Archaeologists have unearthed the skeletal remains of 200 people underneath a supermarket in Paris on the site of an old hospital where victims of the Black Plague had been known to be buried. It was thought, however, that the remains had been moved.
The Telegraph newspaper reports archaeologists were hired to assess the site before rebuilding was done at a Monoprix supermarket. They had expected to find some bodies but were surprised to find so many. The bodies, men and women and children mixed in together, were laid head to toe, alternating, apparently to save space. The bodies are in the earth underneath the store’s basement.
The scientists will test DNA to determine how the people died. Current speculation is they died in a plague, possibly the Black Death that swept Europe from the 14th to 16th centuries, or possibly in a famine. The scientists will also do carbon dating to see how old the bodies are.
It’s estimated half of Paris’ population of 100,000 died in the Black Plague of the 14th century.
“In Paris, where the plague lasted through 1349, the reported death rate was 800 a day, in Pisa 500, in Vienna 500 to 600. The total dead in Paris numbered 50,000 or half the population,” says the book A Distant Mirror by Barbara Tuchman.
