In August of 1984, commercial peat cutters working near Wilmslow, about a half-hour drive south of Manchester, England, discovered a dead body in the moss. The corpse was determined to be a 25-year-old man with a closely shorn beard and well-manicured nails . He had suffered two or three heavy blows to the head, and had sustained a cut throat and a fractured rib. But this wasn’t a fresh corpse: His body had been laying in that peat bog for nearly 2,000 years .

The “ Lindow Man ” is just one of at least 2,000 bog bodies recovered from Europe’s peatlands . They date from the Mesolithic period, which ended in Europe between 8,500 to 5,500 years ago , all the way up through World War II .

“Bog bodies” are essentially human corpses that peat bogs have naturally preserved and mummified. Quite often, their skin, hair, nails, and internal organs are remarkably intact for thousands of years.…