We just read the article on Bog People. In the article it attributes the deaths of these people to a mystical human sacrifice. After reading the article it appears to me that such brutal and systematic slaying of so many people points more to a massacre than a sacrifice. The article does state that this could have been capital punishment for crimes. However, what about these being victims of a war between two opposing tribes or the genocide of a race of people thought to be inferior or adhering to the "wrong" belief system? Some of the victims had red hair which in a by gone era was thought to be "deviant". What if these people were killed for this reason? I wonder what archaeologists 1000 years from now would make of the Nazi death camps? Would they appear to them as a sacred mystical place where human sacrifices occurred? Unfortunately history does repeat itself. Were these bogs the "Auschwitz" of the ancient world?

Dr. dig responds:
Bog bodies that have been remarkably preserved in the peat bogs of Northern Europe are something of a mystery and not everyone agrees about the exact nature of the death of the people that have been found. It seems fairly certain, however, that they were not the victims of any war or massacre or mass killing as there is little evidence either from excavated remains or actual historical documents that would lead us to such a conclusion.

We do know something about the ancient religion practiced in those parts of Europe where bog bodies are found and we know from ancient sources that human sacrifice was not uncommon in places like ancient Britain.

Bog bodies have been very carefully analyzed right down to the contents of their stomach which provide importance evidence about the ingredients of their last meal. These kinds of details suggest that at least some bog bodies were the subjects of some sort of ritual sacrifice. So, some bog bodies most certainly happened by accident, but others were clearly deliberately killed and thrown into the bogs perhaps as part of some sort of human sacrificial ritual. Ancient Roman writers refer to human sacrifice among some tribes of northern Europeans, and it is quite likely that these bog bodies are victims of such a practice.

This may seem gruesome and inhumane to us today, but don't lose your head over it - human sacrifice was an accepted ritual that had been practiced by people all over the ancient world.