Human nail found in European bog may be sign of ancient ritual sacrifice, study says

While surveying a bog in the Czech Republic, researchers unearthed a curious find: a 3,300-year-old human nail.

The small body part — found alongside a large deposit of grains — provides evidence for a gruesome, Bronze Age sacrifice associated with agriculture, according to new research.

The findings were detailed in a preprint study, which has not been peer-reviewed, posted to Research Square, an open-access platform.

The ancient objects were uncovered from a swamp forest about 25 miles northwest of Prague, researchers affiliated with institutions in the U.K., Lithuania and the Czech Republic said.

The nail, which likely comes from a big toe or thumb, was found inside of a core sample taken from the site in 2021.

Found at the same layer in multiple core samples was a large quantity of harvested millet, a cereal crop. Both the grain and the nail dated to between 1400 and 1300 B.C.

“Their joint presence in the same layer does not appear accidental,” researchers said.

While it’s difficult to determine the exact reason for their deposition, researchers ventured several hypotheses.

One of the most likely scenarios, researchers said, is that the crops were placed in the bog, which used to be a lake, alongside a human corpse as part of a ritual sacrifice related to the harvest season.

Occurring in the summer or early fall, the harvest season was often accompanied by various ceremonies in ancient times.

One such ceremony involved a “corn-spirit,” which was typically thought to embody the person who harvested the final crop of the season.

“This person was wrapped in the sheaf, shamed, sometimes beaten, doused with water, thrown into a dunghill and finally into a stream,” researchers said. In some traditions, they were “killed at the end of the harvest in order (for the spirit) to be reborn the following year.”

It’s likely that the individual whose nail was located in the bog was identified as the ill-fated corn-spirit, researchers said.

Providing evidence for this theory are the mud layers picked up in the core samples. The layers of sediment are inverted, indicating a corpse, or another large object, was thrown into the water, causing the mud to splash upward and fall back to the bottom “in reverse order.”

However, none of the samples contained biomarkers associated with decomposing tissue, indicating a body may not have been located nearby.

A number of other scenarios could have led to the nail being deposited in the bog.

For example, it could have been separated from the individual’s finger or toe during manual labor, such as harvesting, or through torture, researchers said.

This story was originally published June 6, 2024 at 4:41 PM with the headline "Human nail found in European bog may be sign of ancient ritual sacrifice, study says."