[Image: Gencraft / AI]
Your average Londoner might do a double take upon hearing that the River Thames has been coughing up human bones for the past two hundred years.
Yep, hundreds of them.
And thanks to fresh research, we now know that a good chunk of these skeletal surprises date all the way back to prehistoric times. A team of UK researchers recently studied the remains of 61 people fished out of the Thames, confirming that most of them lived during the Bronze and Iron Ages.
Now, how they ended up in the river is still a bit of a mystery, but the fact that so many remains date between 2300 BCE and 43 CE has led experts to believe this wasn’t just a case of random drownings or accidental bone-dumping—people were putting bodies in the river on purpose. Spooky.
“We can now say with confidence that these don’t appear to just be bones that have steadily accumulated in the river through time,” Nichola Arthur, a curator at the Natural History Museum in London and co-author of the study, published last month in the journal Antiquity, told Live Science. “There really was something significant going on in the Bronze and Iron Ages.”
And she’s got the receipts to prove it. Using radiocarbon dating, the researchers determined the ages of 30 previously undated skeletons and then combined that info with earlier research, building a timeline for all 61 sets of remains found in the Thames. While the bones cover a massive time span—roughly 4000 BCE to 1800 CE—most hail from those prehistoric periods, reinforcing the idea that this was a thing back in the day.
Interestingly, there’s a weird gap between 300 and 600 CE, where no new dates pop up. Arthur and her colleagues suggest this might be due to a population dip in London after the Romans packed up in the fifth century CE, leaving the place in a bit of a ghost town state until the Saxons showed up and started trading again in the seventh century.
As for how the bodies got there, one theory—that the bones washed into the Thames from eroding Bronze or Iron Age burials—was swiftly debunked. The researchers found zero evidence of such burials along the riverbanks.
Instead, they argue that the whole thing is tied to ancient European “watery deposition practices”—basically, people back then had a thing for chucking offerings (including, apparently, human bodies) into rivers for spiritual reasons. In fact, there’s plenty of historical evidence suggesting the Thames was considered a sacred site.
So, next time you take a stroll along the river, just remember: it’s been a lot more than just an iconic London landmark—it’s also been an ancient dumping ground for the dearly departed.
If you’re feeling the urge to go scavenging for ancient treasures along the Thames—just know that you need a permit and that there’s a waitlist.
[Sources: Popular Mechanics & Gizmodo]
