Lesson 29: Unit 58 MYSTERIES

Lesson 29: Unit 58 MYSTERIES

David: Today we look at mysteries; things that we can’t explain.

Kevin: And we talked to this man; Rick Turner, an archaeologist who will try to explain the mystery of a two-thousand year old man.

Natalie: There are so many things that we can’t explain. Do you know Stonehenge? It’s a huge and very old stone circle in the south of England. Some of its stones came from 300 kilometres away. And that’s one of the mysteries about Stonehenge: how were those huge stones brought there? Do you know, David?

David: No. No idea.

Kevin: They might have come by boat.

Natalie: Perhaps. And what about the Marie Celeste?

David: The ship?

Natalie: Yes. In 1872, a ship called the Marie Celeste was found in the Atlantic with nobody on board. The question is: what could have happened?

David: I suppose pirates could have attacked it.

Natalie: Mmm, maybe. And what about the dinosaurs?

Kevin: What’s the mystery about the dinosaurs?

Natalie: Well, they lived on Earth for 150 million years. Then they disappeared, quite suddenly, Why?

David: Perhaps there was a change in climate.

Kevin: or there may have been a natural disaster, like a great flood or on earthquake…

Natalie: It’s a mystery.

They might have come by boat.

Pirates could have attacked it.

There may have been a natural disaster.

David: Why do you think the dinosaurs disappeared?

1.    The dinosaurs probably disappeared because their environment changed, and they were unable to cope.

2.    I believe there are many theories as to why the dinosaurs disappeared. I think volcanic activity is one possibility.

3.    I like the catastrophe theory that a big meteor struck the Pacific Ocean and through the world into darkness.

4.    I think the dinosaurs disappeared because there was a massive ice age and they didn’t survive the massive ice age.

5.    Oh! I believe dinosaurs disappeared because they were hit by an asteroid.

Holmes: Oh! Well Watson how did the thief entered the room?

Watson: Through the window, Holmes. Look.

Holmes: Mmm. That’s not very likely ableton.

Watson: Why not, Holmes?

Holmes: Because the broken glass in on the outside. The thief must have gone out through the window. He or she must have come in through the door.

Watson: Holmes, you’re brilliant!

Holmes: Not really, Watson, just intelligent. Come on! Let’s go and find our thief.

The thief must have gone out through the window.

He must have come in through the door.

Lindow man: Rick Turner; archaeologist

Lindow Moss

Peat

Lindow Man

Rick Turner: Story begins in the peak depot which just off the site where we’re standing. Where the men one day found what turned out to be a well preserved human foot. I got to hear about this as the local archaeologist responsible for the area and came out the next day out under the bog just behind where is standing and found what turned out to be the rest of Lindow Man.

We came here and what we excavated was the peat in which the body lay we didn’t at that stage want to uncover the body so we when we came here, we actually lifted a block of peat and we weren’t exactly certain or what might have been in there.

What survives is… not everything. What survives are particular types of robust tissue. You have the skin, the hair, the fingernails, the parts of the bone that are tissue: not made of calcium; so you only have a percentage of the body surviving. But they’re the types of body which under other circumstances you would not normally find. And, as a result, you can tell all sorts of things about the body that in other circumstances you would not able to do. We could see exactly We could see exactly what he looked like: the fact he was bearded: the fact his hair was neatly trimmed, perhaps with a form of shears rather than scissors (it was before scissors were invented). We found evidence of the stomach; and the remains in the stomach tell us  what he might have eaten for his last meal or his last two meals, so we could reconstruct that very accurately.

The evidence for how Lindow man died is very clear. And you can reconstruct the events quite closely, what seem to have happened first is that from the two fractures that we found on the top head. It seems that he might have been hit by an axe or a weapon of some sort that certainly made him unconscious and perhaps killed him. Not happy with that, the people responsible then tied a strong cord around the neck; tied at the back of the neck, perhaps inserted a stick through the cord twisted the stick until the neck was broken and the breathing cut off.

Finally from the eighth from the evidence of our cut underneath the neck we think he might  have been bled and the blood would have poured forth from the body onto the ground. So we have a very complicated and perhaps rich elastic.

From all the evidence we’ve been able to gather the scientific analyses and the detailed tests and the studies we’ve made we can begin to build a picture of. Who Lindow Man was, how he lived and how he died? He was a man, we know that for certain. He was perhaps 25, likely to be of medium build.

He must have been someone who didn’t work in the fields at the end of his life: he had beautifully smooth fingernails. He might have been a bard, or perhaps a warrior, or even a priest.

He might have been the victim of an attack: someone might have killed him and chose to bury him in a peat bog so the evidence would never be found. It’s just possible he might have died in some accidental way, and the wounds were caused by a variety of other incidents: an attack by foxes or something of that sort. Or given the very complicated nature of how he died, the fact he was naked when buried, you might try to explain it as some form of ritual. But there are many forms of ritual, and you’ve got therefore to take the evidence further. Perhaps the ritual is religious. It might have been a civil execution, perhaps for some form of crime, or perhaps a prisoner who was being killed.

So that from the evidence we have you can build a wide variety of explanations and we our job is to try and way that evidence and suggests which is the most likely.

He can’t have worked in the fields.	He must have worked with his head.	He might have been a poet.
He may have been a warrior.	He could have been a priest.

First of all he must decide what date he might have died. We think it’s most likely that he was iron age, or died and the just after the Romans had invaded. If so he was Celtic, he was a member of a Celtic try. Who would have lived here in Cheshire at the time. The Celts had a priestly class called the Druids, and we know from classical and descriptions that the Druids indulged in human sacrifice. Lindow Man, therefore, might be the results of one of these sacrifices.  As this phenomenon occurs widely over Europe, this particular time I think we’ve got to look at some sort of religious practice. That leads to these bodies being found in the peak bulbs, in not only here, but in countries like Germany, Denmark and Holland.

We can reconstruct his appearance very accurately. We have a face from the past that we can look at and see that perhaps the past is not so far from our present time, and that he looks much as you and I do. And he would have been walking here around 2000 years ago. He almost certainly comes from the local area. Why he came to be in the bog is the mystery that everyone can speculate about.

WORD BANC

Asteroid	Asteroide	Dinosaur	Dinosaurio
Attack	Atacar	Disappear	Desaparecer
On board	A bordo	Disaster	Desastre
Catastrophe	Catástrofe	Flood	Inundación
Catch/caught	Tomar/tomado	Ice age	Período glacial
Climate	Clima	Massive	Grande/gran
Cope	Hacer frente a/enfrentarse con	meteor	Meteorito
Deduction	deducción	Pirate	Pirata

Sink/sank	Hundir/hundido	Calcium	Calcio
Stone	Piedra	Circumstances	Circunstancias
Survive	Sobrevivir	Evidence	Prueba/indicio/evidencia
Volcanic	Volcánico	Percentage	Porcentaje
Volcano	Volcán	Reconstruct	Reconstruir
Accurately	Fielmente/con exactitud.	Remains	Restos
Bearded	Barbudo	Robust	Robusto
Bone	Hueso	Scissors	tijeras

Shears	Cuchillas	Trimmed	Recortado/cortado
Accidental	Accidental	Appearance	Aspecto/apariencia
Axe	Hacha	Blow	Golpe
Breathing	Respiración	Bury	Enterrar
Civil	Civil	Complicated	Complicado
Cord	Cuerda	Cut off	Cortar
Execution	Ejecución	Field	Campo
Fox	Zorro	Fracture	Fractura

Incident	Incidente	Insert	Insertar/introducir
Naked	Desnudo	Priest	Sacerdote
Prisoner	Prisionero	Religious	Religioso
Ritual	Ritual	Ritualistic	Ritualista/ritual
Smooth	Suave/pulido	Stick	Palo/vara
Suggest	Sugerir	Twist	Enrollar/retorcer
Unconscious	Inconsciente	Victim	Víctima
Warrior	Guerrero	Wound	Herida