London, England - The people who killed Pete Marsh needed to make absolutely certain that he was dead. First, they hit him on the back of the head. Then they strangled him with a leather thong that was still around his neck when his body was found.
Finally they cut his throat – before flinging him face down into the watery bog. By any standards, it was a horrific killing – but one that was a common experience for our ancestors.
The people who put Pete to his gruesome death inhabited the British Isles during the Iron Age, on the eve of the Roman occupation, more than 2,000 years ago.
For Pete – more correctly known to archaeologists as Lindow Man, from the name of the Cheshire bog where his body was found in 1984 – was just one of many human sacrifices made to appease the cruel and merciless gods who governed the lives of the ancient Britons.
‘Human sacrifice was practised all over Europe,’ says Simon Raikes, executive producer of Gods And Monsters, a new five-part Channel 4 series exploring the darker side of history.
‘The victims all appear to have been ritually killed, and may even have agreed to their own deaths for religious reasons. It may seem odd to us, but the overwhelming surprise of our series is the discovery that such strange superstitions lasted into the 19th century – and even beyond. It seems that belief in the supernatural is always with us.’
Gods And Monsters examines neglected and forgotten parts of British history as the series presenter, Time Team’s Tony Robinson, delves into our ancestors’ weird and wonderful rituals and beliefs.
Episode one looks at death, and tries to explain why our forebears felt it essential to kill their own kind in such brutal ways. ‘One particularly weird idea was that the finger of a murdered corpse would point at the killer,’ says Simon. ‘This was even accepted as evidence in murder trials by courts up until the 19th century.’
Often such bizarre beliefs developed as ways of warding off the many dangers that beset the British Isles. In response to the 14th-century plague the Black Death, which wiped out about a third of the population, people compensated for the loss of loved ones by creating the legend that the dead rose from their graves and walked around as zombies.
Occasionally, corpses were beheaded, or a stake driven through their hearts, as a way to prevent this ‘resurrection’ – a practice that persisted for four centuries. Another of the series’ discoveries is that cannibalism was rife in ancient Britain. ‘There is evidence that early British kings ate people they killed, perhaps in the belief that they could absorb their opponents’ strength,’ says Simon.
Archaeologists who have examined sacrificial corpses believe victims may have been chosen because they had a physical deformity – one such body had six fingers and others had missing limbs. A sixth finger also marked a person out as a witch – a recurring theme of the series.
‘We look at a case of witchcraft in Scotland in 1590 that attracted the attention of James I of England,’ says Simon. The king blamed storms at sea that nearly cost him his fleet, and his life, on witchcraft, and when a suspected witch was brought to trial for the crime, he personally intervened to demand the death penalty. ‘He was very disappointed when she was acquitted,’ admits Simon.
It was probably to please James I that Shakespeare introduced his witches in Macbeth – creating the stereotype of an evil old crone with cats and a cauldron that remains to this day. The idea that burning witches purified the taint they spread lasted for centuries. In another case highlighted by the series, from 1895, Irishman Michael Cleary came to believe that his wife Bridget was a ‘changeling’ – a being substituted for a human by fairies. ‘In order to burn the demons out of her he held her over an open fire,’ says Simon. ‘Unfortunately, her dress caught fire and she burned to death.
‘Cleary then went out to a remote place in the country where he believed fairies gathered in the hope they would give him his “real wife” back. He was tried for manslaughter and imprisoned.
‘In those times, fairies were seen as evil, demonic creatures who exacted revenge for insults by stealing people’s children,’ says Simon. ‘It is only more recently that fairies have acquired a more benign image as little girls with wings and wands. These days, the only things they steal are teeth!’ n