Found: multiple people combined into single mummies

A decade ago, archaeologists found two 3,000 year-old mummies buried on Scotland's South Uist island. The mummies had been preserved by immersion in a peat bog but not actually buried for another several hundred years. Turns out though that the skeletons aren't actually a single man and woman but rather bones from six people that someone painstakingly attached together. A mismatched jaw was one clue and DNA tests confirmed scientists' suspicions. From National Geographic:

A cynical theory, study author (and University of Manchester biomedical archaeologist Terry) Brown said, assumes that the Bronze Age people of Cladh Hallan were just eminently practical: "Maybe the head dropped off and they got another head to stick on."

Another possibility is that the merging was deliberate, to create a symbolic ancestor that literally embodied traits from multiple lineages.

"Frankenstein" Bog Mummies Discovered in Scotland"

• [Mitchell Glaser]

  FRANKENMUMMIES!

  Clustergolems? All I’m certain of is that this conglomeration was at some point reanimated and wreaked horrific revenge on someone’s enemies. At least in someone’s next novel…

  • [Ian Wood]

     ”Clustergolem” is fantastic. I shall steal it.

• [fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

  Wow, I had no idea that Bondo(tm) was such an ancient material…

• [blueelm]

  It must be so frustrating with no written record. 

• [Lesley Graham]

  It’s South Uist, not South Ulist.

  • [David Pescovitz]

    thanks

• [Frank Diekman]

  Paleolithic Human Centipede!

• [Wreckrob8]

  This is a good idea for joint funerals now burial plots are so expensive. Body parts from different individuals could be chosen by lot. And you get to save on catering, too…

• [Mr. Protocol]

  Just possibly it was a political thing, like those two dudes who were sent to Egypt to recover the bones of St. clement, I think it was, who was martyred and his body thrown into the sea. Miraculously they succeeded. Or at least, they came back with somebody’s bones. So… “Behold! The gods are with us! We have recovered the bodies of the great chief and his queen, lost in the bog these many centuries ago! Aren’t we the schiz? Buy us a pint, anyone?”

• [Wreckrob8]

  I really only imagined that this happened at places like weddings in Afghanistan or Mafia controlled villages in Sicily. You live and learn, eh?

• [Chris]

  This reminds me of the first couple seasons of Bones, where the serial killer was making a skeleton bone by bone from all the people he had murdered

• [futnuh]

  Maybe they’re just fucking with us. The Bronze Age people, I mean. It’s not like they had a lot of outlets for entertainment.

  • [JohnQPublic]

    we got them back by making them 3rd best in every Olympics

• [Jorpho]

  Gotta love practicality when it comes to ritual burial.  Reminds me of how (apparently) mummification became so fashionable towards the end of Egyptian civilization that apparently those responsible for the process started getting sloppy, taking shortcuts, and making mistakes.   After all, aren’t dead customers unlikely to complain?

• [BongBong]

  How does this all fit into the “Prometheus” timeline?

  • [malindrome]

    “I’m an Archeologist!  I f**king love mummies!”

• [blueelm]

  I wonder if at some point several bodies were found accidentally, and being much decomposed the people who found them put them back together as if they were one?

• [Listener43]

  We’re all missing the assumption being made here that the joining of parts took place after death.
  Unless we have clear evidence that it was simply a skeletal Tinkertoy project, there’s no reason to exclude the likelihood that this is evidence of early transplant activity.

  Please, friends, examine your premises.

• [Petzl]

  I can already hear creationists screaming “Piltdown Man!”

• [wilmcdaniel]

  They probably had their share of Dahmers back then too.

• [Pag]

  They finally found the skeleton of Frankenstein’s monster!

• [Ian Wood]

  Aonghas was honored when he was chosen to become part of the next season’s Great Ancestor. His pride was somewhat tempered when he learned that he would not be contributing an arm, as his father had before him, but rather his head, like his grand-uncle Dubhthach. No one in the family had ever spoken particularly well of Dubhthach.

• [johnnylloydrollins]

  This was obviously an ancient plot to birth Serpentor.  

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=safFetFn7Tk&feature=relmfu

  Watch this now… THIS….. I COMMAND!!!

• [JenniferS]

  Or maybe this was the work of some ancient serial killer sicko type

  • [Antinous / Moderator]

    Like the Human Centipede?