(CNN) – This year, scientists were able to unravel the mysteries surrounding historical figures, both known and unknown, to reveal more about their unique stories.
In some cases, the analysis of ancient DNA has helped fill knowledge gaps and change preconceptions. A prime example is how aDNA research is redefining the way people understand the archaeological site of Pompeii, which remains trapped under a layer of ash thousands of years after the 79 AD eruption of Mount Vesuvius which condemned the Roman city.
Genetic traces collected from the victims’ bones showed that what was once believed to be a mother holding her son in her final moments was a unrelated adult male who likely offered comfort to a child before perishing, and they challenged other long-held assumptions.
Here are some of the ways science has sparked a new understanding of historical figures in 2024 and, in some cases, led to more mysteries that still remain to be unraveled.
Unmask the unknown
Detailed analysis of tooth enamel, calculus and bone collagen helped researchers uncover details about “Vittrup Man,” a Stone Age migrant who died violently in a northwest swamp from Denmark around 5,200 years ago.
His remains, found in a bog in Vittrup, Denmark, in 1915, were found next to a wooden club that was likely used to hit him in the head. But little was known about him.
Using cutting-edge analytical methods, Anders Fischer, a researcher at the Department of Historical Studies at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, and his colleagues set out to “find the individual behind the bone” and tell the story of the bone. oldest known immigrant in Danish history.
Vittrup Man grew up along the Scandinavian coast and belonged to a hunter-gatherer community, subsisting on fish, seals and whales. But his life changed dramatically in his late teens when he moved to Denmark and adopted a farmer’s diet, eating sheep and goats. He died between the ages of 30 and 40.
Vittrup Man may have been killed as a sacrifice, or perhaps he was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. But Fischer found it rewarding to use multiple techniques to uncover aspects of his identity.
“In Vittrup’s case, we meet a true first-generation immigrant and can follow his remarkable geographic and dietary transition from northern to southern Scandinavia and from a fisher-hunter-gatherer lifestyle to one of ‘farmer,’ he said.
The “Well-man” of the Nordic saga discovered
Furthermore, researchers were able to link the identity of a skeleton found in a castle well to a passage from an 800 year old Norse text.
The Sverris Saga, which tells the story of the real king Sverre Sigurdsson, includes a description of an invading army throwing the body of a dead man into a well at Sverresborg Castle in Norway in 1197 in a probable attempt to poison the water supply.
A team of scientists recently studied the bones discovered in the castle’s well in 1938. Using radiocarbon dating, the researchers determined that the remains were approximately 900 years old. Genetic sequencing of tooth samples revealed that “Well-man” had a medium complexion, blue eyes, and light brown or blonde hair. And, paradoxically, its genetics could not be traced to the local population.
“The biggest surprise for all of us was that the Well Man did not come from the local population, but rather that his ancestors traced back to a specific region in southern Norway. “This suggests that the besieging army threw one of its own dead into the well,” Michael D. Martin, co-author of the study and professor in the Department of Natural History at the University Museum of the United States, said in October. Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim.
Debunking a “lost prince”
Advances in molecular genetics over nearly two decades have helped researchers get to the bottom of a long-standing historical enigma concerning a so-called “lost prince,” who appeared seemingly out of nowhere in Germany in the mid-19th century. century.
For 200 years, speculation circulated that an enigmatic man named Kaspar Hauser was secretly a member of German royalty. When he was found wandering without identification in Nuremberg in May 1828, at the age of 16, Hauser was barely able to communicate with those who interrogated him.
A story about Hauser being a kidnapped princeoriginating from the royal family of Baden, in what is now southwest Germany, spread like wildfire.
There have been several studies of genetic data extracted from objects that belonged to Hauser, but conflicting results have led to an unanswered impasse.
This year, researchers performed a new analysis of Hauser’s hair samples and were able to prove that his mitochondrial DNA, or genetic code passed down from his mother’s side, did not match the Baden family’s mitochondrial DNA.
The refutation of the royal hoax may have solved one mystery, but another has taken its place. Who was this man? As his tombstone says, Hauser remains “the enigma of his time.”
A sick and tortured composer
Classical composer Ludwig van Beethoven died at age 56 in 1827 after a lifetime of illnesses, including deafness, liver disease and gastrointestinal disorders. The composer expressed the wish that his ills be studied and shared so that “as far as possible, at least the world will be reconciled to me after my death.”
In May, researchers published a study showing high lead levels detected in authenticated locks of Beethoven’s hair and suggested that the composer suffered from lead poisoning, which may have contributed to his recurring health problems.
The findings build on earlier revelations after Beethoven’s genome was made public to investigate the complex nuances of his health.
As well as lead, Beethoven’s locks also contained increased amounts of arsenic and mercury – but how did they get there? The substances likely came from an accumulation of a lifelong diet of fish from the polluted Danube and aplomb wine, sweetened and preserved with lead.
The new discoveries contribute to a better understanding of the composer and the complex and radical symphonies he left behind and which orchestras still perform around the world.
“People say, ‘Music is music, why do we need to know all this?’ “But in Beethoven’s life, there is a connection between his suffering and music,” William Meredith, a Beethoven scholar and co-author of the study, said in May.
Colonial secrets and scandals
A study of skeletal remains using new DNA analysis techniques shed light in March on the fate of members of the family of America’s first president, George Washington.
Washington’s younger brother Samuel, who died in 1781, and 19 other family members were buried in a cemetery on Samuel’s estate near Charles Town, West Virginia.
But some graves were not marked, probably to prevent grave robbing, Courtney L. Cavagnino, a research scientist at the Armed Forces Medical Examiner System’s DNA Identification Laboratory, told CNN in March.
Cavagnino led a team that studied remains discovered in the cemetery in 1999, identifying two of Samuel’s grandsons as well as their mother. The study team conducted excavations to find Samuel’s final resting place, but the where his grave is remains a mystery.
However, the techniques used in the study could be used to identify the unknown remains of those who served in the military, dating back to World War II.
Meanwhile, a separate investigation into unmarked graves found in the British colony of Jamestown, Virginia, revealed a long-hidden scandal within the family of the colony’s first governor, Thomas West.
Researchers analyzed the DNA of two male skeletons in the graves, and both men were related to West through a common maternal lineage. One of the men, Captain William West, was born to West’s spinster aunt Elizabeth – and is illegitimate.
Details of West’s birth were deliberately removed from the family’s genealogical records at the time, researchers found, suggesting that the secret of his true parentage is what inspired him to cross the Atlantic Ocean and join the colony.
Inside the minds (and laboratories) of famous astronomers
The Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe is associated with the celestial discoveries of the 16th century. But he was also an alchemist dedicated to making secret medicines for elite clients, such as Rudolph II, the Holy Roman Emperor.
Renaissance alchemists kept their work secret, and few alchemical recipes have survived to modern times. Although Brahe’s alchemical laboratory, located beneath his Uraniborg Castle and Observatory residence, was destroyed after his death, researchers carried out chemical analysis of shards of glass and pottery recovered from the site.
The analysis detected elements such as nickel, copper, zinc, tin, mercury, gold, lead and a big surprise: tungsten, which had not even been described at the time. It’s possible that Brahe isolated it from a mineral without realizing it, but the discovery raises new questions about his secret work.
Moreover, centuries after German astronomer Johannes Kepler drew sunspots in 1607 from his observations of the sun’s surface, these pioneering drawings helped scientists piece together the history of the sun’s solar cycle.
Although each cycle of waxing and waning solar activity typically lasts about 11 years, there have been times when the sun has behaved differently than expected. And Kepler’s forgotten drawingsmade before the advent of telescopes, were dusted off this year when scientists analyzed them to learn more about the Maunder Minimum, a period of extremely weak and anomalous solar cycles between 1645 and 1715.
Kepler’s drawings were made using a camera obscura, a device that used a small hole in the wall of the instrument to project the image of the sun onto a sheet of paper. His sketches captured sunspots, which helped astronomers determine that solar cycles always occurred as expected when Kepler observed them, rather than lasting unusually long as previously thought.
Brahe and Kepler, along with Sir Isaac Newton and Galileo Galilei, were giants who replaced the medieval view of the world with a modern one, said Kaare Lund Rasmussen, lead author of the Brahe study and professor emeritus in the Department of Physics and of chemistry. and pharmacy at the University of Southern Denmark.
And this year, the centuries-old work of Brahe and Kepler has provided new pieces that help scientists reconstruct the puzzles of the past.