Study Dates Human Remains Recovered From the River Thames

Archaeology Magazine ^ | February 12, 2025 | editors / Live Science

[SunkenCiv]

According to a Live Science report, radiocarbon dating of ancient human skeletons recovered from the River Thames indicates that they date to between 4000 B.C. and A.D. 1800. Nichola Arthur of London's Natural History Museum said that most of the remains dated to the Bronze Age, between 2300 and 800 B.C., and the Iron Age, between 800 B.C. and A.D. 43. These bones were recovered in upstream zones of the river, she added. "We can now say with confidence that these don't appear to just be bones that have steadily accumulated in the river through time," she explained. "There really was something significant going on in the Bronze and Iron Ages." Arthur thinks the practice of depositing remains in the Thames may be part of a pattern of placing bodies in watery places and boggy patches that has been observed in other areas of northwestern Europe. It has also been suggested that bodies ended up in London's river through warfare, drowning, or the erosion of riverbank burials.

[usurper]

Putting dead people into the very waters that you drink from is the height of stupidity.

All the major city's in Europe were built along side major rivers. The rivers were not for drinking they were for swage disposal and and anything else they wanted to get rid of.

That's why the Romans had to build all those aqueducts to bring in portable water.

[fidelis]

That's why the Romans had to build all those aqueducts to bring in portable water.

I'm sure you meant potable water.

[Verginius Rufus]

The Romans had wine to drink, but they needed plentiful clean water for the public baths.

[fidelis]

They also needed water to drink. They couldn’t usually drink plain water (unless it was directly out of a natural spring) because of the impurities, but for their meals they mixed it with wine. This also prevented them from getting drunk at every meal time.

[Verginius Rufus]

I knew that the Greeks generally mixed water with their wine but couldn't remember if the Romans did so as well.

The modern Greek word for "wine" is krasi (with accent on the iota), from the ancient word krasis meaning mixture or blending. The modern word may have been originally a diminutive form (the little mixing).

[Bon of Babble]

Drinking water certainly came from the Thames - before the origins of cholera were understood:

"John Snow used a dot map to illustrate the cluster of cholera cases around the pump. He also used statistics to illustrate the connection between the quality of the water source and cholera cases. He showed that homes supplied by the Southwark and Vauxhall Waterworks Company, which was taking water from sewage-polluted sections of the Thames, had a cholera rate fourteen times that of those supplied by Lambeth Waterworks Company, which obtained water from the upriver, cleaner Seething Wells. Snow's study was a major event in the history of public health and geography. It is regarded as the founding event of the science of epidemiology.

A replica of the pump without a handle stands outside the John Snow pub on Broadwick Street in Soho, London, commemorating Snow's discovery.