Mystery of 2,000-year-old bones solved – 12/21/2023 – Science

How did a young man born 2,000 years ago near what is now southern Russia end up in the UK countryside?

DNA detectives retraced this young man’s steps and found relevant information about a key episode in the history of Roman Britain.

Research shows that a skeleton found in Cambridgeshire, England, is that of a man from a nomadic group known as the Sarmatians.

It is the first biological evidence that these people came from the reaches of the Roman Empire to Britain and that some lived in the countryside.

The remains were discovered during excavations to improve a road between the cities of Cambridge and Huntingdon.

The scientific techniques used will help reveal the often untold stories of ordinary people behind major historical events.

They include reading the genetic code in bone fragments fossilized hundreds of thousands of years ago, which show an individual’s ethnic origin.

Archaeologists discovered the complete, well-preserved skeleton of a man, which they named Offord Cluny 203645 — a combination of the name of the Cambridgeshire life where he was found (Offord Cluny) and his specimen number.

He was buried alone, without any personal belongings, in a ditch, so there was little to establish his identity.

Scientist Marina Silva, from the Ancient Genomics Laboratory at the Francis Crick Institute in London, extracted and decoded Offord’s ancient DNA from a tiny bone taken from his inner ear, which was the best-preserved part of the entire skeleton.

“This is not like testing the DNA of someone who is alive,” she explained.

“The DNA is very fragmented and damaged. However, we managed to [decodificá-lo] enough. The first thing we saw was that genetically he was very different from the other Romano-British individuals studied so far.”

The latest methods of analyzing ancient DNA are now able to flesh out the human stories behind events that, until recently, were reconstructed only by documents and archaeological evidence.

They mainly tell stories of the rich and powerful.

The latest research uses cutting-edge forensic science to unravel the mystery of an ordinary person – a young man buried in a ditch in Cambridgeshire between AD 126 and 228, during the Roman occupation of Britain.

At first, archaeologists thought Offord was an ordinary find by a local man.

But DNA analysis at the laboratory where Silva works showed that he originated from the far reaches of the Roman Empire, an area that is now southern Russia, Armenia and Ukraine.

Analysis showed that he was a Sarmatian – an Iranian-speaking people known for their horse riding skills.

How, then, did he end up so far from home?

To find the answers, a team from the Archeology department at Durham University in England used another interesting analytical technique to examine his fossilized teeth, which show chemical traces of what he ate.

Teeth develop over time, so, like tree rings, each layer records a “snapshot” of the chemicals that were surrounding them at that time.

The analysis showed that until he was 6 years old he ate corn and sorghum grains, known scientifically as C4 crops, which are abundant in the region where the Sarmatians are known to have lived.

However, over time, analysis showed a gradual decrease in consumption of these grains and more wheat, found in Western Europe, according to professor Janet Montgomery.

“Analysis tells us that he, not his ancestors, made the journey to Britain. As he grew, he migrated west, and these plants disappeared from his diet.”

Historical records indicate that Offord may have been the son of a knight, or possibly his slave.

They show that, at the time he lived, a unit of Sarmatian cavalry incorporated into the Roman army was sent to Britain.

DNA evidence confirms this reading, according to Alex Smith of the company that led the excavation, MOLA Headland Infrastructure.

“This is the first biological evidence,” he told BBC News.

“The availability of these chemical and DNA analysis techniques means that we can now ask different questions and look at how societies formed, their composition and how they evolved in the Roman period. This suggests that there was much greater movement, not just in cities, but also in the field.”

Pontus Skoglund, who leads the genomics laboratory at Crick, told BBC News that new technology is transforming our understanding of the past.

“The main impact of ancient DNA to date has been to improve our understanding of the Stone and Bronze Ages, but with better techniques, we are also beginning to transform our understanding of the Roman and other periods.”

Details about the research were published in the journal Current Biology.

This text was originally published here.