2,000-year-old corpse discovered in Britain: archaeologists uncover the shocking truth

Photo credit: MOLA Headland Infrastructure

DNA analysis has revealed the truth about how the remains of a young man born 2,000 years ago were found near present-day southern Russia in the English countryside. Using various techniques, scientists have been able to trace the steps he took to travel from one end of the Roman Empire to the other.

Finding the skeleton

The excavated burial of Offord Cluny 203645. (Photo credit: MOLA Headland Industry – image as seen on Current Biology)

In 2017, MOLA Headland Infrastructure was carrying out excavations during a project to improve the A14 road between Cambridge and Huntingdon. While excavating near the village of Offord Cluny in Cambridgeshire, they discovered the complete skeletal remains of a man. He was found in a one-track ditch, buried alone and with no other personal belongings around.

They named it Offord Cluny 203645 and, although the remains were fairly well preserved, archaeologists believed they had simply stumbled upon a local man’s unremarkable discovery. However, after extracting a sample of fossilized bone, the true origin of man was revealed.

DNA tests revealed its origin

Marina Soares de Silva at the Francis Crick Institute’s Ancient Genomics Laboratory preparing ancient DNA for sequencing. (Photo credit: Stephen Potvin/Francis Crick Institute)

After removing a small bone from the inner ear, which turned out to be the best preserved part of the man’s remains, scientists at the Francis Crick Institute’s Ancient Genomics Laboratory conducted DNA analysis to determine its age and origin. Dr. Marina Silva, a postdoctoral researcher there, explained that “this is not like analyzing the DNA of a living person. The DNA is highly fragmented and damaged. However, we were able to (decode) a sufficient part.”

“The first thing we saw was that genetically it was very different from the other Romano-British individuals studied so far,” he said. DNA analysis not only determined that he was buried sometime between 126 and 228 AD. C., but was actually originally from the farthest reaches of the Roman Empire. He was revealed to be a Samaritan, an Iranian-speaking people famous for their horse-riding skills who were found in modern-day southern Russia, Armenia, and Ukraine.

The importance of your teeth

Until the age of 5 or 6, Offord Cluny 203645 ate plants commonly found in arid places outside western or northern Europe (Sarmatia in blue). A change in diet around age 6, and again after age 9, suggests that he moved to southeast or central Europe (Roman Empire in red) as a child before arriving in Britain and dying at age 18. 25 years. (Photo credit: Joe Brock/Francis Crick Institute)

To try to find out more about the remains, a team of archaeologists from Durham University took the man’s fossilized teeth to try to determine how he got to the other side of the Roman Empire. Teeth can show how a person’s diet changed over several years through the chemicals that surround each layer. By tracking what it ate, scientists can determine how old it was when it arrived.

They discovered that until the age of six, their diet was based on millet and sorghum grains (scientifically known as C4 crops), which are common and abundant in the regions where the Sarmatians are known to have lived. After this, man’s diet changed from consuming less and less of these crops to consuming more wheat, common in Western Europe. Professor Janet Montgomery concluded that “the (analysis) tells us that he, and not his ancestors, made the journey to Britain. As it grew, it migrated west and these plants disappeared from its diet.”

And how did it get there?

Sarmatian warriors illustration. (Photo credit: Costumes of All Nations / Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain)

In the era in which he lived, the Roman Empire defeated a Sarmatian army on its northeastern border and absorbed its cavalry to form its legions. It is recorded that at that time, Marcus Aurelius sent about 5,500 Sarmatians to Britain to be posted there.

Considering that research found that his diet changed when he was only six years old, it is unlikely that he moved in as a soldier serving as part of the Sarmatian cavalry. Instead, it suggests that he was just a child when he moved away. Therefore, it also suggests that he was the son of a cavalryman or perhaps his slave.