original on May 18, 2005 ; accessed on December 6, 2011 (with a sketch of the location).
  • Anne Hartmann, Antonia Hillrichs: Murder in the Moor? The riddle about the "Girl from Windeby". In: Knowledge & Discover. ZDF , July 21, 2004, archived from the original on April 18, 2005 ; Retrieved December 6, 2011 .
personal data
SURNAME Man from Windeby
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Windeby II
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Bog corpse
DATE OF BIRTH between 4th century BC BC and 2nd century BC Chr.
DATE OF DEATH between 380 BC BC and 185 BC Chr.
Place of death at Windeby