New research by a team of Scandinavian archaeologists sheds light on a man who died a violent death in a region of northwest Denmark more than 5,000 years ago.
The Wittlap Man was first discovered in a peat bog in northern Denmark in 1915. It was clear that his body had been struck at least eight times with a club, resulting in a brutal death.
For more than a century, this was all that was known about this ancient man.
Researchers have now mapped the key details of his life and determined that he covered a wide geographical area before his death, around 3,200 BC.
Researchers use AI to decipher ancient Roman documents carbonized in deadly Mount Vesuvius eruption
The Vittlap Man was first discovered in northern Denmark in 1915. (University of Gothenburg)
The man appears to have grown up in northern Norway, but for some reason traveled to Denmark in his late teens. So his diet changed from fish to agricultural products.
Archaeologist Karl Göran Sjögren, a member of the research team, said: “He came from a relatively cold region in the north, and the food he ate as a child came from the sea, so it was a coastal region.” It must be.” .
Researchers determined that “Wittlap Man” likely spent 10 to 20 years in rural Denmark before being “brutally bludgeoned to death.”
Innovative techniques such as DNA analysis, tartar analysis, and isotope analysis are opening new windows into the lives of ancient peoples.
Anders Fischer, part of the Swedish-Danish team working with the University of Gothenburg, said such techniques would allow researchers to “track the geographical and dietary development of this individual from birth to death.”
“As far as we know, this is the first time researchers have been able to map human life history in such detail and for so long,” Fisher said.
A manga depicting an ancient man who died a cruel death. (via Niels Bach, University of Gothenburg)
The study, published in the journal Nature, is part of a larger study examining the genome and DNA of prehistoric Nordic populations. ‘Wittlap Man’ is part of an analysis of 100 teeth and bone remains discovered in Denmark.
Researchers were particularly drawn to the Vittlap man because his genome was “significantly different from other Danish Stone Age populations,” Fisher said.
”[H]“He was closely related to modern humans who lived in Scandinavia, in what is now northern Norway and Sweden,” Fisher said, adding, “This is why we studied his origins and life history in detail. That’s why I decided to do it.”
How “Wittlap Man” ended up in Denmark and why he was clubbed to death remains unclear, and archaeologists can only speculate. Researchers suspect he may have been a victim.
CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP
“This study adds a living human to these finds,” said Lasse Sørensen, a Neolithic expert at the National Museum of Denmark in Copenhagen and a member of the research team. .