The life and gruesome death of a bog man revealed after 5,000 years

A man who ended up in a Danish bog 5,000 years ago with his skull crushed by a wooden club might have come from far-off northern Scandinavia. Carbon and nitrogen isotope levels in bones and teeth, which can reveal aspects of diet, suggest that ‘Vittrup Man’ had transitioned from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle to farming in his late teens. And genetic analysis shows he was related to hunter-gatherers from what is now Norway and Sweden, not to the farming communities of Denmark.