SC - "bog butter"

[Brenna]

snowfire at mail.snet.net wrote:

> -Poster: Jean Holtom <Snowfire at mail.snet.net>
>
> >> Has anyone heard of this before?
>
> >Yes, I've heard of it before. A couple of comments:
>
> >1) The fact that butter has been found in bogs doesn't prove burying it
> >in bogs was a typical thing to do with butter. Many bog bodies have been
> >found; it wasn't something that was done to everyone. The reason for
> >doing so seems to be pretty unclear, but possibilities might include
> >some kind of sacrifice, an attempt to preserve the butter in a cool,
> >relatively airless place, and an attempt to preserve the butter with
> >various chemicals the bog water has in solution (tannic acid for one).
> >The butter may have been believed to have (and may have, in fact)
> >undergone some kind of chemical change making it medicinally useful.
> >Centuries later, many European recipe books for medicines and foods
> >would speak of May butter, which appears to be butter that has been left
> >in a sunny meadow for several days, in May. The modern explanation seems
> >to be that some vitamin is either created or stored in the butter upon
> >exposure to sunlight (I forget which).

I saw a show about the "bog bodies" and the investigators did what passed for
autopsies on some of the remains (including a toxicology and MRI scans).  What
they found has convinced this group of investigators (sorry, the name escapes
me, but they got several noted forensic specialists in on the exams) that the
bog people were willing sacrifices in some cases and executed in others.  The
difference wasn't so much in how they were killed (the methods varied widely),
but in whether or not they ate a small amount of ritual poisons (hemlock in most
cases) before death.  The team took all the evidence into account and came up
with the premise that those who were sacrifices gave their lives with the idea
of joining nature and the gods of the bog and that those who were executed were
killed because they poked their noses in on sacred ground and interfered with or
messed with someone or something that they shouldn't have.  I haven't heard any
more about this in the 3 or 4 months since I saw that show.  Anyone else seen
anything on this?

Brenna

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