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First scientific study of the Paris catacombs
Researchers hope to uncover how people died and how diseases have developed over 1,000 years
In the first ever scientific study of the site, a team of archeologists, anthropologists, biologists and doctors is examining some of the skeletons of an estimated 5-6 million people whose bones were literally dumped down quarry shafts at the end of the 18th century and beginning of the 19th. In 1810, the inspector general of quarries, nobleman Louis-Étienne Héricard de Thury, decided some respect should be shown for the dead and arranged skulls and long bones - femur, tibia, humerus - into decorative walls, known as hagues. Charlier says maladies that leave a trace on human bones, including rickets, syphilis and leprosy, are easier to identify, but DNA extraction from teeth allows them to pinpoint infectious agents such as the plague that kill too rapidly to make a mark.
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