Life and Death of a Druid Prince

On Aug. 1, 1984, a workman harvesting peat from Lindow Moss bog near Manchester in the English Midlands made a gruesome discovery: embedded in the sodden peat was the upper half of a slain man, fresh enough to interest the local police. The victim, forensic inspection revealed, had been bludgeoned, garroted with a ceremonial cord, drained of blood and drowned. Scientists soon determined, however, that Lindow Man's executioners were already far beyond the reach of the law; their victim had died some two millenniums ago, carbon analysis showed, and his flesh had been accidentally preserved by the oxygen-free acidic moisture of the peat. Violence there surely had been, but the evidence suggested that the man had gone willingly to his death as an act of sacrifice.