whitehall
Diamond Member
I watched a fascinating Smithsonian documentary account of the discovery and recovery and identification of the body of King Richard III in 2012. It was perhaps the strangest archeological dig in history with a civilian, a British actor and a backhoe in a parking lot in a little village in England. Richard III was the notorious "hunchback king" depicted by Shakespeare and there was a hundred year old heated argument about whether King Richard's condition was exaggerated. A couple of civilians researched the possible location of Richard's body which was unknown and they narrowed it down to a parking lot in a small village and dug up the blacktop. The first trench ironically dug under the letter "R" in the parking lot revealed a skeleton. Making a long story short the skeleton exhibited a marked curvature of the spine and subsequent DNA analysis checked against the only living descendent of Richard III turned out to be a match and carbon dating was spot on to the time of Richard's death.