On May 19, 1845, two ships set sail from Kent, England. HMS crew and officers Erebos and H.M.S. terrorismwas to carry out the mission of mapping the Canadian Arctic Northwest Passage under the command of Sir John Franklin. That trip would not go well, to say the least.
Five crew members disembarked due to illness before reaching their destination. They would be lucky, as both ships would become trapped in the arctic ice. Some died before abandoning ship, but in the end 105 of them left the ship and set out to seek help by land. A total of 129 sailors lost their lives.
Inuit recollections of seeing the sailors and marks found on some of the bodies tell a horrifying story of how those who lived the longest were forced to eat the remains of the dead. Now, almost 180 years after the expedition began, the body of one of the unfortunate men who was subjected to post-mortem acts of cannibalism has been confirmed to be that of Captain James Fitzjames. Erebos.
Researchers discovered human bones and teeth on several trips to King William Island dating back to the mid-19th century. That’s where more than 100 survivors of the ill-fated voyage abandoned their stranded ship, fled, and ultimately died. At one site, 451 bones belonging to at least 13 sailors were discovered. Who these bones belonged to remained a mystery until anthropologists and DNA experts at the University of Waterloo and Lakehead University in Canada began analyzing them several years ago. they are published Some of their findings are published in the latest edition. Journal of Archaeological Science: Report. After examining 17 bone and tooth samples collected from one of the camps on King William Island, their DNA was compared to samples taken from living relatives of some of the doomed sailors. Ta.
“We worked with high-quality samples from which we could generate a Y-chromosome profile, and we were lucky enough to get a match,” said Stephen Fratopietro of Lakehead University’s PaleoDNA Laboratory. spoke.
Fitzjames was a senior member of the expedition. In fact, it was he who wrote the report declaring Franklin dead. His rank did not prevent his body from being used for survival purposes. There is a cut on his jawbone, indicating that some of the people still alive at least tried to eat him.
“This is due to the fact that he died before at least some other deceased sailors, and that in the final desperate days of the expedition as he strove to save himself, rank and status were the dominant principles.” “This shows that this was not the case,” said Adjunct Professor Douglas Stenton. In the anthropology of Waterloo, statement.
Fitzjames is only the second member of the expedition whose remains have been identified. In 2021, some of the same scientists used similar techniques to identify some teeth and bones as belonging to former Army Warrant Officer John Gregory. Erebos. scientist rediscovered of Erebos In 2014, terrorism Discovered in 2016.
Archaeologists aren’t done yet. They asked other distant families of sailors on the Franklin Expedition to contact them, in the hope that they too would generate matches that could confirm the identities of more remains. There is.
