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Archiver > GEN-MEDIEVAL > 2000-02 > 0951268778


From: k1w1k <>
Subject: Re: Richard III and A. Weir
Date: Tue, 22 Feb 00 20:19:38 -0500


John Clare wrote:

>I can't remember where exactly I saw this, but, the bodies in the Tower were
>thought to be skeletons which would fit in with their death at the age of
>about 11. At that age, skeletons can be aged fairly accurately. Carbon
>dating is consistant with a date around 1485 (plus or minus quite a lot, but
>they were not Elizabethan for instance).

I'm startled by the statement that the 'princes'' bones have been
carbon-dated. The last I'd heard -- about a decade ago -- the British
government and/or crown had refused to give permission for such a
procedure to be performed ... the ostensible reason being, I gathered,
that it would require destruction of too great a proportion of the said
osseous relics to achieve reliable results. Quite recent books on the
subject of Richard III's 'guilt or innocence' make no mention -- unless
I'm getting senile, which isn't impossible -- of carbon-dating having
been allowed. Is this something VERY recent indeed? Can anyone else
here who's kept up to date on the subject say yea or nay? If it's really
happened, I'd sure like to add the writeup to my file ...

BTW, although it's easier to 'age' the skeleton of a child than that of a
much older person, physiological variation, even in childhood and the
teen years, is so great that pinning down the age of a skeleton any more
tightly than "within two or three years" on either side of a 'best
estimate' is impossible. Among the factors leading to this gross
variation are: dietary idiosyncracies, especially in a culture innocent
of Vitamin D; natural variations in onset of puberty, which, in boys,
spreads broadly from about 11 to about 17 without anyone thinking either
extreme especially so, and which is itself somewhat subject to dietary
influences; and heredity, which has a lot to do with final height -- one
thing that might be borne in mind when assessing the bones in question is
that Edward IV and many of his kin were remarkably tall for their time.
(For our own, even, for that matter. I seem to recall that Lionel was
something like six-seven or six-nine.) I might also mention individual
oddities of hormonal milieu -- even marginally low levels of thyroid
function can result in epiphyseal closure at an unusually late age ...
and unusual final height is, as a matter of fact, often associated with
sub-clinical hypothyroidism.

--Sadal Suud

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