Around fifty years ago, a skeleton was unearthed from a 2nd century Belgian cemetery. It was stored since the 1970s somewhere that archaeologists could study it, and only recently was this skeleton subjected to carbon dating and DNA analysis. Dr. Barbara Veselka of the Free University of Brussels noticed that the femur was too big for the pelvis, and the vertebrae didn't all match. What was going on here?
Advanced tests recently discovered that the skeleton buried all those years ago was made up of seven different unrelated individuals who died between 4212 to 4445 years ago -except for the skull, which belonged to a woman who died only 1800 years ago! However, the skeleton was found buried in a common manor for the recently dead in that area. While the discovery is important, the question is why? We can almost imagine a retiring teacher taking home various bones from anatomy class and assembling them, and after his death the unidentified skeleton was found and buried with all possible dignity. But that's only the first scenario that comes to mind. The skull was fairly contemporary; could the family have tried to assemble a body for the burial after the woman's original body was destroyed? Could there be more such "Frankenstein" skeletons in the area? Could the burial have been a long-haul prank? Or did someone really try to reconstruct a human body from random parts? Read about the unusual discovery at Daily Grail. -via Strange Company
(Image credit: Paumen, Wargnies and Demory/Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles)
