This man was dug up only a few hundred yards from my grandparents’ farm;

This man was dug up only a few hundred yards from my grandparents’ farm;

the family has lived in the general area as far back as anyone can trace them. He was buried about 7,000 years ago, and was in his 60s. In all likelihood, he is my ancestor; later waves of immigration has likely diluted his genes, but humans being human, some of his descendants would have had offspring with the newcomers. He is on display in the Historical Museum of Stockholm.

The only thing I really feel about it is that I personally wouldn’t want to be on display in a museum. I’m sure there are others who would be positively delighted to. A road not far from here is named for a Viking age chieftain; the Vikings set great store by their reputation and he would have been ecstatic to know that his name was spoken daily 1,000 years later; he might very well have felt the same way about his remains being on display.

And there are excellent reasons to show him. It gives us an immediate connection to those who lived here long ago: here he is, he was an ordinary person like you and me, his relatives buried him with care and mourned him, like we do today

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