Rediscovering Noah's Skeleton in a Penn Basement

A Philadelphia archaeology museum has recently uncovered the skeleton of a 6,500-year-old man in its own basement. This rediscovered specimen is a rare example of a victim during an "epic" flood around 4500 BC, earning it the name "Noah."

This summer, while staff members of the University of Pennsylvania's Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology were digitizing their archival records, they stumbled upon something unusual. Penn researcher Brad Hafford found records describing remains of a skeleton preserved in wax, wrapped in burlap and stretched out on a board.

However, to his knowledge, the museum had never possessed such a sample.

Janet Monge, who oversees the physical anthropology section of the museum, knew better.

For as long as she had been a Keeper and Curator, an utterly unidentified skeleton - with no catalog card, no identifying number, and nothing to explain its former whereabouts - had sat in its wooden box surrounded by about 2,000 other complete human skeletons.

"I've been obsessed with him," Monge admitted to The Inquirer. "Somebody took great pains to take a very fragmentary skeleton and bring it here. Therefore, it must be important."

Sound reasoning, but after doing a bit of digging herself, Monge resigned to let her newfound friend eventually sort himself out. And bizarrely, that's exactly what happened.

When Hafford found records describing that exact skeleton, Monge was thrilled to show him what he'd been missing.

According to a museum release, the mystery skeleton was positively identified as remains first unearthed by Sir Leonard Wolley's joint Penn Museum/British Museum excavation team. Found at the site of Ur in what is now southern Iraq, the skeleton is about 2,000 years older than other famous Mesopotamian materials and remains.

This skeleton of a middle-aged man who was about 5-feet, 10-inches tall has been dated between 5500 and 4000 BCE - an extremely rare find from the ancient Ubaid period in the Near East. The fact that the Wolley team not only shipped the remains, but also the spoil they were discovered in, has allowed Monge and Hafford to "rediscover" this skeleton.

They believe that the deep silt layer the skeleton was found in was from an ancient and epic flood, the same flood that many archaeologists believe inspired the ancient Sumerian and then Biblical tale of Noah and the Great Flood.

Appropriately, the rediscovered skeleton was named "Noah" when it was finally and properly archived.