Seventeen bodies found at the bottom of a mediaeval English well were likely Jews who were murdered in an anti-Semitic massacre more than 800 years ago, scientists have revealed.
September 4, 2022
Seventeen bodies found at the bottom of a mediaeval English well were likely Jews who were murdered in an anti-Semitic massacre more than 800 years ago, scientists have revealed.
The massacre took place in 1190 AD in the eastern city of Norwich, where just decades prior the seeds had been planted for an «anti-Semitic conspiracy theory that persists up to the present day,» they said in a new study.
The scientists used an array of techniques—including analysing the oldest known Jewish genomes—to unravel the mystery.
It began when construction workers were digging up land for a future shopping centre in Norwich in 2004. They stumbled upon the remains of at least 17 people—six adults and 11 children, including three sisters—in the old well.
The bodies were buried at strange angles, some head-first, suggesting the possibility of violent death.
Ian Barnes, a geneticist at London’s Natural History Museum, first started looking into the remains while working on the BBC documentary series «History Cold Case» in 2011.
«We first thought it more likely that they were the victims of some sort of plague, epidemic, famine, something like that,» Barnes, one of the authors of the study published in the journal Current Biology this week, told AFP.
