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Over 500 years ago, a medieval The corpse of a soldier settled at the bottom of a Lithuanian lake, and for centuries it remained hidden under the mud. Now these submerged remains have finally been found.
The skeleton was discovered during an underwater inspection of the old Dubingiai Bridge in Lake Asveja in eastern Lithuania. Although the skeleton lay under a layer of sand and silt, the scene was not a burial, said archaeologist Elena Pranckėnaitė, a researcher at Klaipėda University in Klaipėda, Lithuania, according to the Baltic News Service (BNS). On the contrary, the water currents probably deposited sediment which covered the remains over time.
Scientists at Vilnius University Faculty of Medicine in Vilnius, Lithuania examined the body and reported that the person was male and died in the 16th century, although they do not yet know why he died, according to BNS. The weapons and other items recovered from the bottom of the lake near the body hinted at the dead man’s military status, Pranckėnaitė told Live Science in an email.
Related: Photos: Medieval skeletons found near a saint’s grave in England
War-related human burials have already been excavated in the area, but this is the first time a medieval soldier has been discovered underwater in Lithuania, Pranckėnaitė said.
Dubingiai Bridge, one of the longest wooden bridges still in use in Lithuania, was built in 1934, and its deteriorated girders are now being replaced with metal posts, representatives of TEC Infrastructure, the company overseeing the repair project under the Lithuanian Ministry of Transport and Communications, said in a press release. Archaeologists worked with amateur divers to carry out the investigation, and divers located the remains at a depth of 9 meters while inspecting the support system of the wooden bridge, the statement said.
A previous investigation in 1998 revealed that another bridge once stood in the same spot, dating from the 16th or 17th century – around the time the medieval soldier died, Pranckėnaitė added.
“For now, we suspect that these discovered human remains could be linked to the ancient bridge leading to Dubingiai Castle, which was located on the hill on the shore of Lake Asveja,” she said.
The discovery of the soldier’s remains was a big surprise, but just as astonishing was the remarkable preservation of the skeleton and artifacts. The divers recovered a pair of spurred leather boots; a leather belt with a buckle; an iron sword; “and two knives with wooden handles,” Pranckėnaitė wrote in the email. A team of archaeologists, anthropologists and historians from the Lithuanian National Museum are currently working on the conservation and interpretation of the objects.
This finding and this data “is really ‘fresh’ and still needs to be carefully analyzed,” Pranckėnaitė said. “We hope to ‘tell the story’ of this soldier at least a year from now.”
Originally posted on Live Science.
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