From scotsman.com: 400-year-old Scots ready to reveal their battle secrets.

A mass grave of soldiers, including Scots, slaughtered during Europe’s bloody Thirty Years War is yielding up valuable information on how they had lived.

Skeletons of more than 100 men who fought in the Battle of Wittstock near Berlin in 1636 were discovered by workmen excavating a sandpit.

Anthropologists say the remains offer a fascinating insight into the health of Europeans nearly 400 years ago.

Superficially, the bodies bear all the hallmarks of terrible fighting: shoulder blades smashed by axes; spines run through with swords and skulls pierced by musket balls.

They died in the Battle of Wittstock on 4 October, 1636, when a Protestant army of 16,000 Swedes beat a force of 22,000 from the Catholic alliance of the Holy Roman Empire and Saxony. Some 6,000 men died in the fighting. [continue]