Edible Mummies and Headless Gladiators

"You want a piece of me?"

Yummy! A scientist named Richard Sugg says people ate mummies for a long time. More exactly, these people took mummies for medicine!

From the 1100s through the 1700s, doctors often had their patients eat ground-up mummy powder. Why would medical experts think it was smart to eat dried dead people? Look, mummies are so mysterious, it just seemed like eating them HAD to be healthy! Plus, maybe they thought that mummies were SO old, eating them wasn’t cannibalism.

In other news, archaeologists in England uncovered an ancient cemetery full of headless Romans! The skeletons date back to about 1,700 years ago, when the Roman Empire was still colossal. But while it’s too bad many had their heads cut off, at least some were buried WITH their detached noggins!

What’s interesting is that the skeletons have battle scars. And they came from mainland Europe, NOT England. So the theory was that these the headless Romans were soldiers.

But other evidence showed the dead men had one arm that was stronger than the other. Okay, so they probably swung a sword or axe with that one! Ah, but one body had tooth marks from a lion or bear, which suggests a gladiator.

Ancient beheaded gladiators? That’s pretty cool!

Top photo from National Geographic,

article from the Guardian.

bottom photos and article 

from York Archaeology (via).