Posted on 04/05/2022 6:01:35 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
This is the face of a "rolling stone" who spent his life wandering across medieval Scotland before (most likely) meeting an unpleasant death, left to lay in the remains of a Roman toilet for centuries.
Archeologists recently took a closer look at the skeletal remains of nine adults and five children discovered beneath a bathhouse at the former-Roman fort in Cramond near Edinburgh, Scotland, piecing together their story using a bunch of bioarchaeological techniques and isotopic data.
These remains are literally “bog bodies,” not because they were preserved in the acidic, low oxygen environment of a wetland, but because these bodies were actually discovered in what the British often call a bog: a toilet, aka latrine, that was used by Roman soldiers when they occupied Scotland centuries before.
First discovered in 1975, it was initially assumed that the skeletal remains dated from the 14th century CE, perhaps victims of the Black Death. However, new radiocarbon dating showed they were actually some 800 years older, dating to the 6th century CE. This was a tumultuous but little-understood, time in British history; a fact that is sewn into the physical make-up of the skeletons.
Recently reported in the journal Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences, isotopic analysis of their teeth gave a surprisingly detailed history of these people's lives, providing sharp insights into their diet and geographic origins.
(Excerpt) Read more at iflscience.com ...
I’ve been buried in toilets a few times...at least to my shoulders.
A limerick I’ve remembered for many years:
There once was a young man named Clyde
Who fell in a privy and died.
Along came his brother
Who fell in another
And now they’re interred side by side.
But apparently falling down the privy was not uncommon at all - back in the days before sewer systems, a newspaper estimated that at least one person died every week in Cincinnati along of falling into the jakes . . .
I know quite a few limericks, but never competed. My dad (from whom I learned the one I posted) once told me about a classmate in medical school who could reel them off for hours.
For all we know he was a turd.
Good one...
There once was a man from Nantucket...
Well, Scotland, and murdered, so, can't rule it out.
The commies don’t seem to have a problem with God on the money.
It’s James Holzhower (sp)of Jeopardy fame.
Well, maybe.
A rolling stone? Man, they’ve been around a long time. We used to joke that after a nuclear war, the only things left alive will be rats, cockroaches and Keith Richards.
Be careful when your joke about legionnaires. If you offend them, well, they were creative.
“The limerick’s furtive and mean;
You must keep her in close quarantine;
Or she slips to the slums,
Where she quickly becomes,
Disorderly, drunk, and obscene!”
I’m no patch on my dad, but I know a few.
I’ll add that one to the old memory banks.
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