Posted on 03/12/2010 5:09:48 PM PST by Free ThinkerNY
London, England (CNN) -- They were 51 young men who met a grisly death far from home, their heads chopped off and their bodies thrown into a mass grave.
Their resting place was unknown until last year, when workers excavating for a road near the London 2012 Olympic sailing venue in Weymouth, England, unearthed the grave. But questions remained about who the men were, how long they had been there and why they had been decapitated.
On Friday, officials revealed that analysis of the men's teeth shows they were Vikings, executed with sharp blows to the head around a thousand years ago. They were killed during the Dark Ages, when Vikings frequently invaded the region.
"To find out that the young men executed were Vikings is a thrilling development," said David Score, project manager for Oxford Archaeology, which excavated the remains. "Any mass grave is a relatively rare find, but to find one on this scale, from this period of history, is extremely unusual and presents an incredible opportunity to learn more about what is happening in Dorset at this time."
Radiocarbon dating had already placed the remains between A.D. 890 and 1030, before the Norman conquest of Anglo-Saxon England.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
My guess is that they were in congress at the time and tried to pass their version of universal HC. /sarc
They probably did a lot of damage (raping & pillaging)to the native folks there to earn their grizzly fate.
That's what happens when you keep pushing that lutefisk on people...
Here’s the deal. according to you, the isotopes accumulate in the teeth due to diet, correct?
Therefore, how do you geographically locate a person who’s diet is mainly meat? Meat travels. especially meat that lives in the ocean.
AHA! didn’t think of that did ya girlie!
Did they have STD’s? How tall were they? Vikings are famous for sharing all with those whom they conquered and/or visited!
see my post 44
Doh! Of course. It's looking like the battlefield-cleanup angle makes sense.
Kind of goes with the large rings they are putting through their ear lobes!
Bet he could hunt seal much better than the others too!
I think I predicted this a couple of years ago ~ that we'd eventually find evidence that Vikings took one or two Sa'ami with them ~ which would 'splain nicely how some peculiarly Sa'ami genes did a major "break out" in Europe in the 900s.
LOL... oh, man... My grandma used to make that stuff.
Loved the lefse, and the pastries, but the lutefisk... lord, you could smell it two blocks before you got to the house.
I suspect they could tell they were Vikings because of the genetic material — ie the Berzerker Gene. Which is alive and well, is it not?........ Yumpin Yiminy Ya, ya betcha.
The ones at my Apple store have things in their ears that look like spools. Very strange, and painful to observe. But better than the ones at Starbucks with multiple tongue piercings, whom I can barely understand.
I have a theory about that!
My uneducated theory is that the berserker gene is alive and well in the red haird peoples of the british isles.
The phrase “get your irish up” is a modern day vestige of the berserker phenomenon...by my way of thinking.
If someone could go back in time and witness actual viking berserkers, my theory is that they would be largely red haired individuals and that they would be an over representation in the rape parties that tormented the british isles after the viking battle incursions onto the coasts of great britain.
Just a hunch.
PS, I love red haired women. I myself am not red haired, but i do have a redish beard...and as I age, my eyebrows and my sideburns are turning red.
dam i love red haired women!
The first few times I saw this spool piercing I was repulsed by it... but now when I see it I feel sorry for the kid. Sometimes we need to save our youngsters from themselves, even if we become unpopular.
My daughter thanks me for my strict attitude now, and my nieces and her friends who rebelled have for the most part removed the weird piercings and regret the crazy tattoos.
see post 35. just a hairbrained hypothesis.
oh gosh, wait till ya see the spools in the nostrils! Any day now I expect to see spools in eyebrows and lips.
Haven’t seen that one yet.
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