Archaeologists Found 108-Year-Old Remains of WWI Soldiers. Their Bones Were Mysteriously Red.
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Here’s what you’ll learn when you read this story:
- A mysterious red pigment was found on the bones of 12 soldiers who were hastily buried in 1918.
- The grave was made in a five-foot-deep crater left by a wartime explosion, and the bodies were covered with only a thin layer of soil.
- The research team studied the soil and surrounding site to determine what caused the red stains.
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Perched roughly 7,000 feet high at Cima Cady in the Italian Alps, 12 Austro-Hungarian soldiers were buried in a mass grave during World War I. Now, only their bones remain—and over 80% of them are marked with a peculiar reddish stain. And now scientists know why.
In a study published in Scientific Reports, a team of researchers from the universities of Milan and Padua used taphonomic analysis to study the environmental factors surrounding the remains ever since their burial during an advance on Italian troops in June 1918 called Operation Avalanche.
Pairing the scientific data with a wartime diary’s descriptions of events, the researchers opened fresh insights into the hastily developed grave and uncovered the root of the reddish coloration: juniper roots.
“This multidisciplinary approach offers valuable insights into the unusual taphonomic patterns characteristic of Alpine settings,” the authors wrote, “with applications across a range of forensic and archaeological scenarios.”
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The skeletal remains of the 12 soldiers, aged 18 to 35, were poorly preserved in the shallow grave—which was really a crater caused by an explosion with a thin layer of soil sprinkled over the bodies—likely due to acidic soil conditions. The researchers determined that the reddish-purple stains were produced by pigments called phlobaphenes in the roots of nearby juniper plants. The juniper plants had penetrated the grave and intertwined with the remains, passing along the coloration, sometimes even penetrating to the inner layers of the bones.
“The red-colored juniper roots creating tight layers were often adjacent to the areas of pink/purple staining on the skeletal material,” the authors wrote, “[and] were observed invading the foramina and stained medullary cavities, the link between the two occurrences was strongly supported. Considering the acidic nature of the soil at the site, the pigments were likely released from the juniper roots and, with the flow of water produced by the rain and ice/snow melting in the higher attitude zone of Cima Cady, the pigments traveled through the soil and accumulated on the skeletal remains.”
These large, wine-colored roots weren’t the only dramatic details the researchers discovered about the grave in the alpine meadow. A wartime diary account of the burial indicated that it was a hasty endeavor. Scientists confirmed this portrait with evidence from the site of cold-weather blowflies and high-altitude ground beetles. The particular blowfly discovered in the grave only lays eggs on exposed remains, showing that at some point the bones were left out in the open, or the thin layer of soil had been blown or brushed away.
The most well-preserved remains were those still encased in leather boots, although the researchers determined that the leather oddly eroded the bones it touched as well, further supporting the authors’ position that the environment doesn’t passively hold remains, but actively reshapes them.
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Further investigation into the bones showed that three soldiers endured high-velocity projectile trauma and two had blast or projectile trauma. Along with the written account of a quick burial, the authors concluded that the mix of botanical, entomological, and taphonomic evidence provides a thorough reconstruction of the history of the 1918 event.
“These unusual findings offer valuable insights into the sequence of events leading to the victims’ burial,” the authors wrote. “This study offers important insights into how the complex interplay of taphonomic elements can enable a more accurate reconstruction of events associated with a mass grave, specifically, confirming a wartime episode that occurred a century ago.”
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