Who is the Mystery Man Buried Under Notre Dame? | NOVA | PBS
8P83FNr9GQw • 2025-01-09
Transcript preview
Open
Kind: captions Language: en human remains a sealed lead sarcophagus of unknown age finding bodies is not completely unexpected burials in and around the cathedral are part of its history but a sarcophagus like this one is very rare and immediately begs the questions whose remains are these and why are they here this coffin is full of unexpected discoveries his remains will be the subject of a much more detailed analysis by collecting enamel from the teeth and a few grams of bone from a fingertip it is possible to find Clues to where he grew up it's called isotopic analysis our bodies are made from the carbon and other chemical elements we take in when we eat and breathe among the atoms of those elements there are variations called Isotopes the Isotopes of strontium oxygen and sulfur can point to the geographical location where someone grew up and nitrogen and carbon can help determine if he ate mostly fish or meat throughout his life Anthropologist Rosen Coulter in geochemistry re researcher cleria Jaan processed the samples of enamel and Bone collected from the remains in order to extract the chemical isotopes that will tell the story of where he lived they first soak the samples in an acid bath to break down the material the acid causes the bone samples to become soft allowing researchers to extract a protein collagen once concentrated these collagen molecules are placed in small tin capsules to be analyzed by a mass [Music] spectrometer a few months later they receive the first results so this is a map showing the probabilities for oxygen pronouncing once again Paris here and in terms of probability we can see that the higher values are further east in France the analysis says the mystery man grew up in the east of France this result matches with the little information the archaeologist gathered so far about Edward de la maren who belonged to a noble family based in burgundy
Resume
Categories