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I absolutely love the detective work involved in my job. I love the taking all of the strands of evidence together, to piece together a picture of what's happened in somebody's life and how they've died.
Archaeologist Nina Helt Neilson has access to some of the surviving remains, including the victim's rib cage, some shoulder and arm bones and a foot.
Nina the really amazing thing about Tolland Man is just how well preserved he is. It’s really extraordinary, so what's causing that? Why is he so well preserved?
Well, it's because Tollund Man he has been found in a raised bog.
Raised peat bogs are formed by the build-up of layers of sphagnum moss fed by rainwater. The moss removes nitrogen and oxygen from the soil, increasing acidity. With few nutrients in the soil the bacteria that are vital for decomposition starve and die, making peat bogs ideal for mummifying any organic matter that gets thrown in.
It forms a sugar compound that makes the tanning off the bog bodies, so it turns to leather.
While the bog seems to preserve the bones immaculately, it does come at a price.
The acidity of the bog means that even though it is incredibly well preserved, there are certain things you can't do, isn’t there, in terms of doing scientific analysis.
Yeah, well, we really wanted to do like, DNA analysis but, you know, this acidic environment is just really bad for preserving DNA. So that's one of the analysis unfortunately we can't do.
But even an incomplete jigsaw puzzle still forms some of the picture.
After he had been excavated at the National Museum, he was taken to the hospital where they did an autopsy. So, they could see, for instance, that he was 30 to 40 years old, about 161 centimetres high.
They also took out the stomach and the intestines in one piece, with the contents inside.
Wow.
Because that's, you know, of course, the contents would be the remains of the last meal.
Are there any injuries on him?
There’s no evidence at all for him being injured, no broken bones.
Representation: www.josarsby.com/turi-king