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Life in the Iron Age may have been nasty, brutish and short but people still found time to style their hair and polish their fingernails - and that was just the men.
These are the findings of scientists who have been examining the latest preserved prehistoric bodies to emerge from Ireland's peat bogs -- the first to be found in Europe for 20 years.
One of the bodies, churned up by a peat-cutting machine at Clonycavan near Dublin in 2003, had raised Mohawk-style hair, held in place with gel imported from abroad.
The other, unearthed three months later and 40 km (25 miles) away in Oldcroghan by workmen digging a ditch, had perfectly manicured fingernails.
"I think the message I'm getting is that although they were living in a different time, a different culture, eating different things, living in a different way, people are people -- they're the same in their thinking," said Rolly Read, head of conservation at the National Museum of Ireland in Dublin.
Read is one of a team of experts from Britain and Ireland who carried out an 18-month examination of the 2,300-year-old corpses and whose findings form the basis of "Kingship & Sacrifice", a major new exhibition at the museum.
More:
http://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=1108342006
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