Buried Treasure (1954) s01e02 Episode Script
The Peat Bog Murder Mystery
Good evening.
Four years ago, peat cutters working at Tollund in North Jutland in Denmark reported to the police that they had found a body.
The place where the body was found was a bog in this small valley in a lonely, desolate, heather-clad area.
And the police at once suspected that it might be connected with a recent unsolved murder.
But further investigation yielded some even more remarkable facts.
First of all, the body turned out to have been found in this cutting under eight foot of peat, which meant it couldn't be a recent murder.
A fact which was soon confirmed by a local archaeologist who was summoned to the scene by the police.
The body of the man was naked except for a belt and a cap and the cause of his death was very clearly visible, there was a tightly drawn noose round his neck.
Thanks to the tannic acid in the peat the body was extremely well preserved.
And it was at once taken with great care to the National Museum at Copenhagen for further investigation.
Now, the authorities found Tollund Man a matter of extreme interest.
In the first place, they dated it to the early Iron Age, 2,000 years ago.
It was presented to them as a problem, because how had this particular crime happened? If it was a crime.
How had the man met his end? That was the first problem.
And the second one was an interest in the excellent way in which the body had been preserved.
That is one of the very fascinating things about Tollund Man.
Tollund Man stands out very much better than any carving, very much better than any statue that one has from prehistoric times.
He stands out as he is himself and brings us face-to-face with the past.
Quite extraordinary, I think you'll agree.
Now, before we start to discuss how Tollund Man met his end, I think we should have another look at him so that we can decide in our own minds, is this the face of a criminal? Is this the face of a prisoner of war? Or is this the victim of some prehistoric murder? The noose that caused his death was made of very finely plaited leather taken through a loop at one end.
Only the head's been preserved at the National Museum at Copenhagen, the body has been used for examination and analysis.
And the whole preservative processes took about 14 months.
It's left the face almost like a carving in ebony.
Except that you can see here a day's growth of beard on the face.
The leather cap is the only garment except a belt.
Underneath it you can see the hair, perfectly preserved.
But it's the expression that perhaps is the most remarkable thing about Tollund Man, the humour and the wrinkles at the corner of the eyes and the serenity give a quite extraordinary impression of these early people.
He looks as if he's separated from us by sleep rather than by 2,000 years.
Well, we've got here in the studio tonight, Sir Mortimer Wheeler.
And I want to ask him what he thinks.
What his first impressions are on seeing Tollund Man.
Well, Glyn, I should say that this is the most haunting relic of antiquity that I've ever seen.
That head with its strong features carved almost as by a Renaissance sculptor.
His eyes seem to follow one through the closed eyelids in a really haunting fashion.
You say he's 2,000 years old.
Do you think that's a reasonable date? Well, roughly perhaps, but we don't really know.
He was covered by eight feet of peat, which means that he was buried some considerable time ago.
And the contents of his stomach, which I believe we probe into later We do, yes.
.
.
will tell us something more about the period in which he died.
The barley and the flax which he apparently ate in his last meal seem to point to a date round about the beginning of the present era.
Now, before we get on to the actual problem of how he met his death, we must put before you the clues.
Now, not the clues relating to Tollund Man himself but other clues, because it isn't only Tollund Man, there are 40 other people who've been found in similar circumstances or near similar circumstances in bogs in Denmark.
And there are other things that have been found, not skeletons, not bodies, but objects.
When I was in Copenhagen recently, I was shown some of the most impressive of these by the staff of the National Museum.
I want to show some of them to you beginning with this very remarkable helmet from Vikso.
Obviously, with its very impressive appearance, it must have belonged to some extremely important person.
You can see the way the design of a human face has been worked into it.
Eyes and then the eyebrows.
And when it's turned, you can see the nose in profile.
Over the top of the head is this slot for a crest of some sort.
And two little tubes to hold some plumes, probably.
And then these great horns with their sockets at each end which may also have held some sort of plume.
Here's an interesting little bronze figure of a king or a warrior wearing one of these remarkable helmets.
It and the original Vikso helmet may date from about 500 BC.
We know from a drawing made when this figure was discovered that there were originally two of them.
They were joined together like this.
And notice the axes that these figures are holding.
Here's the axe head from just such an axe.
A beautiful piece of bronze casting and, like the others, found in a bog.
And I was shown perhaps the most remarkable object in the whole of the Copenhagen Museum, this wonderful silver bowl from Gundestrup.
The rim around the top is not complete and it had originally handles at the side like this one.
The panels on the outside are representations of Celtic gods.
This was probably a hunting god.
You can see the two little figures holding boars in the god's hands.
There were originally eight panels round the outside, but one is missing, hence the gaps between them.
This panel seems to have a dancing girl trampling on a small figure on a horse.
The bowl itself dates from the early Iron Age.
Notice here the resemblance to a Nazi eagle.
This god is a very handsome one.
Another hunting god, perhaps, with a reindeer in each hand.
This panel has got a Hercules-like figure wrestling with a lion or a boar and a dancing girl on each side.
The oddest monster of all is on this panel, it's a sort of two-headed creature which is busy eating somebody at each end.
And here we come back to the first panel again.
The interior panels are even more striking with their vigour, their art and their workmanship.
They are a sort of Parthenon frieze of Celtic art.
Here's a scene perhaps after a victorious battle.
Serried ranks of armed men, trumpeters with, I presume, their sacrificial trumpets.
And then this little scene explaining, perhaps, the bowl's existence.
A man held over a sacrificial bowl having his throat cut, the blood offered to the gods in the bowl.
This bowl is really quite the most remarkable and beautiful of its kind in existence.
And with the Tollund Man, this is the first film that's ever been taken of it.
This next panel gives us a clue to where the bowl perhaps came from.
There's a distinct feeling of eastern art about this.
Look how the reindeer-headed king is sitting with a torque in his right hand and a serpent in the left.
It's almost Hindu in style.
Perhaps the bowl itself came from Scythia on the Black Sea and eventually found its way to Denmark.
Here's a curious animal, perhaps a misapprehension of an elephant, a horse with a trunk put on it.
These animals, one would like to think, are rhinoceroses, they're more likely to be bison.
Of course, no-one knows the exact interpretation of all these scenes, but they are certainly most remarkable.
This carving of a bull is at the bottom of the bowl.
The whole bowl dates from about 100 BC to 100 AD.
The bull probably had ivory horns put in those sockets, they've been broken off.
Here's something even larger which I was shown, it's the reconstruction of a wagon, the remains of two which were found in a bog at Dejbjerg.
The pieces have been being built up on an iron frame, the wheel is actually a single piece of wood bent round and covered with an iron tyre.
And this bronze open-work decoration is very fine and it's very typical of this early Iron Age style.
So are the faces of these funny persons on the side of the cart.
Almost certainly the whole thing was used for sacrificial and religious purposes.
Now, here's the sacred sun carriage from Trundholm.
It's clear that the sun was conceived as being drawn across the heavens by this steed and this was the image of the sun god.
The whole thing made of bronze and one side of the disc inlaid very beautifully with gold.
You've seen some of these objects and seen how large and valuable they are.
We've been showing them to you because they are in themselves buried treasure, but also because they are clues to the mystery of Tollund Man.
You saw on the Gundestrup bowl a man being held over the bowl, his neck being cut, perhaps it was some sort of sacrifice.
Now, the thing we want to know is are all these finds in the bogs, these unusual finds, something of a special religious or sacrificial nature? Sir Mortimer, what do you think? There are many possible explanations of Tollund Man, which do you think is the right one? Well, let us consider the alternatives.
The first, of course, is murder.
Was he murdered? But I understand from those who understand these things that to hang a man, then to throw him into a lake or a marsh is rather a clumsy way of murdering him.
And, therefore, I dismiss murder as a possibility.
And he wouldn't take his clothes off before.
He wouldn't, no.
Well, he might not.
Now, suicide, that's another possibility.
But it doesn't work, because this man not only hanged himself but then drowned himself.
A suicide doesn't first hang himself and then drown himself as a rule, I believe.
The third is the alternative you mentioned just now, the possibility of suicide.
Yes.
No, I beg your pardon, of sacrifice.
Well, now, of course the The killing of human beings was a familiar way of promoting the fertility of the crops and so on in ancient times.
And he may have been sacrificed for a purpose of that kind.
And you remember Caesar, Julius Caesar tells us how the ancient Germans used to sacrifice their prisoners of war, possibly with some such idea at the back of their minds.
And then another Roman historian tells us that after the Cimbri, the people who came from the exact region in which Tollund Man was found, had defeated a Roman army away to the south in Orange, they destroyed the objects which they'd captured from them and they drowned or hanged the prisoners of war.
You mean, if these customs are happening in the South of France, it was reasonable they would have happened in their homeland of Jutland? They might very well have happened in their homeland of Jutland.
But, finally, there's the possibility that he was a criminal.
Well, we know also from the Roman historian that traitors and deserters were hanged amongst the Germans.
And that cowards and the vicious were drowned in miry swamps.
Well, this man may of course have been an all-rounder.
Yes! He may have been both a traitor and a coward and have been hanged and then drowned.
One doesn't know, but recently, since this was found, the body of a girl has been found in similar circumstances Yes, Schleswig-Holstein.
Schleswig-Holstein, yes.
And she had had her head shaved and her eyes bandaged and had obviously been executed.
He may be just an executed criminal.
Yes.
Well, now, there we are.
We have these two possibilities.
There's no certain answer.
Possibly some sort of sacrificial death on a special occasion like a victory or something else.
Or it may be the death of a criminal.
We haven't got the answer, nor have the Danish archaeologists.
That's the first thing about Tollund Man.
The second thing about him is extremely interesting.
He was so very well preserved that the contents of his stomach were all there.
And the experts in Copenhagen were able to study it and were able to say what his last meal had been.
Now, we've reconstructed this meal with the assistance of Miss Wally and Dr White of the Dietetics Department of the London University.
And now I'm going to hand you over to our prehistoric, early Iron Age cook, Noelle Middleton.
Good evening, everyone, and welcome to my prehistoric kitchen.
Well, I better begin, I suppose, by telling you what I'm going to try to do.
As you've heard from Glyn and seen for yourselves, Tollund Man was extraordinarily well preserved.
And when they examined him in the museum in Copenhagen, they couldn't find any traces of sickness or any damage to his body other than that caused by the hanging.
So we know that the experts' table of contents of his last meal is accurate.
And we know roughly what his last meal consisted of.
Incidentally, it was eaten about 12-24 hours before he died.
We know roughly what the proportions are, and we only know very roughly how it was cooked, we've only certain clues as to how it was cooked.
The first and foremost thing about it is there is no trace of meat whatsoever in what was found.
And this may seem strange, but it is borne out by other evidence from this time.
Hunting weapons were hardly ever found in the graves or the remains of houses of this period.
And few bones were found in refuse deposits.
Earlier, they did live very much by hunting and fishing, but by this time there was very little game left and it was much too precious to kill off as meat.
They did have their domestic animals, of course, they had sheep, cattle, pigs, goats, but these particular ones were much too precious to kill off as meat.
And we know from this Except they sometimes killed them on very special occasions, I think.
But we know from this that Tollund Man's last meal was vegetable.
And it consisted of the following seeds or grains.
First of all there was barley.
Barley, which you can see here.
And there's a picture of it.
And it was the foremost means of subsistence as far as corn went at this time.
And then next there's linseed.
It's a rather light sort of coffee colour.
These small seeds, and it's the seed of flax.
There is one slight disadvantage about eating linseed in large quantities and that is that it's got a well-known laxative effect.
But this can be overcome if you soak the seeds in water for some time or you can boil them up and then drain them off very carefully, which is what we're doing with the ones we're cooking this evening.
And if any of you would like to try out this prehistoric recipe, well, I think you should soak them, do the same.
Then there are camelina seeds.
Here.
They are very, very tiny and they're a product of the mustard family.
And they were probably cultivated along with the flax.
And, like linseed, they're very rich in oil and therefore they're very valuable as a food.
Then there's pale persicaria, seeds of pale persicaria.
And this is the picture.
Oh, I think that's upside down.
This may be more familiar to you, because they're very light seeds and they are found very often on waste ground.
And these seeds have also been found in many Iron Age sites.
And it does seem as if they were either cultivated especially or perhaps they were the main object of seed-gathering expeditions.
Now, those are the main ingredients and then there were other seeds, but they were found in smaller quantities.
They were probably picked by mistake or just if the seed gatherers happened to come across them.
There's corn spurry here, which is very, very dark and tiny.
And it's found usually in corn fields.
And then beside that there's the sort of wild brother to the swede or turnip.
They're very tiny too, rather like miniature marbles.
And they've got little colours, sort of yellow and dark red.
Then there's white goat's foot beside that, which are very tiny and light and a sort of olive green.
And there's the picture of that plant.
And then we havewild pansy.
Just a few little seeds here, or heartsease.
Well, now, those are the main contents.
So, what are we going to do with them? Well, we're not going to roast them or bake them, because if they had been roasted or baked, there would have been some signs of burning and none of them had this, so that means they couldn't have been made into bread.
The first bread which was found in this part of the world dates from 400 AD and it consisted of a charred bun which was made of barley and gravel.
And the next bread was 400 years later and that consisted of coarsely ground peas and spruce bark.
There you are, neither of them sound particularly attractive to me.
Well, anyway, to go back to Tollund Man, he could hardly have eaten these seeds raw, so if they weren't roasted and they weren't baked the only thing that's left is boiling.
And there is evidence which fits in with this, because some bowls and pots were found, clay pots with a crust round them and this does look as if something like soup or porridge had been boiled in them.
And, anyway, porridge has always been a very popular dish with the Norwegians.
Well, now, there we are.
How are we going to prepare this gruel? Well, I've got an enormous cauldron here.
And we'll start off by putting in the barley.
And then the linseed which has been very well soaked.
And then the camelina seeds.
The pale persicaria.
And then the sprinkling of the other seeds.
There we go.
Now, they're all in.
And then we'll add some water to them.
Quite a lot because, of course, they soak up a lot.
There's abouttwo pints here.
And I think that's about enough.
And you stir all this around.
They are, of course, just floating now, because after they're cooked they won't swell.
And you stir it constantly and keep it over a low heat for Oh, I think, ten hours.
At the end of ten hours, you've got a jolly good Iron Age gruel.
The only thing we've left out of this is a spoonful of fine sand, which Tolland Man had in his.
We didn't put that in out of consideration for Glynn and Sir Mortimer.
Oh, we are, of course, using only dishes and implements that they might have used at this time, except for the fire here.
We couldn't build a big log fire in the studios for obvious reasons.
I'm sure the effect on the cooking won't be very different.
Now, in this cauldron over here, we have got a gruel which has been cooking for ten hours.
And the ingredients, you'll have to take my word for it, are exactly the same as the ones we've just seen here.
And I'm going to dish this out to Glyn and Sir Mortimer to try.
There is one other thing, what they might have had with it.
They could have had salt or honey or milk.
And none of these would have left any traces, so I've asked Glyn and Sir Mortimer to choose and they've chosen salt.
In colourit's a rather sinister-looking purpley brown.
I'll put a little bit more into this bowl here.
You see it's speckled with the seeds.
And when it's cold it sets quite hard, so they might have eaten it cold or they might have sliced it up as a sort of cake.
Well, I think that covers everything accept what they might have had to drink with it.
Well, we know from the Greek explorer Pytheas, who travelled to Denmark about this time, it was about 330 BC, and we know from him that the local inhabitants then drank mead or barley.
So Mead or beer.
So sorry! Beer.
And we've brought along some mead to the studio to complete this meal.
So, while Glyn and Sir Mortimer fortify themselves with this, I'll bring over the gruel for them to try.
I'll just put the salt on first.
Now, here it comes.
Have you got your spoons? Yes, we've got our spoons.
Skol.
Skol.
This, I suppose, Glyn, is to break down our resistance to the ordeal which is to follow.
Dreadful! You've got yours, have you? Hmm.
Skol.
Now, we proceed, I suppose.
Very good stuff.
Now, you try first.
Oh, no, I think you try first.
- Do we? - Yes.
It's not as purple as you No, go ahead, Glyn.
Go ahead.
Hmm! Is it delicious? No.
SHE LAUGHS Glyn, is anyone looking? THEY LAUGH Don't tell me the linseed effect has worked already.
It couldn't have.
Do you know, I've solved this problem.
Have you? If one could be frivolous in the presence of thesesolemn relics, I would say that the poor chap of Tollund committed suicide because he could stand his wife's cooking no longer.
Very good.
What I say is a little more animal with a little less vegetable.
There's too much vegetable.
There's too much vegetable and not enough mineral.
No mineral, no mineral.
Salt or sand? Well, anyhow, we'll drink to Tollund Man if not to this diet.
Bless him.
- Skol.
- Skol.
Good stuff.
Yes, it is.
It's much better than the porridge.
Oh, yes.
I'm sorry.
I think I'm inclined to agree with you.
Well, now, strengthened by that rather odd dish, let's now push back even further into the prehistory of Denmark, which is, as a country, full of buried treasure.
In 1821, a farmer at Egtved in North Jutland took away the remains of a barrow which he had and when he got right to the bottom he found an oak tree-trunk coffin.
Here it is.
And the farmer at once realised that this might be of very great interest and age and he informed the National Museum at Copenhagen.
And, sure enough, the coffin did turn out to contain the fully clothed skeleton of a young woman dating from the early Bronze Age some 3,500 years ago.
Now, unlike Tollund Man, it was mainly the hair and the teeth of this body that survived.
The water which had filled the coffin, however, had preserved completely the clothing in which the woman had been dressed.
The coffin was taken to the National Museum and there you can see it till the present day carefully restored to the state it was when it was first opened.
The body was that of a young fair-haired girl aged about 19.
She was dressed in a jersey and skirt and the body had been covered with a blanket and then wrapped in a cow skin before being laid in the coffin.
The coffin also contained various personal ornaments and possessions that it was the custom to bury with their owners at that time.
At the foot was a birchwood bucket and from the crystallised remains at the bottom, we know it must have contained a sort of cranberry wine flavoured with honey and bog myrtle.
Next to the bucket was a little bundle containing the cremated bones of a child, which had either died naturally or perhaps had been sacrificed.
Then there was this little, small, birchwood box containing an awl used for making holes in material when sewing and a cord, probably for tying up the hair, and some bones.
Then there was this small bronze box or canister, which contained some sad little personal relics.
Among them was a bronze knife blade and then a safety pin, a draw dress fastener and a dress stud.
And then one or two little pebbles and things of that kind.
The box itself was decorated in the very beautiful style of the Middle Bronze Age.
And then a yarrow flower had been laid in the coffin, a sign that the burial had taken place in the summer.
The style of skirt found in the Egtved coffin we know of from other evidence from bronze statuettes.
Here's a little bronze figure, either an acrobat or perhaps a handle of some kind And here's another, probably the image of a goddess of fertility.
And this particular figure also gives us an idea of a contemporary hairstyle.
We know from the grave finds, that they took a lot of trouble about the style and many of the women had their hair braided in a most complicated fashion.
As I've said, the clothes in the Egtved coffin were very perfectly preserved.
You can see them any day you like in the Copenhagen Museum.
You will also find there clothes from men who were buried in similar tree-trunk coffins.
Now, of course, it wasn't possible to bring these clothes from the Copenhagen Museum, but we've had replicas made.
And now we want to invite you to attend at what is really a Bronze Age fashion parade.
NOELLE MIDDLETON: And as we welcome you to this pleasant Danish country scene for our fashion parade, we say good evening to Jean, who's wearing a fashionable two-piece suit in dark brown natural wool.
This is a lightweight summer outfit, eminently suitable for the warm weather of the Bronze Age.
Practical for outdoor work and at the same time very elegant.
The neat little jacket with elbow-length sleeves is square cut.
And the edge of the sleeves and the neck is oversewn with scallop stitches.
The jacket is held around the waist by this very elegant tasselled belt.
Which also carries, of course, this bronze ornament, beautifully hammered and engraved with the popular spiral design.
And the charming corded skirt is a wrap-around type fastened by the band at the top.
The model that Jean is wearing is a plain one, it doesn't have the decorative row of bronze or amber tubes two or three inches below the top band, which many models of this skirt feature.
Both skirt and jacket are made from the pure wool of the small goat-horned sheep.
To set off this outfit, Jean is wearing two bronze bangles of contrasting styles.
This elegantly carved horn or wooden comb is carried in the belt and is always found with these outfits.
Notice also the fashionable single bronze earring that Jean is wearing and the hairstyle, with its braided top and pony's tail.
Altogether a practical and elegant summer outfit.
And now we say hello there to Gordon, who is wearing the cloak, gown and hat of the well-dressed Bronze Age man.
Again, the material is of dark brown natural wool woven on an upright loom.
The characteristic tall cap is made up of several pieces of cloth carefully sewn together.
These caps can be strengthened with birch-twig frames and so have a double use, to ward off the rain and an axe blow in battle.
The cloak is a really beautiful and impressive garment, held across the chest by a large bronze pin.
And the gown underneath is wrapped around the body and held in place by shoulder straps and a belt.
The belt is woven and goes twice round the body.
A sword, when worn, is carried in a leather belt over one shoulder.
And the price of these models? Well, the originals are literally priceless and even the copies are rather more than an average summer outfit.
You've got a good impression by now of the clothing that existed in the Middle Bronze Age in Denmark.
We're saying how did these people live? That of course is the great difficulty in trying to reconstruct the prehistoric past, the archaeologist is always up against it.
The Danes have been up against it and they have tried to reconstruct the past of the Middle Bronze Age.
They've made a film trying to get back the life of that very remote period.
We want to show you some of it, and here it is.
Well, now, the film begins with children playing at a lakeside.
And they're suddenly disturbed by the arrival of what to them are foreigners.
People coming from another part of Denmark or Germany on horseback.
Traders.
Merchants.
And the village comes out to meet them.
And the exchange of products begins.
The native village produces amber necklaces.
And the traders have got very finely made bronze axes and bronze bangles, perhaps even objects of gold.
Here's a reconstruction of the sort of scene that might have happened.
An axe is being exchanged for a necklace of amber.
And here's a man bringing a whole lump of amber, which was always valued enormously in prehistoric times.
And I rather think they're haggling about how much should be the exchange.
He's got several things, including great necklaces and armlets of bronze.
Here's the second scene, which is an industrial one dealing with the making of bronze.
Which is, of course, a classical mixture of copper and tin.
90% copper, 10% tin.
Here it is.
The crucible being poured out into a mould, a double mould of stone.
The liquid metal poured in.
The mould tied together with ropes.
There's another mould coming along.
And now when the metal has solidified, here we are, the mould is opened.
And there's the resultant bronze axe.
At first it's rough and got edges that have to be trimmed, but there's the final product with its flanges.
And the flanges fit neatly into a haft of wood .
.
to produce a typical object of this particular period, a tool or weapon wound up with rope.
And there's another typical object, a sword.
And now, the last scene we're showing you in this film is a funeral.
And from the Egtved grave, we'll be able to see to what extent this reconstruction is justified.
First the coffin of wood.
Then the cowhide put down with the hair inwards.
The mourners and relatives gather around.
And here comes the body.
The body of a young woman laid into the tree-trunk coffin.
And the cowhide put over her.
Now she sets off on her journey to her last resting place.
Up the hill.
So often in prehistoric times the tops of hills were used for burial places.
The coffin is put down.
The corpse is exposed again.
Objects placed with it, a sword, a dagger.
And a little folding stool like the one which our Iron Age cook was sitting on.
And then a bowl, possibly of mead, like the mead we've been drinking.
And a little bronze box, possibly full of trinkets and personal things like a knife.
And then a blanket.
And then the cowhide placed over again.
The burial sealed in.
And that part of the funeral is over.
And the lid of the coffin is brought .
.
it's the other part of the oak trunk.
And the burial is sealed in.
And now, as the mourners and friends go away .
.
and the near relatives are left behind.
And then they too go down the hill .
.
leaving the corpse on the top of the hill.
And the corpse, in its coffin, is gradually encased in stone and the stone eventually in a great barrow of earth.
A tumulus or barrow such as we see in the Danish countryside at the present day.
Now, Sir Mortimer, what do you think of that as a piece of reconstruction of the prehistoric past? Well, I think we would agree that discoveries and reconstructions such as these - do bring the past to life - They're very difficult to do.
.
.
as nothing else can.
We are rather inclined to regard our ancestors as naked savages, but, as we've seen, they had their art and their religion, their affection and their piety as we have today.
They even had their trousers as we have today.
We forget that they were not the naked savages of our artists, very often they werethey were fully clad and they were very like ourselves in a great many respects.
They had no agency, their diet as we've experienced tonight was sometimes of a primitive kind, but we have to remember that they were very close indeed to ourselves.
And we have tonight seen outstanding examples of the long dead bringing history to life.
Thank you.
Four years ago, peat cutters working at Tollund in North Jutland in Denmark reported to the police that they had found a body.
The place where the body was found was a bog in this small valley in a lonely, desolate, heather-clad area.
And the police at once suspected that it might be connected with a recent unsolved murder.
But further investigation yielded some even more remarkable facts.
First of all, the body turned out to have been found in this cutting under eight foot of peat, which meant it couldn't be a recent murder.
A fact which was soon confirmed by a local archaeologist who was summoned to the scene by the police.
The body of the man was naked except for a belt and a cap and the cause of his death was very clearly visible, there was a tightly drawn noose round his neck.
Thanks to the tannic acid in the peat the body was extremely well preserved.
And it was at once taken with great care to the National Museum at Copenhagen for further investigation.
Now, the authorities found Tollund Man a matter of extreme interest.
In the first place, they dated it to the early Iron Age, 2,000 years ago.
It was presented to them as a problem, because how had this particular crime happened? If it was a crime.
How had the man met his end? That was the first problem.
And the second one was an interest in the excellent way in which the body had been preserved.
That is one of the very fascinating things about Tollund Man.
Tollund Man stands out very much better than any carving, very much better than any statue that one has from prehistoric times.
He stands out as he is himself and brings us face-to-face with the past.
Quite extraordinary, I think you'll agree.
Now, before we start to discuss how Tollund Man met his end, I think we should have another look at him so that we can decide in our own minds, is this the face of a criminal? Is this the face of a prisoner of war? Or is this the victim of some prehistoric murder? The noose that caused his death was made of very finely plaited leather taken through a loop at one end.
Only the head's been preserved at the National Museum at Copenhagen, the body has been used for examination and analysis.
And the whole preservative processes took about 14 months.
It's left the face almost like a carving in ebony.
Except that you can see here a day's growth of beard on the face.
The leather cap is the only garment except a belt.
Underneath it you can see the hair, perfectly preserved.
But it's the expression that perhaps is the most remarkable thing about Tollund Man, the humour and the wrinkles at the corner of the eyes and the serenity give a quite extraordinary impression of these early people.
He looks as if he's separated from us by sleep rather than by 2,000 years.
Well, we've got here in the studio tonight, Sir Mortimer Wheeler.
And I want to ask him what he thinks.
What his first impressions are on seeing Tollund Man.
Well, Glyn, I should say that this is the most haunting relic of antiquity that I've ever seen.
That head with its strong features carved almost as by a Renaissance sculptor.
His eyes seem to follow one through the closed eyelids in a really haunting fashion.
You say he's 2,000 years old.
Do you think that's a reasonable date? Well, roughly perhaps, but we don't really know.
He was covered by eight feet of peat, which means that he was buried some considerable time ago.
And the contents of his stomach, which I believe we probe into later We do, yes.
.
.
will tell us something more about the period in which he died.
The barley and the flax which he apparently ate in his last meal seem to point to a date round about the beginning of the present era.
Now, before we get on to the actual problem of how he met his death, we must put before you the clues.
Now, not the clues relating to Tollund Man himself but other clues, because it isn't only Tollund Man, there are 40 other people who've been found in similar circumstances or near similar circumstances in bogs in Denmark.
And there are other things that have been found, not skeletons, not bodies, but objects.
When I was in Copenhagen recently, I was shown some of the most impressive of these by the staff of the National Museum.
I want to show some of them to you beginning with this very remarkable helmet from Vikso.
Obviously, with its very impressive appearance, it must have belonged to some extremely important person.
You can see the way the design of a human face has been worked into it.
Eyes and then the eyebrows.
And when it's turned, you can see the nose in profile.
Over the top of the head is this slot for a crest of some sort.
And two little tubes to hold some plumes, probably.
And then these great horns with their sockets at each end which may also have held some sort of plume.
Here's an interesting little bronze figure of a king or a warrior wearing one of these remarkable helmets.
It and the original Vikso helmet may date from about 500 BC.
We know from a drawing made when this figure was discovered that there were originally two of them.
They were joined together like this.
And notice the axes that these figures are holding.
Here's the axe head from just such an axe.
A beautiful piece of bronze casting and, like the others, found in a bog.
And I was shown perhaps the most remarkable object in the whole of the Copenhagen Museum, this wonderful silver bowl from Gundestrup.
The rim around the top is not complete and it had originally handles at the side like this one.
The panels on the outside are representations of Celtic gods.
This was probably a hunting god.
You can see the two little figures holding boars in the god's hands.
There were originally eight panels round the outside, but one is missing, hence the gaps between them.
This panel seems to have a dancing girl trampling on a small figure on a horse.
The bowl itself dates from the early Iron Age.
Notice here the resemblance to a Nazi eagle.
This god is a very handsome one.
Another hunting god, perhaps, with a reindeer in each hand.
This panel has got a Hercules-like figure wrestling with a lion or a boar and a dancing girl on each side.
The oddest monster of all is on this panel, it's a sort of two-headed creature which is busy eating somebody at each end.
And here we come back to the first panel again.
The interior panels are even more striking with their vigour, their art and their workmanship.
They are a sort of Parthenon frieze of Celtic art.
Here's a scene perhaps after a victorious battle.
Serried ranks of armed men, trumpeters with, I presume, their sacrificial trumpets.
And then this little scene explaining, perhaps, the bowl's existence.
A man held over a sacrificial bowl having his throat cut, the blood offered to the gods in the bowl.
This bowl is really quite the most remarkable and beautiful of its kind in existence.
And with the Tollund Man, this is the first film that's ever been taken of it.
This next panel gives us a clue to where the bowl perhaps came from.
There's a distinct feeling of eastern art about this.
Look how the reindeer-headed king is sitting with a torque in his right hand and a serpent in the left.
It's almost Hindu in style.
Perhaps the bowl itself came from Scythia on the Black Sea and eventually found its way to Denmark.
Here's a curious animal, perhaps a misapprehension of an elephant, a horse with a trunk put on it.
These animals, one would like to think, are rhinoceroses, they're more likely to be bison.
Of course, no-one knows the exact interpretation of all these scenes, but they are certainly most remarkable.
This carving of a bull is at the bottom of the bowl.
The whole bowl dates from about 100 BC to 100 AD.
The bull probably had ivory horns put in those sockets, they've been broken off.
Here's something even larger which I was shown, it's the reconstruction of a wagon, the remains of two which were found in a bog at Dejbjerg.
The pieces have been being built up on an iron frame, the wheel is actually a single piece of wood bent round and covered with an iron tyre.
And this bronze open-work decoration is very fine and it's very typical of this early Iron Age style.
So are the faces of these funny persons on the side of the cart.
Almost certainly the whole thing was used for sacrificial and religious purposes.
Now, here's the sacred sun carriage from Trundholm.
It's clear that the sun was conceived as being drawn across the heavens by this steed and this was the image of the sun god.
The whole thing made of bronze and one side of the disc inlaid very beautifully with gold.
You've seen some of these objects and seen how large and valuable they are.
We've been showing them to you because they are in themselves buried treasure, but also because they are clues to the mystery of Tollund Man.
You saw on the Gundestrup bowl a man being held over the bowl, his neck being cut, perhaps it was some sort of sacrifice.
Now, the thing we want to know is are all these finds in the bogs, these unusual finds, something of a special religious or sacrificial nature? Sir Mortimer, what do you think? There are many possible explanations of Tollund Man, which do you think is the right one? Well, let us consider the alternatives.
The first, of course, is murder.
Was he murdered? But I understand from those who understand these things that to hang a man, then to throw him into a lake or a marsh is rather a clumsy way of murdering him.
And, therefore, I dismiss murder as a possibility.
And he wouldn't take his clothes off before.
He wouldn't, no.
Well, he might not.
Now, suicide, that's another possibility.
But it doesn't work, because this man not only hanged himself but then drowned himself.
A suicide doesn't first hang himself and then drown himself as a rule, I believe.
The third is the alternative you mentioned just now, the possibility of suicide.
Yes.
No, I beg your pardon, of sacrifice.
Well, now, of course the The killing of human beings was a familiar way of promoting the fertility of the crops and so on in ancient times.
And he may have been sacrificed for a purpose of that kind.
And you remember Caesar, Julius Caesar tells us how the ancient Germans used to sacrifice their prisoners of war, possibly with some such idea at the back of their minds.
And then another Roman historian tells us that after the Cimbri, the people who came from the exact region in which Tollund Man was found, had defeated a Roman army away to the south in Orange, they destroyed the objects which they'd captured from them and they drowned or hanged the prisoners of war.
You mean, if these customs are happening in the South of France, it was reasonable they would have happened in their homeland of Jutland? They might very well have happened in their homeland of Jutland.
But, finally, there's the possibility that he was a criminal.
Well, we know also from the Roman historian that traitors and deserters were hanged amongst the Germans.
And that cowards and the vicious were drowned in miry swamps.
Well, this man may of course have been an all-rounder.
Yes! He may have been both a traitor and a coward and have been hanged and then drowned.
One doesn't know, but recently, since this was found, the body of a girl has been found in similar circumstances Yes, Schleswig-Holstein.
Schleswig-Holstein, yes.
And she had had her head shaved and her eyes bandaged and had obviously been executed.
He may be just an executed criminal.
Yes.
Well, now, there we are.
We have these two possibilities.
There's no certain answer.
Possibly some sort of sacrificial death on a special occasion like a victory or something else.
Or it may be the death of a criminal.
We haven't got the answer, nor have the Danish archaeologists.
That's the first thing about Tollund Man.
The second thing about him is extremely interesting.
He was so very well preserved that the contents of his stomach were all there.
And the experts in Copenhagen were able to study it and were able to say what his last meal had been.
Now, we've reconstructed this meal with the assistance of Miss Wally and Dr White of the Dietetics Department of the London University.
And now I'm going to hand you over to our prehistoric, early Iron Age cook, Noelle Middleton.
Good evening, everyone, and welcome to my prehistoric kitchen.
Well, I better begin, I suppose, by telling you what I'm going to try to do.
As you've heard from Glyn and seen for yourselves, Tollund Man was extraordinarily well preserved.
And when they examined him in the museum in Copenhagen, they couldn't find any traces of sickness or any damage to his body other than that caused by the hanging.
So we know that the experts' table of contents of his last meal is accurate.
And we know roughly what his last meal consisted of.
Incidentally, it was eaten about 12-24 hours before he died.
We know roughly what the proportions are, and we only know very roughly how it was cooked, we've only certain clues as to how it was cooked.
The first and foremost thing about it is there is no trace of meat whatsoever in what was found.
And this may seem strange, but it is borne out by other evidence from this time.
Hunting weapons were hardly ever found in the graves or the remains of houses of this period.
And few bones were found in refuse deposits.
Earlier, they did live very much by hunting and fishing, but by this time there was very little game left and it was much too precious to kill off as meat.
They did have their domestic animals, of course, they had sheep, cattle, pigs, goats, but these particular ones were much too precious to kill off as meat.
And we know from this Except they sometimes killed them on very special occasions, I think.
But we know from this that Tollund Man's last meal was vegetable.
And it consisted of the following seeds or grains.
First of all there was barley.
Barley, which you can see here.
And there's a picture of it.
And it was the foremost means of subsistence as far as corn went at this time.
And then next there's linseed.
It's a rather light sort of coffee colour.
These small seeds, and it's the seed of flax.
There is one slight disadvantage about eating linseed in large quantities and that is that it's got a well-known laxative effect.
But this can be overcome if you soak the seeds in water for some time or you can boil them up and then drain them off very carefully, which is what we're doing with the ones we're cooking this evening.
And if any of you would like to try out this prehistoric recipe, well, I think you should soak them, do the same.
Then there are camelina seeds.
Here.
They are very, very tiny and they're a product of the mustard family.
And they were probably cultivated along with the flax.
And, like linseed, they're very rich in oil and therefore they're very valuable as a food.
Then there's pale persicaria, seeds of pale persicaria.
And this is the picture.
Oh, I think that's upside down.
This may be more familiar to you, because they're very light seeds and they are found very often on waste ground.
And these seeds have also been found in many Iron Age sites.
And it does seem as if they were either cultivated especially or perhaps they were the main object of seed-gathering expeditions.
Now, those are the main ingredients and then there were other seeds, but they were found in smaller quantities.
They were probably picked by mistake or just if the seed gatherers happened to come across them.
There's corn spurry here, which is very, very dark and tiny.
And it's found usually in corn fields.
And then beside that there's the sort of wild brother to the swede or turnip.
They're very tiny too, rather like miniature marbles.
And they've got little colours, sort of yellow and dark red.
Then there's white goat's foot beside that, which are very tiny and light and a sort of olive green.
And there's the picture of that plant.
And then we havewild pansy.
Just a few little seeds here, or heartsease.
Well, now, those are the main contents.
So, what are we going to do with them? Well, we're not going to roast them or bake them, because if they had been roasted or baked, there would have been some signs of burning and none of them had this, so that means they couldn't have been made into bread.
The first bread which was found in this part of the world dates from 400 AD and it consisted of a charred bun which was made of barley and gravel.
And the next bread was 400 years later and that consisted of coarsely ground peas and spruce bark.
There you are, neither of them sound particularly attractive to me.
Well, anyway, to go back to Tollund Man, he could hardly have eaten these seeds raw, so if they weren't roasted and they weren't baked the only thing that's left is boiling.
And there is evidence which fits in with this, because some bowls and pots were found, clay pots with a crust round them and this does look as if something like soup or porridge had been boiled in them.
And, anyway, porridge has always been a very popular dish with the Norwegians.
Well, now, there we are.
How are we going to prepare this gruel? Well, I've got an enormous cauldron here.
And we'll start off by putting in the barley.
And then the linseed which has been very well soaked.
And then the camelina seeds.
The pale persicaria.
And then the sprinkling of the other seeds.
There we go.
Now, they're all in.
And then we'll add some water to them.
Quite a lot because, of course, they soak up a lot.
There's abouttwo pints here.
And I think that's about enough.
And you stir all this around.
They are, of course, just floating now, because after they're cooked they won't swell.
And you stir it constantly and keep it over a low heat for Oh, I think, ten hours.
At the end of ten hours, you've got a jolly good Iron Age gruel.
The only thing we've left out of this is a spoonful of fine sand, which Tolland Man had in his.
We didn't put that in out of consideration for Glynn and Sir Mortimer.
Oh, we are, of course, using only dishes and implements that they might have used at this time, except for the fire here.
We couldn't build a big log fire in the studios for obvious reasons.
I'm sure the effect on the cooking won't be very different.
Now, in this cauldron over here, we have got a gruel which has been cooking for ten hours.
And the ingredients, you'll have to take my word for it, are exactly the same as the ones we've just seen here.
And I'm going to dish this out to Glyn and Sir Mortimer to try.
There is one other thing, what they might have had with it.
They could have had salt or honey or milk.
And none of these would have left any traces, so I've asked Glyn and Sir Mortimer to choose and they've chosen salt.
In colourit's a rather sinister-looking purpley brown.
I'll put a little bit more into this bowl here.
You see it's speckled with the seeds.
And when it's cold it sets quite hard, so they might have eaten it cold or they might have sliced it up as a sort of cake.
Well, I think that covers everything accept what they might have had to drink with it.
Well, we know from the Greek explorer Pytheas, who travelled to Denmark about this time, it was about 330 BC, and we know from him that the local inhabitants then drank mead or barley.
So Mead or beer.
So sorry! Beer.
And we've brought along some mead to the studio to complete this meal.
So, while Glyn and Sir Mortimer fortify themselves with this, I'll bring over the gruel for them to try.
I'll just put the salt on first.
Now, here it comes.
Have you got your spoons? Yes, we've got our spoons.
Skol.
Skol.
This, I suppose, Glyn, is to break down our resistance to the ordeal which is to follow.
Dreadful! You've got yours, have you? Hmm.
Skol.
Now, we proceed, I suppose.
Very good stuff.
Now, you try first.
Oh, no, I think you try first.
- Do we? - Yes.
It's not as purple as you No, go ahead, Glyn.
Go ahead.
Hmm! Is it delicious? No.
SHE LAUGHS Glyn, is anyone looking? THEY LAUGH Don't tell me the linseed effect has worked already.
It couldn't have.
Do you know, I've solved this problem.
Have you? If one could be frivolous in the presence of thesesolemn relics, I would say that the poor chap of Tollund committed suicide because he could stand his wife's cooking no longer.
Very good.
What I say is a little more animal with a little less vegetable.
There's too much vegetable.
There's too much vegetable and not enough mineral.
No mineral, no mineral.
Salt or sand? Well, anyhow, we'll drink to Tollund Man if not to this diet.
Bless him.
- Skol.
- Skol.
Good stuff.
Yes, it is.
It's much better than the porridge.
Oh, yes.
I'm sorry.
I think I'm inclined to agree with you.
Well, now, strengthened by that rather odd dish, let's now push back even further into the prehistory of Denmark, which is, as a country, full of buried treasure.
In 1821, a farmer at Egtved in North Jutland took away the remains of a barrow which he had and when he got right to the bottom he found an oak tree-trunk coffin.
Here it is.
And the farmer at once realised that this might be of very great interest and age and he informed the National Museum at Copenhagen.
And, sure enough, the coffin did turn out to contain the fully clothed skeleton of a young woman dating from the early Bronze Age some 3,500 years ago.
Now, unlike Tollund Man, it was mainly the hair and the teeth of this body that survived.
The water which had filled the coffin, however, had preserved completely the clothing in which the woman had been dressed.
The coffin was taken to the National Museum and there you can see it till the present day carefully restored to the state it was when it was first opened.
The body was that of a young fair-haired girl aged about 19.
She was dressed in a jersey and skirt and the body had been covered with a blanket and then wrapped in a cow skin before being laid in the coffin.
The coffin also contained various personal ornaments and possessions that it was the custom to bury with their owners at that time.
At the foot was a birchwood bucket and from the crystallised remains at the bottom, we know it must have contained a sort of cranberry wine flavoured with honey and bog myrtle.
Next to the bucket was a little bundle containing the cremated bones of a child, which had either died naturally or perhaps had been sacrificed.
Then there was this little, small, birchwood box containing an awl used for making holes in material when sewing and a cord, probably for tying up the hair, and some bones.
Then there was this small bronze box or canister, which contained some sad little personal relics.
Among them was a bronze knife blade and then a safety pin, a draw dress fastener and a dress stud.
And then one or two little pebbles and things of that kind.
The box itself was decorated in the very beautiful style of the Middle Bronze Age.
And then a yarrow flower had been laid in the coffin, a sign that the burial had taken place in the summer.
The style of skirt found in the Egtved coffin we know of from other evidence from bronze statuettes.
Here's a little bronze figure, either an acrobat or perhaps a handle of some kind And here's another, probably the image of a goddess of fertility.
And this particular figure also gives us an idea of a contemporary hairstyle.
We know from the grave finds, that they took a lot of trouble about the style and many of the women had their hair braided in a most complicated fashion.
As I've said, the clothes in the Egtved coffin were very perfectly preserved.
You can see them any day you like in the Copenhagen Museum.
You will also find there clothes from men who were buried in similar tree-trunk coffins.
Now, of course, it wasn't possible to bring these clothes from the Copenhagen Museum, but we've had replicas made.
And now we want to invite you to attend at what is really a Bronze Age fashion parade.
NOELLE MIDDLETON: And as we welcome you to this pleasant Danish country scene for our fashion parade, we say good evening to Jean, who's wearing a fashionable two-piece suit in dark brown natural wool.
This is a lightweight summer outfit, eminently suitable for the warm weather of the Bronze Age.
Practical for outdoor work and at the same time very elegant.
The neat little jacket with elbow-length sleeves is square cut.
And the edge of the sleeves and the neck is oversewn with scallop stitches.
The jacket is held around the waist by this very elegant tasselled belt.
Which also carries, of course, this bronze ornament, beautifully hammered and engraved with the popular spiral design.
And the charming corded skirt is a wrap-around type fastened by the band at the top.
The model that Jean is wearing is a plain one, it doesn't have the decorative row of bronze or amber tubes two or three inches below the top band, which many models of this skirt feature.
Both skirt and jacket are made from the pure wool of the small goat-horned sheep.
To set off this outfit, Jean is wearing two bronze bangles of contrasting styles.
This elegantly carved horn or wooden comb is carried in the belt and is always found with these outfits.
Notice also the fashionable single bronze earring that Jean is wearing and the hairstyle, with its braided top and pony's tail.
Altogether a practical and elegant summer outfit.
And now we say hello there to Gordon, who is wearing the cloak, gown and hat of the well-dressed Bronze Age man.
Again, the material is of dark brown natural wool woven on an upright loom.
The characteristic tall cap is made up of several pieces of cloth carefully sewn together.
These caps can be strengthened with birch-twig frames and so have a double use, to ward off the rain and an axe blow in battle.
The cloak is a really beautiful and impressive garment, held across the chest by a large bronze pin.
And the gown underneath is wrapped around the body and held in place by shoulder straps and a belt.
The belt is woven and goes twice round the body.
A sword, when worn, is carried in a leather belt over one shoulder.
And the price of these models? Well, the originals are literally priceless and even the copies are rather more than an average summer outfit.
You've got a good impression by now of the clothing that existed in the Middle Bronze Age in Denmark.
We're saying how did these people live? That of course is the great difficulty in trying to reconstruct the prehistoric past, the archaeologist is always up against it.
The Danes have been up against it and they have tried to reconstruct the past of the Middle Bronze Age.
They've made a film trying to get back the life of that very remote period.
We want to show you some of it, and here it is.
Well, now, the film begins with children playing at a lakeside.
And they're suddenly disturbed by the arrival of what to them are foreigners.
People coming from another part of Denmark or Germany on horseback.
Traders.
Merchants.
And the village comes out to meet them.
And the exchange of products begins.
The native village produces amber necklaces.
And the traders have got very finely made bronze axes and bronze bangles, perhaps even objects of gold.
Here's a reconstruction of the sort of scene that might have happened.
An axe is being exchanged for a necklace of amber.
And here's a man bringing a whole lump of amber, which was always valued enormously in prehistoric times.
And I rather think they're haggling about how much should be the exchange.
He's got several things, including great necklaces and armlets of bronze.
Here's the second scene, which is an industrial one dealing with the making of bronze.
Which is, of course, a classical mixture of copper and tin.
90% copper, 10% tin.
Here it is.
The crucible being poured out into a mould, a double mould of stone.
The liquid metal poured in.
The mould tied together with ropes.
There's another mould coming along.
And now when the metal has solidified, here we are, the mould is opened.
And there's the resultant bronze axe.
At first it's rough and got edges that have to be trimmed, but there's the final product with its flanges.
And the flanges fit neatly into a haft of wood .
.
to produce a typical object of this particular period, a tool or weapon wound up with rope.
And there's another typical object, a sword.
And now, the last scene we're showing you in this film is a funeral.
And from the Egtved grave, we'll be able to see to what extent this reconstruction is justified.
First the coffin of wood.
Then the cowhide put down with the hair inwards.
The mourners and relatives gather around.
And here comes the body.
The body of a young woman laid into the tree-trunk coffin.
And the cowhide put over her.
Now she sets off on her journey to her last resting place.
Up the hill.
So often in prehistoric times the tops of hills were used for burial places.
The coffin is put down.
The corpse is exposed again.
Objects placed with it, a sword, a dagger.
And a little folding stool like the one which our Iron Age cook was sitting on.
And then a bowl, possibly of mead, like the mead we've been drinking.
And a little bronze box, possibly full of trinkets and personal things like a knife.
And then a blanket.
And then the cowhide placed over again.
The burial sealed in.
And that part of the funeral is over.
And the lid of the coffin is brought .
.
it's the other part of the oak trunk.
And the burial is sealed in.
And now, as the mourners and friends go away .
.
and the near relatives are left behind.
And then they too go down the hill .
.
leaving the corpse on the top of the hill.
And the corpse, in its coffin, is gradually encased in stone and the stone eventually in a great barrow of earth.
A tumulus or barrow such as we see in the Danish countryside at the present day.
Now, Sir Mortimer, what do you think of that as a piece of reconstruction of the prehistoric past? Well, I think we would agree that discoveries and reconstructions such as these - do bring the past to life - They're very difficult to do.
.
.
as nothing else can.
We are rather inclined to regard our ancestors as naked savages, but, as we've seen, they had their art and their religion, their affection and their piety as we have today.
They even had their trousers as we have today.
We forget that they were not the naked savages of our artists, very often they werethey were fully clad and they were very like ourselves in a great many respects.
They had no agency, their diet as we've experienced tonight was sometimes of a primitive kind, but we have to remember that they were very close indeed to ourselves.
And we have tonight seen outstanding examples of the long dead bringing history to life.
Thank you.