It would seem that Vittrup man met a tragic end. His shattered skull, found in 1915 in a peat bog at the northern tip of Denmark, has finally revealed part of his enigmatic story. Anders Fischer (University of Gothenburg, Sweden; and University of Copenhagen, Denmark) and his colleagues have subjected him to a series of analyses to learn more about his origins and his abrupt end, some 3,200 years ago. They published their findings in PLOS One on February 14.

"We've been studying him for 10 years, and spent four years on his genome, which was difficult to analyze," explained Fischer. When DNA sequencing linked him to hunter-fisher populations that were then present in Sweden and Norway, and not to the more recent farming communities from Anatolia who occupied Denmark at the time, it came as a surprise. "It was almost too good to be true! I must admit I doubted the geneticists' analysis," said Fischer, who decided to use a series of different techniques to see if this result held water.

The team partly derived their findings from anatomical measurements of the skull, which is more massive than those of the local inhabitants of the area in which he was found. It eventually emerged that "Vittrup Man" was initially from northern Scandinavia – "But we don't know how far north," said Fischer. In any case, oxygen isotope analyses of his teeth show that his early years were spent in a colder climate than that of Bronze Age Denmark. He would therefore have migrated south in his late teens. The enamel on his teeth, the collagen in his bones and the tartar in his teeth reveal a change in diet. He grew up eating fish and sea mammals – seals and whales – before switching to a typical contemporary Danish peasant farmer diet, including sheep and goat meat. This change took place before he reached the age of 20, according to the samples taken at different depths of one of his teeth. "The others have been preserved for future generations of researchers," said the archaeologist.

The analyses didn't reveal anything about the following decades of his life, until his death sometime between 30 and 40 years of age. Some researchers have referred to this as a "ritualised sacrifice." "That's one interpretation," agreed Fischer. The incomplete skull shows no less than eight impact lesions that have left oval fractures, possibly caused by a maple wood club found close to him in the bog. This was not an uncommon occurrence, as several individuals of all ages bearing similar wounds have already been unearthed by archaeologists in Denmark. "A tradition," Fischer concluded.

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