Not every archaeological find is a trove of gold or jewels - some can be deadly, alien or just downright eerie. Let's take a look at...
- The red-toothed skeleton of the Silk Road
- The books that can kill
- The hidden witch bottles of England
- The extraterrestrial grave goods of Tutankhamun
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| Silk Road traders skirted the edge of the Flaming Mountains while passing Turpan... (It_was_a_pleasure) |
The Red-Toothed Skeleton of the Silk Road
Would you be unnerved if you found a 2,000 year old skeleton with red teeth? That's what awaited the archaeologists excavating a site along the Silk Road near Turpan City, China.
The skeleton was that of a woman from the Subeixi, a culture where both men and women rode using saddles. The 20-25 year old female skeleton was found sharing a grave with three other individuals, but stood out thanks to her red teeth - researchers took a sample and determined them to be painted with toxic cinnabar (mercury sulfide.)
It's unknown why her teeth were painted - it may have been a shamanistic trapping or possibly purely cosmetic. We do know that cinnabar isn't naturally found near Turpan City, which implies that it acquired further along the silk road or bought from traders. The mineral would have been mixed with animal protein (perhaps an egg) to form a paste that would adhere to the teeth... which probably also put the woman at risk of mercury poisoning.
The skeleton has been dubbed the "Red Princess" due to a previously discovered Mayan Queen. Lady Tz'akbu Ajaw of Palenque, Mexico (known as the "Red Queen") was discovered covered in ground cinnabar inside a a limestone sarcophagus.
The Books That Can Kill
They say that sticks and stones can break your bones, but words can never hurt you... three poisonous books from the University of Southern Denmark’s library collection would beg to differ. These tomes date back to the 16th and 17th century and their covers are laced with arsenic.
Researchers were actually investigating something else when they discovered this hidden hazard. Their covers had been made from scraps of even older books (apparently a fairly common practice in those times) but attempts to read the contents of these scraps were foiled by a thick layer of green paint. The researchers turned to micro-XRF (Micro X-ray Fluorescence) to see the letters beneath the paint... which revealed the green pigment as arsenic.
Arsenic is highly toxic and can cause cancer if it doesn't outright kill you. Though historically it was fairly well understood that arsenic was poisonous by ingestion, people didn't realize that prolonged contact (and even the gas given off by arsenic paint) could also be lethal. Because arsenic was considered safe if not consumed, it was used to create vivid pigments such as the "Paris Green" used to cover the three books mentioned above. While an appealing shade, it's also possible that the bookbinders of the era though the poisonous paint would deter vermin.
The librarians of today are a little more cautious, and the books now live in a ventilated and labeled cabinet. Despite requiring special treatment, they are not actually the most dangerous books in the world - that award goes to the limited-run "Shadows from the Walls of Death" produced by by Dr. Robert M. Kedzie in 1874. This book was chock-full of arsenic-laced wallpaper specimens and intended to illustrate the dangers of using arsenic as pigment - few copies still exist, as many libraries destroyed them to avoid poisoning their patrons!
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| Glass from a comet impact was used in the grave goods of Tutankhamun... (Simon) |
The Hidden Witch Bottles of England
The people of 16th and 17th century England believed that few things could ruin your life like drawing the attention of a witch. Crops failing, livestock wasting, illness or death of a relative, milk souring, bad luck in gambling - all could be blamed on otherworldly influences. Clearly one needed protection... and an easy method was a witch bottle.
Witch bottles could be made using a glass bottle, a ceramic jug or whatever else was available. These containers would be filled with a mixture of human biological material (such as nail clippings, hair or urine) alongside thorns and bent pins. One example found in London contained sixty bent copper pins, rusty nails and a piece of wood or bone.
These bottles would typically be placed beneath a floor, doorway or fireplace where they were intended to act as otherworldly snares, entangling the spirit of a roaming witch. The idea seems to have been fairly popular - they've been found in historic buildings, archaeological digs, churchyards and waterways across England.
The Extraterrestrial Grave Goods of Tutankhamun
Tutankhamun is perhaps the most well known pharaoh of ancient Egypt, but less well known is the story of his grave goods - specifically a brooch and a dagger with ties to the extraterrestrial.
Researchers believe that a comet struck (or exploded over) the sands of Egypt around twenty-eight million years ago, heating the impact zone and producing yellow silica glass. A portion of this comet-forged glass was cut and polished into the body of a winged scarab, the centerpiece of a pendant found in Tutankhamun's tomb.
There's also the matter of the dagger. It's iron, but contains significant amounts of nickel and cobalt - a telltale sign that the iron was meteoric in origin. The mixture of materials in the blade seem to have made it exceptionally long lasting - there's almost no sign of corrosion despite it being over 3,000 years old!
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