What DNA Revealed About The Tollund Man Has Shocked Every Scientist Who Studied Him

What DNA Revealed About The Tollund Man Has Shocked Every Scientist Who Studied Him In May 1950 two brothers cutting peat in central Denmark stopped when they found something that shouldn't have been there. A man. Face intact, eyes closed, expression completely undisturbed, a leather cap still on his head. The police were called before the archaeologists because nothing about what they were looking at suggested ancient history. It suggested last week. He had been dead for more than two thousand years. The Tollund Man is the best preserved prehistoric human ever recovered anywhere on earth and for seven decades scientists examined everything the bog had held intact, the rope around his neck, his last meal still identifiable in his stomach, the stubble still faintly visible on his jaw. Then modern DNA technology reached a level of precision that made all the earlier work look like a rough draft. When it was applied to what remained inside him the results did not confirm what researchers expected, they rewrote it. What the DNA revealed about who the Tollund Man actually was, where he came from, and what his presence in that Danish bog two thousand years ago actually means is one of those answers that raises more questions than it closes, and personally I think the face is what makes this one impossible to look away from. He doesn't look ancient. He looks like someone you might recognise.