Lindow Woman facts for kids
Lindow Woman is the name given to the parts of a woman's body found in a peat bog at Lindow Moss, near Wilmslow in Cheshire, England. She was discovered on May 13, 1983, by people cutting peat.
The remains were mostly a skull, which was missing its jaw, but still had some soft skin and hair. Scientists believe these remains are from the time of the Romans in Britain. The Lindow Woman is also known as Lindow I. This is because other bodies were found in the same bog later. These include Lindow Man (Lindow II) found in 1984, and Lindow III found in 1987.
Finding Lindow Woman
The Lindow Woman was found on May 13, 1983, by peat cutters named Andy Mould and Stephen Dooley. They first saw something unusual on their conveyor belt. It looked like a football. They took it off the belt to look closer. After cleaning off the peat, they realized it was part of a preserved human head. It still had some soft tissue, brain, an eye, and hair.
Today, only the skull remains because of how it was handled by the police. Scientists first thought the skull belonged to a woman aged 30 to 50. However, newer studies have made them less sure about whether it was a woman or a man.
Another body, called Lindow III, was found in the same area in 1987. This body had no head and a small thumb. Some scientists think Lindow III might be the rest of the Lindow Woman's body. One idea is that both Lindow I and Lindow II were placed in the bog as part of a special ceremony by the Celtic people.
How Bog Bodies Are Preserved
Bog bodies stay preserved because of special conditions in peat bogs. For a body to be preserved, the bog must be a sphagnum moss bog. The temperature when the body is placed there must be colder than 4°C (39°F). Also, the average temperature for the year must be lower than 10°C (50°F). The bog also needs to stay wet all year and not dry out.
Sphagnum moss makes the water around it very acidic. This is much more acidic than normal water, with a pH of about 3.3 to 4.5. There are also very few minerals dissolved in the water. When the moss dies, it forms layers and releases special sugars and acids. These use up all the oxygen in the water. Since living moss covers the water's surface, the water below has no oxygen. Because of these conditions, human bodies buried in the bog turn into a kind of leather, instead of decaying.
See also
In Spanish: Mujer de Lindow para niños
