Bog Bodies are cadavers preserved in peat bogs. The oldest known BB is Koelbjerg Man, who dates to 8000 BCE. The most famous is probably 2400yo Tollund Man (pictured). The Nazis were fascinated with them & used them to justify their persecution of LGBTQ+ ppl.
A thread
CW. Bodies & Nazis 🚨
The water in peat bogs is very acidic with no oxygen. These conditions mean any bodies in them are very well preserved. The acid bleaches the hair & tans the skin. Many died violent deaths & it’s unclear if this was ritualistic, punishment, or murder
(This is Grauballe Man)
Side note: BB are so well preserved they are often mistaken for recent murder victims when they are discovered. In Macclesfield, in 1983, the head of a woman was found buried in the ground, some 300m away from the house of local man Peter Reyn-Bardt.
When the police asked him to explain the head he immediately confessed to the murder & burial of his wife, Malika de Fernandez some 20 years earlier. Further testing revealed the woman had actually died in the late Iron Age.
Reyn-Bardt was convicted of his wife’s murder, even though her remains were never found. The discovered head became known as Lindow Woman.
Back to the story.
The Nazis went to extraordinary lengths to appropriate Norse & Germanic history & mythologies to prove themselves the “superior race”. For example, a lot of nazi propaganda pushed the idea they were descended from Vikings, who they portrayed as “racially pure”, noble savages.
Another side note - this still happens today in far right groups who still appropriate Norse iconography & mythology.
The effort to rewrite their history was considerable. How does this fit in with bog bodies? Well, the two leading theories about BBs were that they were, A. killed as ritual sacrifice, or B. punished for some kind of criminality. (Pictured. Yde Girl’s body & reconstruction)
The criminality theory comes mostly from the work of the Roman historian Publius Cornelius Tacitus, who wrote Germania in ACE 98, a work that portrays social customs in the northern parts of the empire. (Facial reconstruction of The Girl of the Uchter Moor)
It’s not known if Tacitus ever actually went to Germany, but his work described the Germanic tribes as being very noble, honourable, brave, restrained, etc. Basically all the things the Nazis thought they were, so they loved this.
(Red Franz found in Bourtanger Moor)
These were the “noble savages” the Nazis wanted claim descendent from. So desperate were they to “prove” this that Heinrich Himmler established an archaeological institute, the Ahnenerbe, to do just that.
(The Osterby man, or Osterby head, dates to 70 ACE)
Tacitus doesn’t write about BBs but he did write this about Germanic laws, “The punishment varies to suit the crime. Traitors and deserters are hanged on trees; the cowardly, the unwarlike and those who disgrace their bodies are drowned in miry swamps under a cover of wicker.”
Well, that was enough for the Nazis. The BBs were CLEARLY the “cowardly, the unwarlike, and those who disgraced their bodies” - or, to the mind of mass murdering, nazi fuckheads - gay people.
This was viewed by Nazis as proof that they descended from ppl who punished homosexuality. I don’t need to tell you how powerful history can be, so the idea that there was a precedence for homophobia & murder was soon pushed as the *only* explanation for BBs
(The Windeby girl)
In a 1937 speech about the homosexuality, Himmler referred to the bog bodies to justify the persecution of gay people. He said:
The research of the Ahnenerbe was also used to justify the Holocaust, Germanic imperialism, and all manner of crackpot nazi ideas. Following the end of WW2 & the defeat of the Nazis, new research was allowed to flourish
(The Elling woman was found in a bog in Denmark)
It was eventually proven the BBs are widely dispersed across Europe & are not uniquely Germanic. It was also shown that they vary greatly in date - some from 8000 BCE & some to the 20thC. The reasons these ppl ended up in the bog will never be fully understood
(Tollund man)
If you would like to read more about the bog bodies of Europe, this article is a great place to start smithsonianmag.com/science-nature…
Final thought - Indiana Jones was pretty spot on with claim the Nazis were pillaging the globe for fabled, lost artefacts. In fact, as well as making up crap about gay ppl & BBs, they really were searching for the holy grail - and for Thor’s hammer
👇 history.co.uk/shows/lost-rel…
Judging by my DMs, I seem to have sent many ppl down an Internet rabbit hole in search of bog bodies. I make no apologise for this, in fact, I encourage it. This documentary is one of my favourites - History Cold Case, The Skeletons of the Windypits
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Today is #WorldPenguinDay , so here is a story about the “astonishing depravity" and "hooligan males" of the Adélie penguins recorded in Cape Adare in 1911.
This is George Murray Levick, a scientist with the 1910-13 Scott Antarctic Expedition. He arrived at Cape Adare in 1911 & observed the penguins for a year. He was the first scientist ever to observe the breeding cycle of the penguins.
George photographed the penguins throughout. This is one of his.
I can’t believe I’ve been woken up the for this, but here we go.
1. The historian Strabo (64BCE - 24 ACE) described operations on the clitoris
2. Galen (129-126 ACE) called the clitoris “the nymph” in his “on the usefulness of the parts of the body.”
3. Soranus of Ephesus (1st century ACE) also calls it a “nymph” and describes it as “hidden underneath the labia such as young brides hide under their veil.”
4. Other ancient writers who describe the clitoris include, Caelius Aurelianus, Iianus, Albucasis, and Avicenna. They would call it a “nymph,” a “myrtleberry,” or “tongue bag.” The romans called it “landica.”
5. Although the clitoris is not mentioned in the Kama Sutra, it was in other ancient Hindu texts. The Sanskrit for clitoris is “smart-chatra,” which translates to “umbrella of the love god.” (Best. Clit. Fact. Ever.)
Wewe Gombel is a female ghost in Javanese folklore. It is said that she kidnaps children and hides them under her breasts.
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Wewe Gombel, or “Hantu Kopek" as she’s known in Malaysia, has a complicated legend. It is said that in life, she married the man of her dreams, but they never had children because she was infertile.
Her husband grew resentful and began shagging around. One day, Wewe Gombel caught her husband in bed with another woman. She flew into a rage & killed him.
July 22nd is the Feast Day of Mary Magdalene in the Christian faith. Much has been made of who Mary was, but she almost certainly wasn’t a sex worker. That story came about in 591, when Pope Gregory I got his Marys muddled.
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Mary Magdalene, (who debuts in Luke 8:2) was mixed up with with Mary of Bethany (Luke 10:39), and the anonymous "sinful woman" who washed Jesus's feet in Luke 7:36–50.
The Mary who washed Jesus’ feet had been up to naughty things & all three were conflated. To be fair, there are quite a few Marys knocking about.
Mary Carleton (1642-73) was the most infamous thief & harlot of Port Royal, Jamaica. She was said to be “A stout frigate … or else she never could have endured so many batteries & assaults … she was as common as a barber’s chair: no sooner was one out, but another was in.”
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Mary was born Mary Moders in Canterbury, England - possibly to a fiddler. There is not much that is certain about her life because she was an exceptional bullshit artist. Most of what we know about her was written in jail reports that were designed to shock, or from Mary herself.
These reports say Mary married a shoemaker called Thomas Stedman, who she eventually left to marry a surgeon called Thomas Day. Her first arrest and trial was for bigamy.
This is the legendary burlesque artist & 'vaginiste', Honeysuckle Devine. She was once described as a 'one woman slum', & had one of the most extraordinary acts in the history of burlesque.
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Honeysuckle was born Betty Allsup in Rock Island, Illinois in 1938. She was one of 14 children & described her father as a 'hillbilly, banjo-playing lumberjack.'
As a teenager she became deeply religious & at 21 she went to Philadelphia to become a postulant at the Grey Nuns of the Sacred Heart Convent