A skeleton found in Belgium and assumed to be of an single person has , after further exam , turned out to be made of at least seven individuals who lived centuries apart from each other .
In the 1970s , excavations of a large Gallo - Roman townsfolk in Pommerœul , Belgium , found 76 cremation interment and one unknown burial of remains . The sepulture land site was thought to be from papistical clock time , around the second to third hundred CE , based on the beleaguer settlement and an item found on the eubstance . However , there were strange aspects to it .
" The lone inhumation was recovered from a deeper stratigraphic stratum than the cremation deposits , " the team explained in their paper . " Although the placement of the body is atypical for the romish period – positioned in a flexed place on the right-hand side – the mien of a Romanic bone pin near the cranium led to the interpretation of the inhumation as Gallo - Roman . "
However , radiocarbon datingin 2019found that while the cremation entombment come from the popish period , the burial was consistent with the Late Neolithic , chiliad of years prior . This fit with the sepulture itself . resupine sepulture were preferred in the later period , while this skeleton was lying on its ( or should we say , their ) right - hand side , with flexed legs , more consistent with burials in the Late Neolithic . So why the papist bone pin ?
Re - examining the body , the team found a few more surprisal . examine the bones making up the skeleton , the squad found they belonged to at least seven different people , arrange into a undivided skeleton .
" Although all escort broadly to the Late Neolithic , the time intervals for some elements do not overlap , " the team explained . " The high variability present propose that the individuals lived and died during at least three dissimilar periods . "
While most of the bone were from the Late Neolithic , the geological dating of the cranium was inconclusive . However , deoxyribonucleic acid depth psychology was performed on the cranium , finding it closely matched with two the great unwashed immerse in a Roman cemetery150 kilometers(93 Roman mile ) away , around 1,800 age ago . The body was tack by somebody , from people who died thousands of years apart .
While it would be proficient to give a unequivocal intellect why , that is n’t really potential with the cue we have been go away by time .
" One theory is that the composite burial was disturbed during the interment of cremations during the Gallo - Roman period , " the team suggested , base on the evidence and other like interment . " Either there was in the first place no brainpan and the Roman community of interests that discover the burial added one to nail the ‘ individual ’ , or they replaced the existing Neolithic - date cranium with a Romanist - period one . "
Another possibleness is that the skeleton was assembled all during the Roman era , from a new ( or fresh - ish ) braincase , and " topically source " off-white from Neolithic times . However , the team favors the first possibility , due to there being no similar examples of the latter , and how the consistency was positioned in its tomb .
" More likely is the scenario that the composite burying was first get together by a local Neolithic radical , " the team concluded , " and that , some 2,500 years afterward , the Gallo - Roman indweller of the area disturbed and ‘ restore ’ the burial . "
The study is publish inAntiquity .
