The River Thames Has Been a Dumping Floor for Our bodies for at Least 6,000 Years, Research Reveals

The typical Londoner is perhaps shocked to listen to that, over the previous 200 years, tons of of human bones have been found within the River Thames. As new analysis reveals, a large portion of those stays date again to prehistoric occasions.

Researchers within the U.Okay. have studied the stays of 61 people recovered from the enduring river, confirming that the majority date again to the Bronze Age and Iron Age. Although it’s unimaginable to know precisely why the our bodies ended up within the river 1000’s of years in the past, the abundance of circumstances particularly between 2300 BCE to 43 CE led the group to counsel that the deposition of our bodies throughout that point interval was intentional.

“We are able to now say with confidence that these don’t seem to simply be bones which have steadily collected within the river by way of time,” Nichola Arthur, a curator on the Pure Historical past Museum in London and co-author of the study, revealed final month within the journal Antiquity, instructed Live Science. “There actually was one thing vital occurring within the Bronze and Iron Ages.”

Arthur and her colleagues used radiocarbon relationship, a well-established methodology for relationship natural matter, to determine the age of 30 beforehand undated skeletal stays. They then joined their new information with earlier analysis, making a timeline for 61 human stays dredged up from the Thames. Whereas the stays span virtually 6,000 years—4000 BCE to 1800 CE—most originated from the Bronze Age and Iron Age, confirming “beforehand reported predominance of Bronze and Iron Age dates,” the researchers wrote within the examine.

Then again, a scarcity of dates between round 300 and 600 CE “may mirror the decline in inhabitants of the London space between the top of the Roman interval within the early fifth century [CE] and the institution of the Saxon buying and selling port of Lundenwic within the early seventh century [CE],” added Arthur, together with co-authors Jane Sidell, principal inspector of historic monuments at Historic England, and Heather Bonney, principal curator of the anthropology collections on the Pure Historical past Museum of London.

The group dismissed the speculation that our bodies entered the Thames by way of the erosion of riverside Bronze Age and Iron Age burials because of a scarcity of archaeological proof; no such burials have been discovered within the areas they examined. As a substitute, they finally counsel that the Thames our bodies from the Bronze and Iron Age is perhaps associated to broader ritual “watery deposition practices” recognized to be current in northwestern Europe throughout these ages. Actually, additionally they cite materials tradition data that time to the Thames having doubtless been a “place of votive significance.”

For these of you who now really feel impressed to go scavenging for historic treasures alongside the Thames—keep in mind that you need a permit, and that there’s a waitlist!