Tollund Man researchers found out what he ate for the last time (4 photos)

About the mummified remains of a man with a leather noose around his neck, found in a peat bog in Denmark in 1950, it is known anyone interested in archeology and history. After all, they are 2400 years old! An amazing recent study of the Man from Tollund, found out what his last meal was.








Scientists believe that the remains belong to a man who lived in the 5th century BC. This period is called the pre-Roman Iron Age. Northern Europe.



Even today, seven decades after the discovery remains of Tollund Man, many questions remain unanswered. But some researchers managed to establish with absolute accuracy. They found out what dish he ate before his death.

To begin with, let's go back to 73 years ago: then scientists in the first once examined the insides of a man from Tollund (thanks to being in peat bog, the intestines are perfectly preserved). grains were found and seeds, but a deeper study of the materials found is not was carried out.

And only in our days has it become possible, using new technologies, to conduct such a study.



In 2021 Cambridge University Press published a scientific work entitled "The Last Meal of the Man from Tollund". Using a new analysis of plant macrofossils, pollen, non-pollen palynomorphs, steroid markers and proteins found in his intestines, the experts were able to conclude that Tollundsky the person ate 12-24 hours before he was killed.

He ate porridge containing barley, pale peach (a plant in the buckwheat family) and flax, and perhaps some fish.

It turns out that the last meal was an ordinary bowl of porridge.

"The proteins and eggs of intestinal worms indicate that he was infected with parasites,” the study also says. But alarmed scientists not this fact, but the presence of pale peach seeds in the intestines. Such seeds were usually removed from the grain as threshing waste.



Reconstruction of the ingredients of the Tollund Man's last meal

For decades, researchers have been unable to come to what could be the circumstances of this man's death. But there is a fairly common theory that his murder was his kind of ritual sacrifice to the gods. This version is supported by the latest study:

Although the found remains of food indicate ordinary food Iron Age, the inclusion of threshing waste in it may be associated with ritual practices.

Such were the ritual practices in the pre-Roman Iron Age of Northern Europe. Now you know.