Eerie secrets of the British Thames: why corpses were dumped into one of the most famous rivers

Over the past two centuries, hundreds of human bones have been recovered from the bottom of the Thames River in England, and a new study suggests that most of them date back to the Bronze and Iron Ages. In an article published in the journal Antiquity, researchers presented a radiocarbon dating analysis of 30 skeletons found in the Thames to determine the period and possible reasons for their entry into the river.

According to Live Science, the reason why the bodies ended up in the water is still a mystery. "Many people, including Londoners, were shocked to learn that hundreds of human bones had been recovered from the Thames," said lead author Nicola Arthur, curator at the Natural History Museum in London.

She emphasized that although human remains have been repeatedly found in water bodies in northwestern Europe, large-scale accumulations of bones in the Thames are unique.

The study of these skeletons has been going on since the nineteenth century. Initially, it was believed that they belonged to warriors who died in a battle between the Celts and the Romans. Later, researchers suggested that some of the bodies fell into the river due to the erosion of coastal burials or drowning.

"The key question is how these bones ended up in the Thames," Arthur emphasized.

The first stage of the research was to determine the exact dates of the finds. By combining the new results with previous data, the scientists found that the remains date from 4000 BC to 1800 AD, covering almost 6000 years. However, most of them belong to the Bronze (2300-800 BC) and Iron Ages (800 BC - 43 AD), and the main findings were made in the upper reaches of the river.

"We can now confidently say that these bones did not just accumulate in the water over time - something really significant was happening in the Bronze and Iron Ages," Arthur said.

Although the exact reasons why the bodies were dumped in the river are unknown, scientists speculate that it may have been related to ritual practices. At that time, people throughout northwestern Europe deliberately placed remains in bodies of water, giving them sacred significance.

Bioarchaeologist Chris Knussel from the University of Bordeaux in France noted that the study allowed for new hypotheses, but the question of the ritual origin of these remains still needs to be studied in detail.

There is also a possibility that the bones in the river are the result of armed clashes, as the Thames was of strategic importance to many nations.

"Violence is quite common for prehistoric human remains found in water locations. We found signs of trauma on some of the bones from the Thames," Arthur added.

In the future, the researchers plan to study these injuries in more detail to determine their origin and confirm or refute the theory of combat.

"The next step in our project will be to find out how the human remains from the Thames fit into this long tradition," Arthur summarized.

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