For nearly a century, a skeleton sat in the basement of a Philadelphia museum, collecting dust. The item, which had no identification of any kind, remained mysterious, until a museum official finally figured out what it was and where it came from.
That 6,500-year-old skeleton was originally uncovered during a dig in Iraq around 1930 by a team of archaeologists from the Penn and British Museums led by Sir Leonard Woolley. The expedition most famously discovered hundreds of graves and tombs in a "royal cemetery."
However, other graves were found that were older than even that.
The archaeologists also recovered one skeleton from a specific part of that dig that contained 48 graves. This skeleton dated to around 5000 B.C. Those bones, embedded in silt, were eventually packaged and shipped to Philadelphia.
Penn Museum's records originally showed that Woolley's expedition shipped two skeletons to their museum from that excavation. However, when the museum recently updated its records-keeping to a digital format, they could only account for one of those skeletons.
Museum officials began looking through images of the skeleton and sought out more details about it. Janet Monge, the museum's curator of physical anthropology, then thought of the mysterious skeleton being kept in the basement.
"I've been obsessed with him," says Monge. "Somebody took great pains to take a very fragmentary skeleton and bring it here. Therefore, it must be important."
Once examined, the museum team determined that this was the missing skeleton from Woolley's dig.
Researchers nicknamed the skeleton "Noah," because they believe it lived after a massive flood in the area where it was originally discovered. "Noah" was around 50 years old when he died and stood approximately 5 feet 9 inches tall.
Using modern technology, researchers will soon learn more about the life of "Noah," including what he ate, where he came from and even possibly why he died.
Unfortunately, abandoned artifacts and items often sit unidentified in museum basements and storage all over the world. However, this discovery has sparked renewed interest at Penn Museum.
"I have quite a few specimens that are cold case, orphaned museum collections," says Monge. "So that gives us the fun enterprise of going back and sleuthing through all of the archival material and trying to identify them as best as we can."
