The remains of a young man found in a Laois bog in Ireland have been dated back 4,000 years, making it the world’s oldest ‘bog body’ ever recovered in the world. The chemical composition of bogs can preserve human bodies for thousands of years and so far archaeologists have found more than 100 ancient bodies in Irish bogs but few as well-preserved and none as old as this one.
The mummified remains were discovered two years ago on Bord na Móna land in County Laois by a worker operating a milling machine and researchers have now been able to date the body back to 2000 BC, nearly 700 years earlier that the famed Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamen.
Scientists had initially thought the body dated from the Iron Age period (500 BC – 400 AD) as a number of other bodies had been recovered from Irish bogs from that time period. However, they were astonished to find that the remains were nearly two millennia older, predating the earliest bog body discovered in Ireland which dates to around 1300 BC.
Mummified remains found in bog are world’s oldest
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