A Philadelphia museum rediscovered a forgotten 6,500-year old human skeleton in its own basement.
The human skeletal remains date back to 3,800 B.C. and have been lying in the basement of Philadelphia's Penn Museum for over 80 years. The human remains were discovered in 1929 or 1930 by Sir Leonard Woolley, a British archaeologist, in the ancient city of Ur, which lies in modern day southern Iraq.
Woolley and his team found around 48 graves in Ur. Their excavation efforts found skeletal remains from the Ubaid period. The burial practices used by the people of that era and the type of soil did not permit proper preservation, which made the discovery a rare one. Only one human skeleton was entirely preserved and appropriate for further examination.
After the discovery of the human bones from Iraq, the excavation team applied a wax coat to the bones and sent it to London for further examination. The bones were then sent to the Penn Museum where it was not documented and was lost for decades.
The current curators say that they were unaware of the 6,500 year-old human bones as the skeleton did not appear in records. However, in 2012, a museum digitalization effort revealed the existence of the ancient bones.
William Hafford, a project manager, was validating archaeological objects with the museum's inventory lists dating back to the Sumerian age. An item that described the full skeletal remains appeared on the list he was not able to find it.
Hafford spoke to Janet Monge, chief curator of physical anthropology at the museum, who said that there was an unlabeled box that contained a human skeleton in the museum's basement.
"So we went, found the crate, opened it up and compared it to the field notes and the field photographs, and we had a match," says Hafford.
The researchers say that the human bones discovered from Ur were of a man who was at least 50 years old when he died. The man is supposed to be well-muscled and stood 5 feet, 9 inches tall. Monge says that a CT scan may provide further details about the man such as his diet, ancestral origins, diseases suffered and more.
Even though the skeletal remains are much older than the Bible, researchers have renamed the 6,500 year-old human skeleton "Noah." It was found in deep silt, according to a report.
"Utnapishtim might be more appropriate, for he was named in the Gilgamesh epic as the man who survived the great flood," Harford adds.
Monge says that it is not unusual for a big institution like Penn Museum to have a question mark over the origin of some of the specimens. The skeleton was discovered in 1922 on a dig led by Woolley. Half of the objects found over the years of teh dig at Ur went to the National Museum of Iraq in Baghdad, while the other half was split between London and Philadelphia.
