I caught a program last night on the National Geographic Channel that had me thoroughly hooked. It concerned the 2006 discovery of several underground chambers in Rome that were filled with corpses – over 1,000 of them, stacked like cord wood from floor to ceiling. While subterranean Rome is filed with catacombs and cemeteries, this is utterly unique.
[ul]
[li]Examination of the bodies finds a mixture of men, women and children, each carefully anointed with funerary ointments and shrouded in burial wrappings. The remains possibly date as far back as the first century A.D.[/li][li]Romans of that time period traditionally cremated their dead. Interment was a custom practiced by some families (a trait seen as an eccentricity), but was mostly performed by foreigners or members of eastern cults – including Christianity. This fact, and the sheer number of the dead (who seemed to have all died within a fairly short period of time) led many to speculate that these might have been the remains of martyred Christians.[/li][li]There is no common cause of death that can be determined from examination of the skeletal remains. The lack of injury trauma would seem to rule out a massacre.[/li][li]The presence of expensive jewelry, toga fabric, and gold thread from expensive textiles indicates that a considerable percentage of the bodies belonged to well-to-do or even upper-class families.[/li][li]The burial chambers are immediately adjacent to a known complex of Christian catacombs. There is evidence to suggest that the chambers were discovered during the construction of the catacombs (which they predate), but resealed and perhaps forgotten.[/li][/ul]
The investigators leading the team seem to be leaning toward the theory that the bodies were victims of a plague. There are certain pathogens that leave no obvious trace in the victim’s bones – while this fact does not, in itself, prove anything, it does present a plausible scenario to explain such a large number of deaths over a short period of time.
According to the program, the next step is to extract blood cells from the pulp of selected victims’ teeth and continue the investigation at the microscopic level. This is essentially where the show left off – something of a letdown as the pre-commercial teasers hinted that a solution to the mystery would be revealed at the end.
I’ve made a few weak attempts to Google the story in hope of finding if any more recent information was available. About the only mentions I’ve come across were bloggers caught up in the early Christian martyr theory. Can anyone point me to something more substantial?
Does anyone know how this works and what the limitations are? I’m assuming this kind of technique would still be less effective the older/less well preserved the teeth are.