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This year, scientists were able to pull back the curtain on mysteries surrounding figures across history, both known and unknown, to reveal more about their unique stories.
In some cases, analysis of ancient DNA helped fill knowledge gaps and change preconceived notions. A prime example is how aDNA research is reframing the way people understand the archaeological site of Pompeii, which remains trapped beneath a layer of ash thousands of years after Mount Vesuvius’ eruption in AD 79 doomed the Roman town.
Genetic traces collected from the bones of victims showed that what was once considered to be a mother holding her son in their final moments was an unrelated adult male who likely offered comfort to a child before they perished, and they challenged other long-held assumptions.
Here are some of the ways science sparked a new understanding of historical figures in 2024, and in some cases, led to more mysteries that have yet to be untangled.
Unmasking the unknown
The fragmented skull of “Vittrup Man” is on display at Denmark’s Vendsyssel Historical Museum. – Stephen Freiheit
A detailed analysis of tooth enamel, tartar and bone collagen helped researchers uncover details about “Vittrup Man,” a Stone Age migrant who died violently in a swamp in northwest Denmark about 5,200 years ago.
His remains, recovered from a peat bog in Vittrup, Denmark, in 1915, were found alongside a wooden club that was likely used to beat him over the head. But little else was known about him.
Using cutting-edge analytical methods, Anders Fischer, project researcher in the department of historical studies at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, and his colleagues set out to “find the individual behind the bone” and tell the story of the oldest known immigrant in Denmark’s history.
Vittrup Man grew up along the Scandinavian coast and belonged to a hunter-gatherer community, enjoying a diet of fish, seals and whales. But his life changed drastically in his late teens when he made the move to Denmark and shifted to a farmer’s diet, eating sheep and goat. He died between the ages of 30 and 40.
Vittrup Man may have been killed as a sacrifice, or perhaps he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. But Fischer found the use of multiple techniques to uncover aspects of his identity gratifying.
“In the Vittrup case we meet a genuine first-generation immigrant and can follow his remarkable geographic and dietary transition from northern to southern Scandinavia and from a fisher-hunter-gatherer to a farmer way of life,” he said.
Norse saga’s ‘Well-man’ unearthed
Separately, researchers were able to connect the identity of a skeleton found in a castle well to a passage from an 800-year-old Norse text.
The Sverris saga, which related the story of the real-life King Sverre Sigurdsson, includes a description of an invading army tossing the body of a dead man down a well at Norway’s Sverresborg castle in 1197 in a likely attempt to poison the water supply.
A team of scientists recently studied bones uncovered in the castle’s well in 1938. Using radiocarbon dating, the researchers determined that the remains were about 900 years old. Genetic sequencing of tooth samples laid bare that “Well-man” had a medium skin tone, blue eyes, and light brown or blond hair. And in a twist, his genetics couldn’t be traced to the local population.
Researchers first excavated the remains of a skeletal torso — known as “Well-man” — from a well at a Norwegian castle in 1938. – The Norwegian Directorate for Cultural Heritage
“The biggest surprise for all of us was that the Well-man did not come from the local population, but rather that his ancestry traces back to a specific region in southern Norway. That suggests the sieging army threw one of their own dead into the well,” study coauthor Michael D. Martin, a professor in the department of natural history at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology’s University Museum in Trondheim, said in October.
Debunking a ‘lost prince’
Improvements in molecular genetics over nearly two decades have helped researchers get to the bottom of a longstanding historical puzzle of a so-called “lost prince” who appeared seemingly out of nowhere in mid-19th century Germany.
For 200 years, there was speculation that an enigmatic man named Kaspar Hauser was secretly a member of German royalty. When he was found wandering without identification in Nuremberg in May 1828 at the age of 16, Hauser was barely able to communicate with those questioning him.
A story about Hauser being a kidnapped prince, taken from the royal family of Baden in what’s now southwest Germany, spread like wildfire.
There have been multiple studies of genetic data taken from items that belonged to Hauser, but the conflicting results led to a stalemate with no answers.
This year, researchers conducted a new analysis of Hauser’s hair samples and were able to prove that his mitochondrial DNA, or genetic code passed down on the maternal side, did not match the mitochondrial DNA from the Baden family.
Disproving the royal hoax may have solved one mystery, but another one has taken its place. Just who was this man? As his tombstone reads, Hauser remains “the riddle of his time.”
An ailing, tortured composer
Locks of Beethoven’s hair were studied to uncover new details about the composer’s health. – Martin Meissner/AP
Classical composer Ludwig van Beethoven died at 56 in 1827 after a lifetime of ailments including deafness, liver disease and gastrointestinal complaints. The composer expressed his wish that his ailments be studied and shared so “as far as possible at least the world will be reconciled to me after my death.”
In May, researchers published a study showing high levels of lead detected in authenticated locks of Beethoven’s hair and suggested the composer had lead poisoning, which may have contributed to his recurring health woes.
The findings built on previous revelations after Beethoven’s genome was made publicly available to investigate the complicated nuances of his health.
In addition to lead, Beethoven’s locks also contained increased amounts of arsenic and mercury — but how did they get there? The substances were likely from an accumulation of a lifetime diet of fish from the polluted Danube River and plumbed wine, which was sweetened and preserved with lead.
The new findings add to a better understanding of the composer as well as the complex, sweeping symphonies he left behind that orchestras still play around the world.
“People say, ‘The music is the music, why do we need to know about any of this stuff?’ But in Beethoven’s life, there is a connection between his suffering and the music,” William Meredith, Beethoven scholar and study coauthor, said in May.
Colonial secrets and scandals
Samuel Washington, George Washington’s younger brother, was buried in an unmarked grave at the cemetery at his Harewood estate (an interior view is seen above) near Charles Town, West Virginia. – Frances Benjamin Johnson/Library of Congress
A study of skeletal remains using new DNA analysis techniques shed light on the fate of family members of the first US president, George Washington, in March.
Washington’s younger brother Samuel, who died in 1781, and 19 other members of the family were buried in a cemetery at Samuel’s estate near Charles Town, West Virginia.
But some of the graves were unmarked, most likely to prevent grave robbing, Courtney L. Cavagnino, a research scientist with the Armed Forces Medical Examiner System’s Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory, told CNN in March.
Cavagnino led a team that studied remains excavated from the cemetery in 1999, identifying two of Samuel’s grandsons as well as their mother. The study team carried out the excavations to find Samuel’s final resting place, but the whereabouts of his grave remain a mystery.
However, the techniques used in the study could be employed to identify unknown remains of those who have served in the military, going as far back as World War II.
Meanwhile, a separate investigation of unmarked graves found at the British settlement of Jamestown, Virginia, revealed a long-hidden scandal within the family of the colony’s first governor, Thomas West.
DNA analysis of human remains found at the site of a church built in 1608 in the colonial settlement of Jamestown, Virginia, suggest the men are kinsmen of the colony’s first governor, Thomas West. – Jamestown Rediscovery Foundation (Preservation Virginia)
Researchers analyzed DNA from two male skeletons within the graves, and both men were related to West through a shared maternal lineage. One of the men, Capt. William West, was born to West’s spinster aunt, Elizabeth — and illegitimate.
Details of West’s birth were deliberately removed from the family’s genealogical records at the time, researchers found, suggesting that the secret of his true parentage is what inspired him to set sail across the Atlantic Ocean and join the colony.
Inside the minds (and labs) of famed astronomers
Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe is associated with celestial discoveries during the 16th century. But he was also an alchemist devoted to brewing secret medicines for elite clients, such as Rudolf II, the Holy Roman emperor.
Renaissance alchemists kept their work covert, and few alchemical recipes have survived to modern times. Although Brahe’s alchemical lab, located beneath his castle residence and observatory Uraniborg, was destroyed after his death, researchers carried out a chemical analysis of glass and pottery shards recovered from the site.
The analysis detected elements such as nickel, copper, zinc, tin, mercury, gold, lead and a big surprise: tungsten, which hadn’t even been described at the time. It’s possible that Brahe isolated it from a mineral without realizing it, but the discovery raises new questions about his secretive work.
Separately, centuries after German astronomer Johannes Kepler made sketches of sunspots in 1607 from his observations of the sun’s surface, the pioneering drawings helped scientists piece together the history of the sun’s solar cycle.
Astronomer Johannes Kepler made sketches of sunspots that were published in his 1609 book “Phaenomenon Singulare Seu Mercurius In Sole.” – Johannes Kepler
While each cycle of waxing and waning solar activity typically takes about 11 years, there have been times when the sun behaved differently than expected. And Kepler’s long-forgotten drawings, made before the advent of telescopes, were dusted off this year when scientists analyzed them to learn more about the Maunder Minimum, a period of extremely weak and abnormal solar cycles between 1645 and 1715.
Kepler’s drawings were made using a camera obscura, a device that utilized a small hole in the wall of the instrument to project the sun’s image on a sheet of paper. His sketches captured sunspots, which helped astronomers determine that the solar cycles were still occurring as expected when Kepler observed them, rather than lasting for abnormally long amounts of time as previously believed.
Brahe and Kepler, along with Sir Isaac Newton and Galileo Galilei, were giants who replaced the medieval view of the world with a modern one, said Kaare Lund Rasmussen, lead author of the Brahe study and a professor emeritus in the department of physics, chemistry and pharmacy at the University of Southern Denmark.
And this year, both Brahe and Kepler’s centuries-old work have contributed new pieces that help scientists reconstruct the puzzles of the past.
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