Forensic Case Files: The Bard’s Missing Skull

There has been controversy for years about who Shakespeare really was. History tells us he was the son of a glove maker, born in Stratford-upon-Avon in England in 1564, who grew up to be an actor, poet and playwright. But doubts were raised that someone born in a small village and living so far outside royal life would be able to write about it so eloquently, and some have proposed that Sir Francis Bacon or Christopher Marlowe were actually ‘The Bard’. But the man most recognize as the ‘greatest writer in the English language’ is known to have died four hundred years ago on April 23, 1616. He was laid to rest two days later in the chancel of Holy Trinity Church in his beloved Stratford-upon-Avon. Later, his wife, daughter and son-in-law were buried beside him.

Two stories of a strange grave robbing surfaced roughly 250 years later, in 1879 and 1884. They describe a doctor digging up Shakespeare’s head in 1769, possibly to sell to an art dealer. There is a theory from the time that a person’s genius could be discerned from their skull alone, so Shakespeare’s skull would have had significant worth.

Recently, that tale was put to the test as researchers from Staffordshire University were allowed to come into Holy Trinity Church with ground penetrating radar equipment to scan the grave under an etched stone slab. And what they found supports those stories—the results show a disturbance at the head end of the grave showing where dirt was removed and replaced, and the skull does not appear to be present. The scans also show that Shakespeare and his family were not buried in coffins, but simply wrapped in cloth shrouds and entombed in shallow graves, which would have certainly made grave robbing an easier task.

Researchers realize their results ask more questions than they answer, but they are determined to go back to the records of the time to try and solve the mystery of Shakespeare’s missing skull. Was it truly stolen, or could it reside in another church or in a family member’s tomb instead?

An interesting side note to the theft is the epitaph chiseled on Shakespeare’s tomb, one the robbers most certainly ignored:

Good friend for Jesus sake forbeare,

To dig the dust enclosed here.

Blessed be the man that spares these stones,

And cursed be he that moves my bones.

Photo credit:  Steve

Queen Nefertiti’s Tomb Discovered?

We love interesting burials here at Skeleton Keys. Add in some fascinating history and we’re in heaven. We spent lots of time examining the process of finding and identifying Richard III. We covered the potential discovery of the remains of Joan of Arc and King Alfred. We looked at the plague burials of London, the Roman burials of York, and even those entombed at Pearl Harbor. But we’ve never tackled ancient Egypt.

This past week, there was a press conference in Cairo. The Egyptian minister of antiquities announced that new research being conducted in King Tut’s tomb revealed the possible presence of two hidden chambers off the room that held the royal sarcophagus. Seeing as almost everyone thought the tomb had been fully excavated by Howard Carter between 1922 and 1932, the announcement came as quite a surprise.

The one man who thought there was more to discover was Dr. Nicholas Reeves, an archeologist from the University of Arizona. Known as a scientist who often makes discoveries by fully analyzing the research of others, he published a paper in 2015 based on radar scans of the tomb done by a team of conservators from Factum Arte. Factum Arte’s scans were commissioned in order to produce a replica of the tomb for an Egyptian project to preserve tombs in the Valley of the Kings. After the scans were complete, they were uploaded to the Internet for all to see. When Dr. Reeves examined the highly detailed scans, he saw what everyone else had missed—the outline of two doorways in clear, straight lines beneath layers of plaster and paint. His analysis of the data prompted further scans to determine if there was any truth behind his theory.

Dr.  Hirokatsu Watanabe, a well-known Japanese radar expert, was brought in to run fresh scans of the north and west walls of the tomb. Immediately following the scans, Watanabe was “90% positive” of the presence of a hidden room behind the north wall. Six months later, the full analysis is complete and Watanabe reported finding empty space on the other side of both walls, with metal and organic material behind the north wall, and organic material behind the west wall. Organic material in this case could be anything from wooden items to human remains.

The quality of the plaster in those two areas is also different from the tomb walls themselves. It is composed of a softer, grittier material than the tomb walls proper. More specifically, this type of gritty plaster exactly matches the material sealing another door opened by Howard Carter in his initial excavation. Carter kept some of the material so Reeves was able to do a direct comparison.

Reeves has a theory about the reported organic materials. It is his opinion that the remains of Queen Nefertiti, stepmother to King Tut, are buried in the chamber behind the north wall. If so, KV62, the most important archeological find of the 20th century, may prove to also be the most important archeological find of the 21st century.

Howard Carter was an amazingly thorough archeologist and painstakingly took a decade to document and excavate King Tut’s tomb, a dedication that was considered unusual for the times. But imagine such an excavation with modern archeological and scientific tools at the researchers’ disposal. They would be able to do field testing radically unlike anything Carter could achieve and in-lab testing well beyond that. Not to mention that current conservation skills far outstrip any of a century ago, ensuring the safety of any objects inside the tomb, sealed away for the past 3,339 years.

So what are the next steps? National Geographic has been invited to send in a team of specialists to confirm the previous radar data as well as to determine the thickness of the walls. Once that is determined, Dr. Reeves would like to use a tiny fiber optic camera to breach the wall with as little damage as possible to visualize any open space beyond without defacing the beautiful painted murals that cover both the north and west walls. He would also like to talk to Japanese conservators with experience in removing wall paintings intact in case they have to fully breach the wall to excavate behind it.

It’s a very exciting prospect, but one that will take time and care to achieve. So patience will be the watchword as the Egyptian government carefully oversees the entire process. But they will not be the only ones to pay attention. To say the whole world will be watching is surely not an overstatement.

Photo credit: By Philip Pikart - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0

The Bugs Are Going To Win… Or not?

First of all, our apologies for being AWOL for the last several weeks. We were on deadline on the developmental edit of LONE WOLF and barely had time to sleep, let alone come up with a well-researched article for the blog. But the manuscript is done now, and handed in, and we’re back in business!

A T4 bacteriophage poised to infect a bacterium.

I have a saying that I seem to repeat often: “The bugs are going to win.” This refers to the oncoming crisis humankind is likely to have against microbes (or ‘bugs’ as we generically refer to bacteria in the lab). In a day and age when factory-farmed animals are given antibiotics prophylactically and too many medical professionals still consider knee-jerk prescription writing for antibiotics an acceptable act, news stories repeatedly warn of the number of strains of bacteria resistant to all antibiotics. Another continual theme are reports of now-resistant bacteria that used to be susceptible to a shrinking number of heavy hitting antibiotics used in only the most severe hospital cases.

In many ways, the thought of these tiny organisms taking out human kind is hard to wrap your brain around. We’re the top of the food chain; we have technology and science on our side. How can they top that? Part of the answer is very simple—replication rate. Your average bacteria divides into two identical daughter cells approximately every 20 minutes. It takes humans approximately 20 years for that same replication. This rate of bacterial replication leads to a very large number of progeny—in one day, a single bacterium can produce 4.7 x 10^21 bacteria. Even if the mutation rate is only 1 in 10^10 DNA base pairs, depending on the genome size of the bacteria, hundreds of mutations can occur in a span of less than 10 hours. Some of these mutations could lead to an inactive bacterium, but one of them might lead to a new gene conferring resistance to one of our last ditch antibiotics.

What happens when we can no longer control bacteria with a pill or injection and we enter the post-antibiotic age? It will be like going back to the early 20th century, before the advent of penicillin. Pneumonia would be a fatal infection. Bacterial epidemics similar to the Black plague that killed 30 million people—a full third of Europe at the time—could once again be a scenario faced by the world. Those who are very young and very old will be at risk due to compromised or immature immune systems. It’s a very scary concept.

So how can we beat the bugs?

• Develop new chemical therapies or multi-therapies: Scientists at Merck Research Laboratories in New Jersey recently announced two separate compounds, tarocin A and tarocin B, that makes Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureaus (MRSA; a bacteria well known for its resistance) susceptible to antibiotics again. Tarocins A and B target the bacterial cell wall, and, when used with standard antibiotics, kill the bacteria effectively in mice. Human trials will be the next test.
• Find new natural anti-bacterial compounds: Dr. Gerry Wright at McMaster University has been sending students around North America to sample soil in different areas. Compounds from those soils are then tested against bacteria. If the bacteria are killed, the samples are then further tested to determine the successful compound. So far the team has made two notable discoveries:
  •  AMA, a molecule produced by a fungus in Nova Scotia soil that is able to knock out one of the strongest and most worrisome antibiotic resistance genes, NDM-1. NDM-1 is such a concern that the World Health Organization identifies it as a global health threat. When AMA is used, regular antibiotics once again become effective.
  • Teixobactin is an antimicrobial molecule produced by one bacteria to kill others and was discovered in the soil from a field in Maine. The compound has been shown to be effective in killing multiple antibiotic resistant strains of bacteria.
• Revisit OLD remedies: A one thousand year-old Anglo Saxon recipe to treat eye infections using onion, garlic, wine and cow bile has been found by modern scientists to kill MRSA. Rather than being any individual ingredient that was effective, it was the combined recipe that killed 90% of the MRSA in the sample.
• Use their own natural enemies against them: We’re all familiar with the concept of viruses. Bacteriophage are viruses that attack bacteria (see the above photo), acting as all viruses do—they inject their contents into the bacterium and highjack it’s replication machinery to produce hundreds or thousands of copies of itself, eventually bursting the bacterium, killing it. Scientists in Russia and parts of Europe have used bacteriophage for nearly a century as antibacterials. The Western world is now looking at phage therapy as a potential replacement for antibiotics.

In the end, the question remains can we beat the bugs, and that remains to be seen. In the meantime, be conscientious citizens of the world. Do not demand antibiotics for your kids because they have ear infections, of which a full 70% can be caused by viruses; wait and let the infection run its course and it will likely clear up just as fast without antibiotic usage. Don’t run to the doctor every time you have a cold until you hit the 7 to 10 day range and a secondary infection may have set in. We should only use antibiotics when they are truly necessary. And maybe, just maybe, the bugs won’t win after all.

Photo credit: Xvivo Scientific Animation