6500 year old skeleton from Ur discovered in basement at Penn Museum

International Business Times
6500 Year Old 'Noah' Skeleton Discovered
By Sarah Thomas
August 11, 2014

The boxed remains of a 6500 year old human skeleton were accidently found in the basement of the well known Penn Museum in Philadelphia. It was left unattended for 85 years in the basement. A project, Ur of the Chaldees: A Virtual Vision of Woolley's Excavations was undertaken to digitaliSe the museum when this astounding discovery came to light.

The box did not carry any identification number or catalog card. The digitalisation project showed information about the skeleton and its history along with the nickname 'Noah'.

The human skeleton was originally found during 1929-1930 at an excavation site of Ur which is the modern day Iraq. According to museum records a team of archaeologists led by Sir Leonard Woolley from the Penn and British museums had unearthed the skeleton.

The Mesopotamian 'Royal Cemetery' that has over hundred graves and tombs with cultural artifacts is Woolley's famous excavation. But the team also unearthed graves about 2000 years older than the Ur's royal burial ground in a flood plain that is 50 feet below the surface of the Ur site. These graves were 48 in number dating back to the Ubaid period around 5500 B.C to 4000 B.C. Even during 1929 it was rare to find such remains dating back to this period, only a single skeleton was recovered from the site. Woolley coated the bones and the soil in wax, boxed and shipped it to London and later to Philadelphia....

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