3,400 years after her death, scientists track a girl's travels

[Contrary1]

I find these stories so fascinating...thought I would share.



[font size=1]A photo of the remains of a Bronze Age high status female found inside an oak-coffin in a monumental burial barrow at Egtved, Denmark. The Egtved Girl’s garments are extremely well preserved and her exceptional wool costume consists of several wool textile pieces as well as a disc-shaped bronze belt plate, symbolizing the sun.[/font]


In 1921, archaeologists exploring an ancient burial mound near Egtved, a village in Denmark, unearthed the grave of a girl estimated to have been 16 to 18 years old when she died.

Not much remained of her body — only some hair, teeth, nails, and bits of skin and brain — but scholars could tell a lot about her. Dressed in fine woolen clothing, with a bronze medallion on her belt that probably represented the sun, the Egtved Girl, as she came to be known, was believed to be a person of high status. She was buried with the cremated remains of a small child and a bark bucket that once contained beer. Analysis of the oak coffin in which she lay revealed that she died about 3,400 years ago.

This week, nearly a century after she was discovered, a team of researchers in Denmark filled in more detail of the Egtved Girl’s life story. By analyzing chemicals in her body and in the items in her coffin, they were able to surmise that she hadn’t been born in Denmark, that her diet lacked protein from time to time, and that she traveled widely in the final months of her life.

“Our study provides evidence for long-distance and periodically rapid mobility. Our findings compel us to rethink European Bronze Age mobility as highly dynamic, where individuals moved quickly, over long distances in relatively brief periods of time,” the researchers wrote, in a study published Thursday in the journal Scientific Reports.

More: http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-bronze-age-girl-denmark-travels-20150521-story.html


More details here: http://www.nature.com/srep/2015/150521/srep10431/full/srep10431.html

and http://en.natmus.dk/historical-knowledge/denmark/prehistoric-period-until-1050-ad/the-bronze-age/the-egtved-girl/

[Spitfire of ATJ]

1. They didn't know much about crop rotation back then....

They would plant fields and when the soil played out the whole community would move on to greener pastures.

[struggle4progress]

2. Bronze Age Egtved Girl found in Denmark came from the Black Forest

... The combination of the different provenance analyses indicates that the Egtved Girl, her clothing, and the oxhide come from Schwarzwald (“the Black Forest”) in South West Germany – as do the cremated remains of a six-year-old child who was buried with the Egtved Girl ...
http://www.pasthorizonspr.com/index.php/archives/05/2015/bronze-age-egtved-girl-found-in-denmark-came-from-the-black-forest

[struggle4progress]

3. "Replica of woman's dress, in natural brown wool, second half of second millennium BC, Egtved"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Egtved_Girl.gif

[FSogol]

4. Very cool, thanks for posting. n/t

[etherealtruth]

5. This is amazing, thanks for posting

[The2ndWheel]

6. It's no wonder our movements today are increasingly tracked

We have a fascination with people that died 3400 years ago, and that kind of information is even more valuable with people alive today. You can sell them stuff, make sure they're not doing anything wrong, etc. When the day comes that we're all biologically hooked up to the internet, it'll be that much easier.

[Oilwellian]

8. Uh, it's valuable to us today because...

we don't know a whole lot about that time period. Not really sure what your point is. Do you object to our learning more about the Bronze Age?

[The2ndWheel]

9. No, just commenting on the need to know

As we become ever more immersed in the surveillance society being built, it's just because it/we need to know. Just like we need to know about some previous period of time.

[MisterP]

10. people's desire for connectivity or even voyeurism has NOTHING to do with the NSA

[smirkymonkey]

7. +1000

[yellowwoodII]

11. But What about Christianity?

What I find fascinating about this is how people manage to fight over an event that might have happened 2000 years ago when history is so vast.