I wasn’t looking for that skeleton, I was looking for THIS skeleton
There was a headline in New Scientist about a curious skeleton found in a Roman graveyard in Belgium. It seemed unremarkable, until they tested the bones:
Laid to rest on the right side with tucked-up legs, the remains feature long bones from seven unrelated Stone Age men and women – of varying ages and separated by several centuries – and the skull of a Roman woman who died…
Unfortunately, New Scientist is behind a paywall and that’s where the article cut off. I was sure I could find the same info at an archaeology site, but I have been unsuccessful. In the course of Googling, I ran across yesterday’s skeleton – and lot of others beside. Dear me there are a lot of bones in Europe.
Local councils end up with boxes of the things. They’re required to have an archaeologist on construction sites to collect anything interesting. Bones end up in storage and seldom get revisited. On the rare occasion they are, odd things come to light.
There was one report I read that turned up a similar skeleton made up from the ancient bones of multiple individuals – except all the bones had tiny holes drilled in them. The obvious purpose being to string them together and hang them up.
I doubt it’s ancestor worship, if they couldn’t be bothered to keep the bones of various ancestors separate. To scare the kids on Halloween? And why would you Frankenstein together a skeleton from eight different people and then bury it?
Our ancestors baffle me.
November 5, 2024 — 8:15 pm
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