Mystery of Britain’s 'Franken-mummies’

[Jazzy]

Two 3,000-year-old human skeletons dug up in the Outer Hebrides have been found to be a jigsaw of at least six different people who died hundreds of years apart.



t is one of Britain’s most intriguing archeological mysteries.



When two almost perfectly preserved 3,000-year-old human skeletons were dug up on a remote Scottish island, they were the first evidence that ancient Britons preserved their dead using mummification.



The scientists who uncovered the bodies also found clues that one of them – a man buried in a crouching position – was not a single individual, but had in fact been assembled from the body parts of several different people.



The discovery began a 10-year investigation into what had led the bronze-age islanders to this strange fate.



Now, a new study using the latest in DNA technology has found that the two skeletons together comprise the remains of at least six different individuals, who died several hundred years apart.



The researchers now believe that large extended families, living under one roof, may have shared their homes with the mummified remains of their dead ancestors, before deliberately putting the bodies together to look like single corpses – possibly in an attempt to demonstrate the uniting of different families.

Professor Mike Parker Pearson, an archaeologist at University College London who led the research, said: “It looks like these individuals had been cut up and put back together to look like one person.”

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Fascinating.

 

[Evil Eye]

The researchers now believe that large extended families, living under one roof, may have shared their homes with the mummified remains of their dead ancestors, before deliberately putting the bodies together to look like single corpses – possibly in an attempt to demonstrate the uniting of different families.

Creeeepy.

But interesting, yes.