Posted on 12/29/2012 12:47:51 AM PST by nickcarraway
Search for infamous monarch’s remains is the latest in the rush to dig up the dead and famous
For centuries, William Shakespeare seemed to have the last word. His Richard III glowered and leered from the stage, a monster in human form and a character so repugnant "that dogs bark at me as I halt by them." In Shakespeare's famous play, the hunchbacked king claws his way to the throne and methodically murders most of his immediate family—his wife, older brother, and two young nephews—until he suffers defeat and death on the battlefield at the hands of a young Tudor hero, Henry VII.
(Related: "Shakespeare's Coined Words Now Common Currency.")
To shed new light on the long vilified king, a British scientific team has tracked down and excavated his reputed burial spot and exhumed skeletal remains that may well belong to the long-lost monarch. The team is conducting a CSI-style investigation of the body in hopes of conclusively identifying Richard III, a medieval king who ruled England for two brief years before perishing at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485. Results on the investigation are expected in January.
But the much maligned monarch is not the only historical heavyweight to be exhumed. Since the 1980s, forensic experts have dug up the remains of many famous people—from Christopher Columbus (video) and Simón Bolívar to Jesse James, Marie Curie, Lee Harvey Oswald, Nicolae Ceausescu, and Bobby Fischer. Just last month, researchers in Ramallah (map) disinterred the body of Yasser Arafat, hoping to new glean clues to his death in 2004. Rumors long suggested that Israeli agents poisoned the Palestinian leader with a fatal dose of radioactive polonium-210.
(Read more about poisoning from National Geographic magazine's "Pick Your Poison—12 Toxic Tales.")
Indeed, forensic experts have disinterred the legendary dead for a wide range of reasons—including to move their remains to grander tombs befitting their growing fame, collect DNA samples for legal cases, and obtain data on the medical conditions that afflicted them. Such exhumations, says anatomist Frank Rühli at the Centre for Evolutionary Medicine, University of Zurich, always raise delicate ethical issues. But in the case of early historical figures, scientists can learn much that is of value to society. "Research on ancient samples provides enormous potential for understanding [questions concerning our] cultural heritage and the evolution of disease," Rühli notes in an emailed response.
Franciscan Resting Place?
Archaeologists from the University of Leicester began actively searching for the burial place of Richard III this past August. According to historical accounts, Tudor troops carried Richard's battered corpse from the Bosworth battlefield and displayed it in the nearby town of Leicester before local Franciscan fathers buried the body in their friary choir. With clues from historic maps, the archaeological team located foundations of the now vanished friary beneath a modern parking lot, and during excavation, the team discovered the skeleton of an adult male interred under the choir floor—exactly where Richard III was reportedly buried.
The newly discovered skeleton has scoliosis, a curvature of the spine that may have resulted in a slightly lopsided appearance, and this may have inspired Shakespeare's exaggerated depiction of Richard as a Quasimodo-like figure. Moreover, the body bears clear signs of battle trauma, including a fractured skull and a barbed metal arrowhead embedded in the vertebrae. And even the burial place points strongly to Richard. English armies at the time simply left their dead on the field of battle, but someone carted this body off and interred it in a place of honor.
Taken together, these early clues, says Jo Appleby, the University of Leicester bioarchaeologist studying the remains, strongly suggest that the team has found the legendary king. Otherwise, she observes, "I think we'd have a hard time explaining how a skeleton with those characteristics got buried there."
But much work remains to clinch the case. Geneticists are now comparing DNA sequences from the skeleton to those obtained from a modern-day Londoner, Michael Ibsen, who is believed to be a descendant of Richard III's sister. In addition, forensic pathologists and medieval-weapons scholars are poring over signs of trauma on the skeleton to determine cause of death, while a radiocarbon-dating lab is helping to pin down the date. And at the University of Dundee in Scotland, craniofacial identification expert Caroline Wilkinson is now working on a reconstruction of the dead man's face for a possible match with historic portraits of Richard III. All this, says Richard Buckley, the lead archaeologist on the project, "will help us put flesh on the bones, so to speak."
Digging Up History
Elsewhere, teams digging up the historic dead have contented themselves with more modest goals. In Texas, for example, forensic experts opened the grave of Lee Harvey Oswald in October 1981 to identify beyond doubt the man who shot President John F. Kennedy. A British lawyer and author had claimed that a Soviet agent impersonated Oswald and assassinated the American president. To clarify the situation, the forensic experts compared dental x-rays taken during Oswald's stint in the United States Marine Corps to a record they made of the body's teeth. The two matched well, prompting the team to announce publicly that "the remains in the grave marked as Lee Harvey Oswald are indeed Lee Harvey Oswald."
More recently, in 2010, Iceland's supreme court ordered forensic experts to exhume the body of the late world chess champion Bobby Fischer from his grave in Iceland in order to obtain DNA samples to determine whether Fischer was the father of one of the claimants to his estate. (The tests ruled this out.) And that same year, Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez ordered forensic experts to open the casket of Simón Bolívar, the renowned 19th century Venezuelan military leader who fought for the independence of Spanish America from colonial rule. Chavez believes that Bolívar died not from tuberculosis, as historians have long maintained, but of arsenic poisoning, and has launched an investigation into the cause of his death.
For some researchers, this recent spate of exhumations has raised a key question: Who should have a say in the decision to disinter or not? In the view of Guido Lombardi, a paleopathologist at Cayetano Heredia University in Lima, investigators should make every effort to consult descendants or family members before proceeding. "Although each case should be addressed individually," notes Lombardi by email. "I think the surviving relatives of a historical figure should approve any studies first."
But tracking down the descendants of someone who died many centuries ago is no easy matter. Back in Leicester, research on the remains found beneath the friary floor is proceeding. If all goes according to plan, the team hopes to announce the results sometime in January. And if the ancient remains prove to be those of Richard III, the city of Leicester could be in for a major royal event in 2013: The British government has signalled its intention to inter the long-maligned king in Leicester Cathedral.
Thank god he wasn’t shot. What would the Brits have to say about that?
Exactly.
Shakespeare was the Goebbels of his time.
How can they be sure it’s NOT Jimmy Hoffa?
(can’t believe I’m first with a Hoffa joke)
;^)
How can they be sure it’s NOT Jimmy Hoffa?
(can’t believe I’m first with a Hoffa joke)
;^)
That would be a royal pain in the ass to tear up the parking lot to find out.
Paging Jimmy Hoffa.....
Now is the winter of our disinterment.
Now is the winter of our disinterment.
Never heard the bit about why treason never prospers, have you?
The last truly legitimate King was Henry VI, who was much too kind and decent a man to hold onto his crown.
The Crown had been fought over for several decades when Henry VII landed, changing hands from York to Lancaster several times. Parliaments did not deliberate and express the will of the people, they merely rubber-stamped the results of the various wars and intrigues.
The Wars of the Roses, BTW, featured the greatest battle ever fought in the British Isles. Probably 80k fought, and around 20k died. Towton.
To my mind the notion that RIII kept the little princes locked up till they were found by the victorious HVII and murdered by him, makes little or no sense.
RIII had been ruling with some success till the rumor got around that he had not only displaced the little princes but had murdered them. This rumor was a, possibly the, major factor in his progressive loss of support.
To squelch this rumor and regain the lost support, all he had to do was display the live princes. Since he never did, it seems likely to me that he was unable to, they being already dead.
HVII continued to himself face rebellions and invasions of the type that brought him to power throughout his reign, often headed by an impostor pretending to be one of the lost princes.
However, the notion that this was some sort of burning political issue by Shakespeare's time is just silly. AFAIK there were no Yorkist rebellions during HVIII's reign or those of any of his children. Nobody cared any more.
Great uncle, I believe. But, yes...I immediately thought of Black Adder!
Sunstitute Sir Thomas More (who wrote the book Shakspear adapted for the stage) for Shakspear.
IN the opening sentence of More's Richard III, he gives precise age of death for Edward IV (a near-contempory and hardly obscure individual) which is totally wrong - the opening sentence! (trust nothing herein).
Oh, come on! You don’t believe that Richard the Third was in his mother’s womb for two years and when finally born had a full set of teeth and hair to his shoulders?? Oh, you Doubting Thomas, you!
Actually, the rumors (and there were really very few) simply suggested that young Edward may have died - not that he was murdered. There were some notions floating around that he was not in good health. Just as a point of fact, Richard was no where near the Tower during the time it is said that they disappeared. He was on a progression throughout England.
Happily, several pretenders showed up claiming to be the two brothers, making stingy, nasty, cowardly Henry VII’s life a misery!
The current queen will not allow the bones of the children to be disinterred so that modern dating methods can be used. I have seen the dental records made in 1933 and they are very interesting. Some say the young (unanointed) king died from a disease of the jaw and the records do show signs of serious illness.
Most Ricardians tend to think that the Duke of Buckingham (who had charge of the kiddies, I believe) killed them - without Richard’s knowledge. I, myself, don’t know. All I know is that at this point in history, we have no proof Richard did away with them.
Last British monarch to die in battle iirc.
If Edward died, then his brother Richard would have inherited his claims to be the “legitimate” Yorkist King.
I think the history is very clear that RIII’s main problem was his own supporters deserting him or switching sides, some of them on the field of battle itself. And a prime reason for that was the rumors that he had killed the Princes.
On a practical note, none of these kings of the period had any greater or lesser “right” to the throne than any of the others. It was a clearcut power struggle, that was all.
Of course, a king who came to power by these means soon found that his throne was insecure and that he could be overthrown by exactly the same methods. A good example of poetic justice.
Henry VII was actually a reasonably good king, as compared with other kings, admittedly not a particularly high standard to beat. He mostly kept England out of foreign wars. He was “oppressive” to the high nobility that threatened his throne, though to be fair the high nobility needed to be taken down several pegs. They had, after all, put England through several decades of horrible civil war pursuing their own interests.
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