What Can Two Ancient Skeletons Tell Us About Roman London?
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- Опубліковано 5 тра 2024
- 'The Skeletons Of Two Roman Londoners Tell A Fascinating Story!'
Today it is one of the greatest cities on earth. But London, originally, was a Roman city. Follow Dr Simon Elliott and Dr Rebecca Redfern as they uncover the magnitude of information a skeleton can tell us about Romans and their lifestyle.
Watch the full documentary here: access.historyhit.com/life-an...
#Roman #London #HistoryHit
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I believe it would be great if this scientist had a weekly blog by taking a recent discovery and explaining what the remains tell her. I would certainly watch!
"What did the Romans ever do for us?"......
"Errrrrmmm.... education, sanitation, aqueducts."
What a great film that was......
LOL!
Invasion, rape, pillage, occupation, stealing of resources, enslavement and colonisation!
@@nickjung7394 that was all happening before the Romans.
@@whoarewe7515 i don't understand your point. Given the current persecution of the British over the Empire and the demand for "apologies and reparations" it is clear that African mercenaries assisted the Romans in the invasion and enslavement of the people of the British Isles. Slavery was not a feature of ancient British culture, it was most certainly a feature of the Roman/African culture that was imposed on the British!
@@nickjung7394 there is no point for as long as people tribes of native counties they have been taking people prisoner raping murdering and all the things you mentioned
she was amazing would love to spend hours talking to her about history, great vid
Right, so you would like to talk about dead people all day?
@@randomvintagefilm273 I know what id like to do with her and it wouldn't be talking about dead people lol
@@ramoncanham9751 aye aye
@@randomvintagefilm273 I hate the living.
@@ramoncanham9751 😊 I Agree with you 💯❗😄
Such a lovely enthusiastic lady. Makes history fascinating. She's lovely
If this was the BBC's Horrible Histories all the skeletons would be from sub Saharan Africa.
Just shut up for once! Keep your racism to yourself!
Very astute sir . Bravo 👏🏻👏🏻
🤣🤣🤣
They would've been LGBT somehow as well.
Rebecca is wonderful - please can we see much more? absolutely fascinated
Just stumbled across this channel, what a treat. If only all hosts and guests could be this friendly.
I really enjoy this program. The young woman is charming, very well educated and passionate about in her subject
An interesting video. I lived in Chester for a time, it is another Roman City.
I noticed on one of my walks that the wall had been repaired in places, by Roman grave stones. At the time I thought it disrespectful to the deceased.
Your mention of finding skeletons wearing shackles, can really only lead to one conclusion.
Iron was a valuable resource so the iron would have been removed prior to burial, unless the corpse had died of some disease that was contagious, that might have deterred someone from remaining in the company of the corpse for too long, or of touching it.
Something like leprosy perhaps, or plague.
The slave owner might not have wanted to reuse the shackles and risk spreading the disease to another slave.
Slaves cost money after all.
If the corpse had been buried alive for some reason, I would have thought the iron shackles would have been replaced by cheaper rope.
So disease seems the more obvious answer.
Generally enslaved peoples in the Roman Empire after the middle of the first century, were generationally enslaved, therefore they were born and traded. They had an ascribed status. It is far more likely that someone buried and shackled were something else. Criminals were shackled and thrown on rubbish dumps. Slaves were usually buried i. Slave cemeteries.
I absolutely love watching this sort of stuff, I find it totally amazing that people use to walk all those years ago where we walk now!!
Alice Thompson: You can see it better in Chester. The Roman street level was about twenty feet lower than present day levels. Lots of Roman ruins there and excavations showing how the Romans lived, their central heating etc.
Just outside the town is a mass grave where plague victims were buried.
Royalist soldiers from the English Civil war, are also buried in the graveyard.
Outside the graveyard is a monument to a Protestant Martyr, burned at the stake for his faith.
Chester is well worth a visit.
Yeah I will!
If some people were buried still wearing shackles, I think that suggests that they were considered dangerous people even in their afterlife
In some traditions, it was to prevent the dead from 'walking' amongst the living as malevolent spirits. Along the vein of the Transylvanian vampire tradition in the middle ages where various methods to keep the body and soul together in the earth. Rocks or stakes on the chest etc.
That was my thought too, especially if the shackles are expensive.
Yes. The people that removed the shackles will now be a target of the freed spirits….
I would guess that the only reason to bury a shackled person is that they were still alive and resisting, ehh? Just think bit.
Courtesy of Half Vast Flying
@@jackvoss5841 or they died, and were rotting, which leads to speculation of what happened to the prison keepers. They were buried, which is a custom of preserving the body for the afterlife, someone cared about not spreading disease, they didnt cremate her which is how some cultures deal with burials and that someone wasnt interested in preserving human bondage instruments. She may of been a prison keeper as well, buried alive as you suggested. They recently dug up graves elsewhere, i think it was pompei, with chains still on as well.
Sad stuff.
My first thought.
The value of the reuseable metal being more than the value of a slave. The existence of a shakle is a Statement.
"Never leave me again my love/ you slept around too much/you are a political murderer/your innocent virtue will rest unviolated...."
my mind is instantly drawn back to the curses of others' scratched on lead and thrown into Minerva's pool at what is now the Roman Baths [in Bath, UK.]
Some of those /expensive lead_ scratched curses were ablaze with *real raging vitriol*, even just for stealing a comb! _Fascinating._
Very intelligent host and guest. Amazing what we can learn with such old human remains. I wonder if burial in shackles is a type of curse (like buried in shackles will make you a slave in the afterlife).
That is a very interesting thought. Better hope you don't get buried by your enemies in a culture that believes that how the body is treated is vital for the afterlife!
@@penguinista Like America?
who'd want to bury a perfectly good pair of shackles ?
I am not sure whether this is a possible theory but I know at one time superstitious people were worried about the walking dead and vampires, and several tools were used to combat this . One way was the classic metal stake through the breast and another was decapitation and I wonder were metal shackles used.
@@garypautard1069 you have the same effect now with migrants…except that superstitious tools used to defend people are slogans and flags.
She is a natural teacher. I really loved this video. Thanks for posting it.
Love the passion for her work and the history!! Wonderful presentation thank you.💚
Wow, the description was true, that was ABSOLUTELY Fascinating! I could listen to her all night! Brilliant post.
They may not have been slaves but criminals or people who scared the community. I really wish they would remake these finds WITH their jewelry and things so that we could actually see how they looked in the face and at burial.
Depending on the Roman view of the afterlife in a given period, burying them with shackles might be seen as a way of perpetuating their status (slave or criminal) beyond death. ='[.]'=
I adore this woman! She is so intelligent and so passionate. You can tell she loves what she does! She is loving the dream in my opinion. I too absolutely love history and just go nuts talking and reading and learning about it!
Determination of 'ancestry' from cranial measurements (Fordisc) has been widely critised. Especially with regard to partial Crania. Eg:
"A 2009 study found that FORDISC 3.0 "is only likely to be useful when an unidentified specimen is more or less complete and belongs to one of the populations represented in its reference samples", and even in such "favorable circumstances it can be expected to classify no more than 1 per cent of specimens with confidence."
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Very true I just watched Simon Webb talk about this
@@accountretired9479 one never knows anything for sure
SHHHHH!! You are ruining their fantasy history
Good thing they had the pelvis!
The person was almost certainly of North African origin, not sub-Saharan.
Yes, most of North Africa in the early 400s had been part of Rome for almost 300 years.
The black nationalists in the US continually ignore North Africa as being Africa, and always populated by people of Arab/Levant/European descent, and try to claim the African troops, governors and emporers were black. But of course, they weren't.
Yepe the majority of Africans who lived in Rome and its provinces were North Africans and not black. However, the woke and leftist scholars are obsessed with forcing SSAs into Roman Britain and proving the noncase that Britain and Europe were filled with black Africans. There were black Africans in Rome but they were a small minority. Here's the thing, North Africans are too Caucasiod and not black enough for the taste of the woke scholars. Therefore this scholar was tap dancing talking confusing stuff about the ancestry and origin of the found human remains. You have to take everything these liberal scholars say about DNA or ancestry with a grain of salt.
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Lol, have you ever heard of Carthage it's in North Africa? And this person was from Africa before Islam massacred north Africa. He might have looked like any number of humans. Quit it with the colorism.
Another brilliant video
Really fascinating. Great video.
Absolutely fascinating,
although I was a bit disappointed Dr. Redfern didn't say anything about her years working with Scooby Doo.
Welma.....hehehehe.
Rut Roh
Such a cool video...more of this please!
So very interesting, many thanks.
Quite interesting, thank you so much 🌹
Quite fascinating...enjoyed it so subscribed...and hit the all bell.
Really great explanation and lots of detail and facts revealed.
The host was very engaging and explained things so well!
I enjoy this program.. thank you.
Incredible the amount of informationthat can be found from a few bones.
Very Interesting and informative
Great chat but you might want to turn down his lav mic.
I've been prescribed codeine for a tooth abscess, so we still take opiates for tooth pain now- as well as for other infections.
True
What a fascinating woman! I could listen to her all day!
So much information from just a few old bones and teeth. Good work.
Another wonderful presentation,thank you.
Amazing 👏
Interesting. Thanks
totally fascinating......
It is kind of creepy to be walking in a place like London, knowing how many dead people are right under your feet.
And walking amongst you
This is not unique. The same things can be said for any metropolis in the world.
That young and myself would get along great. I could listen to her for hrs
Brilliant
The female skeleton shows she may have been an early Saxon that came to Britain in the late 4th/early 5th century A.D. - the first wave of what became the "English" people.
Very interesting.
Dr. Redfern just opened a window to an ancient past..of Romans living in London...with such clarity ....invaders who did not end well ...and brushing their teeth with dog poo??? Dr Redfern... you are amazing....love the details....
Roman London appears to have been a fascinating place.
Fascinating!
Rebecca is gorgeous. I could listen to her voice all day.
You can not hide this lady,s beauty with glasses .
Very interesting
Fascinating.
In my, very humble, opinion the Roman Empire would not take the trouble to bury slaves in limited grave sites complete with their fetters. Why waste a valuable crafted piece of metal? My view that this was a ritualistic thing. Who knows what it was 16 centuries later but I would think a more likely explanation was to chin him, or her, as they were a nasty piece of work when they were living.
Imagine how much more we would know if every person had written a bit about their daily lives. Or even if it was a habit to bury the dead with a little gravestone implanted in the body cavity: their name, occupation, and age forever attached to their bones.
Loved this film. Thanks very much.
So much for RIP.
Not Paget’s disease in what she describes as a melted spine area ( the fused 12:35 bone case. ) I’d guess more like Ankylosing Spondylosis.
That vision of the edge of the Thames would be more than 100m back from the present day water edge under buildings by now
Very informative video, but it would have been much better if I couldn't hear the man breathing in his mic the whole time 😑🥴
Great video, shame the camera man was eating the microphone the whole time.
Fascinating - So is there a general or specific museum in London dedicated period, and or the period prior to the Roman invasion?
The towton and visby skeletons,or the beheaded vikings in suffolk are fascinating
sorry...weymouth
In cases where the vertebrae are fused you can end up like Richard III (different condition in his case) but you only have pain during the inflammatory phase. You will never look like an Olympic gymnast but you can be functional.
Dr Rebecca needs her own show!
Can you do a video on Southampton bargate?
I love videos like this!!/Awesome !!very interesting!
If this painting is accurate, You can actually see the A1 heading North and maybe a right towards Colchester and Felixstow. The A2 heading South East towards
what would later become Dover, and last the A3 heading down to Portchester. Exactly where an invasion may come from, Fascinating.
This is very interesting, I did a shoot at a museum and we were talking with 2 historians one male and one female, we were discussing the Byzantine Empire's religious and sociological culture on war, marriage, death etc; When we were talking about killing, executions, death the male historian would excitedly discussing every detail with us not sparing any detail much to our amusement while the female historian was kinda glossing over details and seemed uncomfortable discussing the same subject. This interview kinda reminded me of that how the interviewer was fascinated about the gross details of death and the female historian was uncomfortable and kinda skirting around the details.
Why would a slave be buried with usable shackles?
Wouldn't it make more sense to shackle, or at least tie up, the body of an executed criminal or evil person, to prevent their spirit from 'walking' with evil intent?
Great video! His breathing is very loud though
Excellent presentation and information from Rebecca, but it was spoiled a bit by the breathing noises from Simon - sorry to mention this.
If my spine is fused together, I’m riddled with painful swelling and various arthritis, plus my teeth are worn down to the pulp…You’re gd right I’m gunna be sipping on some poppy syrup!!🤣
Is it just me or was the dude breathing really loudly into his lav the entire time?
Classicist here. Fantastic interview! Knowledgeable. Great questions. A great listen. Thank you.
Opioid syrup for toothaches sounds fine to me, especially when dental pain can be some of the worse pain there is. All of this under treatment of pain due to others abusing those types of substances is exactly what lead to this "epidemic" in the 1st place (under treatment lead to oxycontin being over prescribed & doctors not tapering patients as they shoud always do. And abuse & a opioid/opiate epidemic is nothing new & was the reason for the creation of drug scheduling/drug laws). Not to mention there is NOTHING over the counter that helps with pain. Taking a Tic Tac gives the same result as they do, they just taste better if it doesnt go down the first try.
I have read original latin souces after 50 from high school I can still read latin that the romans used poopy syropp to relieve pain but knew it was addictive.
Kristi Skinner: Aspirin, Paracetamol; Ibuprofen; Cocodamol, Codeine. Anything stronger requires a prescription from a doctor.
For mild to moderate pain the over-the-counter medicines are fine.
The skeletons would say, "on the whole, I'd rather be in kensington".
Imagine being dead thousand years ago and then thousand years later your grave being analyze by scientists.
Constructive criticism: the camera-person is breathing through his mouth in bursts and this is "in our ear", so to speak.
I could listen to Dr Rebecca for hours. She's gorgeous too.
Hey Phil, how’s your little brother? 😀😀😀
Does the ankle bones of the shackled burials show long term wear of the restraints, or could be the shackles symbolic?
As I expected they could tell what sex these skeletons are even after so many hundreds of years.
Interesting. She mentioned that body parts were found in many different places like ditches, down a well etc. Being "drawn and quartered" comes to mind. They may even have parts of that Big Scot, William Wallace? Everyone ends up somewhere...
I enjoy these videos but many start abruptly or mid sentence! You need better editing. An intro with a bit of background at the beginning would help.
There is a country that I do admire on the Northern Coastline of Africa. I'm going there now.
Also when she says North Africa I believe they were mostly Macedonians and Greeks etc not the Arabs of today
The Arab conquest came later. I believe they were Greek and Phoenicians.
@@josm1206 that’s what I said
@@MrTangolizard you did. But I was simply adding the Phoenicians. Carthage etc was a Phoenician city.
@@josm1206 ok fair enough ,
What makes you think so? Neither country is in Africa.
I’m sure one of my old school teachers brushed their teeth with dog poo. Always wondered how they got their breath to smell like that?
My father in law was Welsh and he got Paget's
Thumbnail - Great Dentists.
I read this wrong. I saw "The Skeletons of the Two Ronnies" for some bizarre reason. I need glasses.
interesting analysis of how people were buried in Roman London with Dr Rebecca Redfern and ,Dr Simon Elliott. Shackles might indicate either prisoner or slave.
I think we should all appreciate not being born in Roman times….no matter how difficult that can be.
One of the things I AM grateful for - toilet paper.
@@hlmoore8042 I repair paper machines.
You're welcome.
It could be that the Romans of the time thought the very same thing about their predecessors... and, of course, wondering just when the toilet paper would be showing up.
The Ancient Romans used Sponge.. harvested from the Sea, which they used for " toilet paper",🗞️washed them after every use , ready for the next application..
Ever wondered why the Roman soldiers had sponge mentioned during The Christ's crucifixion ?
@@manfredrichthofen2494 That is interesting. Its never occurred to me to question...why was a sponge on a stick at the crucifixion site? The most logical reasons would be: sponge was used for giving liquid to the people being crucified as a simple act of kindness. Or somebody went to get the sponge on a stick as a final act of contempt and belittlement. I vote for option #2 as most likely. That's incredible to contemplate but the actions fit the motive at that place and time.
Hearing her talk about bodies being buried in shackles makes me wonder about their beliefs concerning the afterlife, especially ghosts or other revenants. Perhaps slaveowners believed that after their slaves died they would then be free to return and take revenge by haunting them. But if they left the bodies shackled in the grave this would prevent them from rising to torment the living...
could hear nothing but that guy breathing into the mic for 15 minutes
She has lovely hair.🦋🦋
ha, some call it covering up a murder, others call it a clandestine burial
By law people had to be buried outside the city walls. So it was more likely that families didn't want to have a loved one so far away or couldn't afford a proper burial. Although undoubtedly some were foul play! The Romans were a rough lot.
The sound engineer needs to have filtered out the should of the male presenter's audit mouth breathing room when the woman has answering his questions.
It's creepy
I wonder if most people follow her deliberate use of English ? She is using words like "prone" in their rigorous definitions, and she is doing so to highlight important facts their research has uncovered.
Prone meaning face down, this is unusual in human burials, in most cultures at the time. people were buried laying on their side. Laying face down in your grave seemed to have some significance because of its rarity but quite WHAT it signified remains a matter of speculation. So she notes it as an important fact of that burial.
And her interview is full of these distinctions, there is a lot more information she is sharing than most people without training will grasp.
This Russian invasion of Ukraine sheds some light on some prone burials, I think. The news reports following body recovery teams (Whether exhumation of ad-hoc burials, atrocity victims in the woods or bodies found in rubble.) What happens now in the extreme circumstances of war would happen in the past to strangers and beggars. When a body is in rigor, it’s often not lying in any neat position; they get rolled into a blanket (or bodybag, or shroud) and then transported, lifted on and off vehicles etc, and handled by different sets of people on the way to their eventual burial. The same goes for people found after decay has begun. By the end of the line, no-one knows or is going to look inside the blanket or bodybag to find out which way up the body is. And rather than lift the body to put it in the grave - which is very difficult in the best if circumstances - they TIP it in. I can imagine this happening in a town context to people discovered murdered in a field, say, or to drowning victims washed up or pulled out of the river after skin slippage, fish nibbling and battered by boats and shore. If you’ve reached the fragrant stage, then once you’re wrapped up, it really isn’t easy to tell what way up you are. And if you are a dead pauper, criminal or stranger carted to the graveyard for the sake of public hygiene, or in a situation like war or plague when the gravediggers are overwhelmed - there may be no-one who cares what way up you are.
@@eh1702 That is a very interesting speculation. It seems very likely, just from the purely human empathy point of view.
I wonder how you could go about *scientifically* determining if that was the case in an archaic burial ?.
@@uncletiggermclaren7592 I don’t see that it could be *determined*, but you could perhaps find a balance of probabilities if you examined all prone skeletons and found some statistical trend. I don’t know if it is physically possible, but perhaps from the bones of fingers, toes, eye sockets etc, it could be possible to decide whether decay began in an oxygen rich environment - in the open air - or in water (say with tiny water organisms) or in the soil. If you were able to find a big enough number of stored bones from prone burials that have been well documented, and compare them with normal burials from the same general time & locality, you might be able to see an area where the two sets don’t overlap.
Love her so clever and yet scatty and funny 😄
Could think the decapitation and chains on corpses also possibly having to do something with the afterlife belief and taking what you have in the grave with you. In otherwords, decapitating the body would result decapitation in the afterlife and waking up in chains in the afterlife would also be inconvenient to the deceased person
Creating problems for future archaeologists.
" 'ere Blacksmith, I lost the key to that there padlock some 25 years ago , just after I bought that slave, so how much to get 'em off without damaging 'em?"
"I could do 'em for 30 denarius and that's cutting my own throat"
What about just cutting off those there ankles then?"