You Mean He Wasn't a Hunchbacked Woman?

More news on the search for Friedrich Schiller's earthly remains. Neither of the skulls thought to belong to the poet was his, and the two accompanying skeletons were found to "contain bones from at least six people."

Five members of the Schiller family were exhumed in the process to provide the DNA samples for comparison. They found no matching DNA among either of the poet's supposed bodies.

They determined that the skull found by von Froriep was far off the mark. Instead of Schiller, a large man, it actually belonged to a hunchbacked woman, who through analysis of the bones and historical records they later showed was a lady of the court whom Schiller was known to have disliked while alive. The jawbone belonged to another woman entirely.

The other skull was so similar to Schiller's death mask that it confounded even contemporary anthropologists, leading one to say that it belonged to Schiller's "Doppelgänger." The fact that this close match had seven strange teeth inserted post-mortem has led one of the experts who worked on the documentary to the conclusion that it was fixed to look like Schiller's skull and that the real one was stolen. [Link]

One Skull Too Many

Anthropologists have exhumed three relatives of German playwright and poet Friedrich Schiller in hopes of positively identifying which of two skulls is his.

The mystery surrounding the skulls began in 1826, 21 years after Schiller died in Weimar, when the local mayor had 23 skulls retrieved from a mass grave in which the poet was buried. Many eminent people at that time were buried in mass graves.

The mayor identified the largest skull as Schiller's and it was brought to the home of his contemporary Goethe, who wrote a poem about it, according to German scholar Albrecht Schoene.

In 1911, another skull was disinterred from the mass grave which researchers claimed was the real one. [Link]

They Didn't Roam Far From Home

Dutch archaeologists who recovered some well-preserved DNA from a 1,000-year-old corpse have matched its Y-chromosome to a man living nearby.

Ahead of planned building work, an excavation in 2002 found a graveyard dating from around 1000 - 1050 AD. Mr. Eduard Zuiderent, a retired dentist said his ancestors remains were found in one of the graves.

Only people who could prove generations of their family had descended from Vlaardingen were accepted into the lengthy process of identifying relatives.

Unwrapping his ancestor's skull out of a cardboard box, Zuiderent said: "We happen to be relatives. Some maybe 35 generations ago, I don't know. It's maybe an uncle, maybe not a direct father, but a brother or an uncle or a nephew, but we have identical same DNA," he said adding it was an incredible feeling to hold his ancestors skull. [Link]

It was ten years ago that a history teacher in England was found to be related to 9,000-year-old Cheddar Man, discovered in a cave only 15 miles from his home.

A Viking-Inca Link?

The Vikings were great seafarers, but could they have traveled all the way to Peru and brought back an Inca? Archaeologists pulled up some rose bushes at the old St. Nicolas church in Sarpsborg, Norway, and came upon an unusual skull.

"A particular bone at the back of the head was not fused. This is an inherited trait found almost exclusively among the Incas of Peru," [Mona Beate] Buckholm added. To this day, no other example of this trait has been found in Norway. "While it is tempting to speculate, seeing as St. Nicolas is the patron saint of sailors, it's hard to imagine a Peruvian making his way here at the time. This is quite puzzling." [Link]

She'd Know That Skull Anywhere

Genealogist Joyce Saunders had the chance to meet her great-grandfather, Civil War soldier Roland Gillispie, when his remains were moved to make way for a highway in West Virginia.

She noticed Gillispie’s skull was relatively small compared to that of an average man. She knew it was his based on prior research into his medical record.

“He had the head of maybe a 12- or 14-year-old boy,” Saunders said. “He was only 5’5”, had a fair complexion, blue eyes and light hair.” [Link]

Is That a Pinky Ring or a Wart?

Missouri farmer Greg Ellison thinks he's found a picture of George Dixon, captain of the Hunley.

The man looks to him like the facial reconstruction of Dixon made from his skull, and he is wearing a Civil War-era naval uniform.

And, most significant of all, Ellison says he's wearing a pinky ring much like the diamond-studded ring found in Dixon's pocket on the Hunley.

"I firmly believe that's what it is, that ring," Ellison said. "From what they know about Dixon, he was a sharp dresser, he was rich and had nice jewelry. My biggest clue was the fact that he's wearing that diamond pinky ring." [Link]

Ellison sent a scan of the photograph to the Hunley lab for verification. They concluded that it was not Dixon, and that the object on the man's pinky was not a ring but a wart. Ellison insists that "they looked at the wrong finger."

The President's Grave-Robbing Grandpa

Members of Skull and Bones—the secret society at Yale to which both President Bushes belonged—reportedly plundered the grave of Apache leader Geronimo about ten years after his death. A letter written by a Bonesman in 1918 recently came to light, in which he bragged that "[t]he skull of the worthy Geronimo the Terrible, exhumed from its tomb at Fort Sill by your club and Knight Haffuer is now safe inside the [Tomb] -- together with his well worn femurs, bit and saddle horn." The "Tomb" is the society's clubhouse on the New Haven campus.

Harlyn Geronimo, a former tribal leader who is Geronimo's great grandson, said he trusts the accounts and may pursue legal options to recover his ancestor's remains. He also expects an apology from U.S. President George W. Bush '68, whose grandfather has been implicated as one of the robbers, Geronimo said. [Link]

[tagged: genealogy, family tree, ancestry]

Geneticists Say 'Uncle'

Scientists are 99% certain that a skull dug up from beneath the floor of a Polish cathedral is that of astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus. The only way to know for sure is to match DNA from the skull with that of a known relative—a difficult task, since Copernicus was too busy thumbing his crooked nose at the Pope to father any children.

But researchers think they have a solution. They are now preparing another excavation to look for the remains of Copernicus's uncle, the former bishop of Warmia, who is also believed to be buried in Frombork Cathedral. Exactly where, no one is sure. [Link]

If it turns out they can't positively identify the bishop's remains, I guess they'll just dig up one of his uncles.

It's OK to Sell Italian Skulls on eBay

From The (Newport News, Va.) Daily Press:

Skull for sale discovered to be part of Indian history

By SUE LINDSEY
Associated Press Writer
December 11, 2005

ROANOKE, Va. -- Steven Mendola thought he would help out the medical profession when he put a human skull up for sale on eBay as a teaching tool. Instead, he's done a service to Virginia's Monacan Indians by returning one of their own.

Sorting through a closet after he took over the Staten Island, N.Y., office of a chiropractor who had died, Mendola found the old skull.

[snip]

The chiropractor checked with New York authorities to make sure he wouldn't be selling someone's long-lost relative. The skull had a sticker on it labeled "Suponi," which he assumed was an Italian name. No one with that name was missing, he was told.

[snip]

Mendola hadn't put the sticker name on the eBay listing, but when he gave it to Dan Reany, then with WSLS-TV, the reporter discovered it was more likely "Saponi."

That's a Siouan tribe related to the Monacans in Virginia. The sale was off--it's a federal crime to sell American Indian remains.

[snip]

[Read the whole story]

185-Year-Old Couple Moves to Higher Ground

From the Pittsburgh (Pa.) Post-Gazette:

Long road for long-dead to dry ground

Thursday, October 27, 2005
By Dennis B. Roddy, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

JOHNSTOWN -- One-hundred-sixteen years after he survived the Great Johnstown Flood, 109 years after he died, and five hours after a judge granted a petition to move him to higher ground, Henry Leckey was out of the clay of Sandyvale Cemetery and en route to the suburbs.

He traveled light: a shattered skull, some surprisingly perfect teeth, a left thigh bone, bits of a jacket and the sole of a size-8 shoe were Henry. His first wife, Mary, who died 14 years before him, made the journey as well. Diggers found bones and a dress.

[snip]

"I don't want my great-great grandparents under a pond," said Donald Leckey, a Michigan engineer who spent years seeking his ancestors and, upon finding their grave, was mortified at plans to turn their cemetery into a memorial botanical garden, complete with decorative pond, fruit trees and a recreation area -- all of it, presumably, atop the nearly 3,000 early Johnstowners interred there.

[snip]

[Read the whole story]

The Wages of Evil: $7 - 10

From the Victoria (B.C.) Times Colonist:

Tseycum band finds remains of ancestors in U.S. museums

Rob Shaw
Times Colonist

Sunday, October 16, 2005

It was a sight that left Cora Jacks in tears -- her ancestors' bones from North Saanich lying on the stark warehouse shelves of two of America's most prominent museums.

They were more than skulls and skeletons to Jacks; they were thousands of years of spiritual history tying together the Tseycum First Nation. They had been missing since the 1850s, when American archeologists looted grave sites around the Saanich Peninsula.

[snip]

About 57 sets of bones were identified in New York using the museum's collection of letters and photos from the archeologist who originally took the bodies. Jacks brought local maps and matched up the sites to determine they were from North Saanich.

But the letters also provided a disturbing look into the past. They revealed the archeologist was paid $5 a skull and between $7-10 to steal an entire First Nations skeleton from its burial site, said Smith.

[Read the whole story]

Grave Desecration Taken to New Low

From the Boston (Mass.) Globe:

Man, 19, accused of desecrating Civil War corpse

By Cristina Silva, Globe Correspondent | August 25, 2005

NEWBURYPORT -- A 19-year-old man from Salisbury was supposed to be cleaning up a cemetery last week as part of court-ordered community work after he broke into an apartment building last fall.

Instead, officials said, Neil J. Goodwin Jr. invaded the tomb of a Civil War veteran, pulled apart the 142-year-old skeleton, and then played with the bones, balancing the skull on his shoulder and posing for pictures.

"It's bizarre, absolutely bizarre," said Lieutenant Richard Siemasko of the Newburyport police. "I can't even imagine what was in his head. This is just a whole new level of weird for me."

[snip]

[Read the whole story]