admin Scientists at the Penn Museum in Philadelphia are literally sweeping skeletons out of closets. Museum staff recently rediscovered a 6,500-year-old human skeleton that had been stored in the basement for 85 years.
6,500-year-old human bones have been unearthed at the Ur site in Iraq. Here, the skeletons on the field are covered with wax and the whole is raised with the surrounding soil.
The crate hidden in the storage room had no identification number or catalog card. But a recent attempt to digitize some of the museum’s old records has yielded new information about the history of the mysterious box and the skeleton it contained, named “Noah.”
The human bones in the box were originally recorded as having been excavated between 1929 and 1930 at the site of Ur in what is now Iraq, by Sir Leonard Woolley and a team of archaeologists from the Penn and British Museum. .
Woolley’s excavations are best known for uncovering the famous Mesopotamian “Royal Cemetery”, which contained hundreds of tombs and 16 tombs filled with cultural relics . But the archaeologist and his team also found a tomb that predates the King of Ur’s burial site by about 2,000 years.
A light plaster mixture is applied over a covered skeleton, a 6,500-year-old human remains found at the Ur site in Iraq, for protection during transport. Mud has already been scraped away under the framework to make room for the hauling boards.
In a floodplain about 15 meters below the surface of the Ur site, the research team discovered 48 Ubaid-era tombs dating to around 5500 BC. Until 4000 BC
Skeletons from this period were very rare even in his 1929 date, but Woolley decided to recover only one skeleton from the site. He waxed the bones and the soil around them, packed them in bags and sent them to London and then Philadelphia.
The 6,500-year-old skeleton’s teeth are well-preserved, as shown in this torso and skull illustration. A series of
lists describe where from 1929 he found the artifacts unearthed in the 1930 excavations. Half of the relics remained in Iraq, and the rest were divided between London and Philadelphia.
One of the lists stated that the Penn Museum should receive a bowl of mud and two skeletons from excavations.
However, William Hafford, the project manager responsible for digitizing the museum’s records, was confused when he saw the list. One of the two listed skeletons was nowhere to be found.
Further research into the museum’s database revealed that the unidentified skeleton had been registered as “unrecorded” since 1990. To get to the bottom of this mystery, Hafford began digging through Woolley’s own vast archives.
After finding additional information, including images of the missing skeleton, Hafford contacted Janet Monge, curator of physical anthropology at the Penn Museum. But like Hafford, Monju had never seen a skeleton before.
Then Monju remembered a mysterious box in the basement.
When Ms. Monju opened the box later that day, it was clear that the human remains inside were the same ones Woolley had packaged and shipped, she said. rice field.
The skeleton was that of a man, probably over 50 years old, and between 173 and 178 centimeters tall, she said.
Archaeological data suggest that the skeleton lived in its original location in Ur after the Great Flood, so researchers at the Penn Museum nicknamed the rediscovered skeleton “Noah.” attached.
New science and technology not available in Woolley’s time will allow scientists at the Penn Museum to learn more about the era to which these ancient sites belonged, including diet, ancestral origins, trauma, stress and disease. may be useful for
