Bringing the Dead to Life

Overheard at National Geographic

National Geographic

Science, Society & Culture

4.5 • 10.1K Ratings

🗓️ 17 May 2022

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Thousand-year-old Peruvian queens and medieval murder victims may seem lost to time, but history “detectives” are on a mission to solve a mystery: What did those people look like? We hear from Oscar Nilsson, a forensic facial reconstructionist who uses a combination of science and art to re-create the faces of our ancestors. For more information on this episode, visit natgeo.com/overheard. Want more? Oscar Nilsson’s reconstructions of Cheddar Man, Bocksten Man and others can be seen at his website odnilsson.com. Also explore: When an explorer uncovered the skeleton of an ancient Peruvian queen in a tomb in Peru, they asked Nilsson to make a recreation of her. Uncover the story here. 8,000 years ago, a man’s bones were used in a ritual in Scandinavia. Take a look at Nilsson’s recreation of him. For subscribers: A mother and child were buried in Sweden 4,000 years ago. Read about Nilsson’s recreation of the woman and see what she might have looked like. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	There's something so romantic about winter and I don't know whether that's just because
0:05.4	I'm a bit for homebody and I love a 5th but I think it's just the holiday period is just
0:10.7	for me it's the most romantic period and I think anyone who's listened to my records
0:15.9	will know that I'm quite a big fan of romance.
0:18.8	Join in every sip with Red Carp's Now Back at Starbucks.
0:31.7	Picture it.
0:33.0	It's June 22nd, 1936, the day before mid-Summer's Eve.
0:37.0	We're in Sweden, the town of Varburg near a place called Boxden's Bog.
0:42.9	Two children, an 11-year-old boy and his five-year-old sister are working there, harvesting
0:47.8	meat when the boy notices something sticking out of the muck, something that looks creepy,
0:55.7	like bones.
0:58.3	The frightened children run and fetch their dad who returns with them, he digs a little
1:02.3	deeper in the bog and uncovers more bones and subscripts of cloth.
1:08.8	Dad realizes there's a body there and summons the local police.
1:15.6	The police investigate the site and confirm the presence of a body in the bog, one that's
1:20.6	been pinned down underwater by wooden stakes.
1:24.4	It's a very grim scene.
1:29.1	But it turns out it's not a recent crime, the person in the bog had been dead for almost
1:34.5	700 years.
1:38.1	The skeleton and its clothing were carefully excavated from the site, preserved and
1:42.4	studied.
1:44.0	This bog body, now known as the Boxden Man, has become one of the most famous in Europe.
	...

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