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Peat-cutters near the village of Grauballe in Denmark made the gruesome discovery. He was a fairly tall man with reddish brown hair buried 2 or 3 feet below the surface of the bog. He was naked and his face was contorted in a look of horror and pain, likely a result of having his leg broken, skull crushed and throat cut from ear to ear. An autopsy revealed that his last meal consisted of a porridge of wheat and rye. Although the bog acids and tannin had turned his skin into leather and made his bones soft and pliable, it was still possible to get fingerprints from the body. But the prints didn’t match any on file and the perpetrators were well ahead of the authorities. Actually about 2,000 years ahead. C14 dating showed that the Grauballe Man, as he has come to be known since his discovery in 1952, was vertical at the time of Julius Caesar. By some accounts, close to 2,000 bog bodies have been found in Northern Europe over the years and he is one of the best preserved. Indeed, much of what is known about life in the iron age derives from studying the bodies and artifacts found in these oxygen-excluding places that preserve things so well. While a few of the bodies found have met accidental deaths in the bog, most have been victims of violence, probably religious sacrifice. Recently researchers from the University of Copenhagen, the Danish Technological Institute and Manchester University, UK collaborated to find out what The Grauballe Man really looked like. Since bone becomes pliable in a bog, under the weight of the peat the skull had become distorted and flattened. It was also desired to reverse early efforts by conservators who added clay-like materials inside the head to make him look less horrific to visitors of The Moesgård Museum of Prehistory, in Aarhus, Denmark where he still resides.     The CAT scan data is shown on the left. Right, the skull being reconstructed from stereolithography-generated replica bones. Below, the cast of the skull replica with markers for adding soft tissue. Reconstruction pictures courtesy of Dr. Niels Lynnerup, University of Copenhagen.   Niels Lynnerup of the University of Copenhagen’s Laboratory of Biological Anthropology used MIMICS software from Materialise to remove the clay material from the CAT scan data, and to fit together the individual bones. This data was then used by the Danish Technological Institute to create stereolithography replicas of the individual bones which were subsequently assembled using clay to fill empty and missing areas. A cast of the complete skull model was then used by Dr. Caroline Wilkinson of Manchester University as a basis to make the final reconstruction. We will never know who he was or exactly why he was killed. But he is not forgotten, his image is preserved and his memory is honored.   For more info Contact: Dr. Niels Lynnerup Laboratory of Biological Anthropology University of Copenhagen The Panum Institute Blegdamsvej 3 Copenhagen N, DK-2200 Denmark +45/3532-7239 +45/3532-7215 FX n.lynnerup@antrolab.ku.dk Dr. Caroline Wilkinson, Manchester University Danish Technological Institute   Moesgård Museum of Prehistory The Grauballe Man as he appears to Museum visitors. Courtesy of Moesgård Museum of Prehistory, Aarhus, Denmark