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  • RESEARCH HIGHLIGHT

The guts of a ‘bog body’ reveal sacrificed man’s final meal

Tollund Man, who lived more than 2,000 years ago, ate well before he was hanged.
Selected materials found in the gut contents of Tollund Man

The intestinal contents of a man killed in a prehistoric ritual (clockwise from upper left): barley, charred food that had been encrusted in a clay pot, flax seeds and sand. Credit: Peter Steen Henriksen, the Danish National Museum

Some 2,400 years ago, a man was killed and placed in a bog in modern Denmark — probably as some kind of ritual sacrifice. Now, researchers have reconstructed the man’s last meal, down to its recipe.

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Nature 595, 629 (2021)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-01984-y

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