Among the victims, at least 11 children.
In 2004, excavations in Norwich, England, to build a shopping mall, found the remains of at least 17 medieval victims.
In 2004, 17 remains, mainly children, were found during a construction project in Norwich, England. According to a new study, the remains may have been the remains of medieval Jews who were slaughtered for their religion.
Genetic analysis of the remains suggests that the dead were All Ashkenazi Jews — descendants of Jews who established communities in Northern Europe in the early Middle Ages , mainly in what is now Germany and France. (After the 11th and 13th centuries, many Ashkenazi emigrates migrated from these regions to Eastern Europe.) Other studies have shown that Norwich's dead were killed in an anti-Semitic massacre in 1190 by crusaders who vowed to wage an anti-Muslim campaign in Jerusalem.
The study offers researchers a rare opportunity to analyze Jewish remains — religious laws generally prohibit the destruction of Jewish graves — and reveal that "genetic bottlenecks" for Ashkenazi Jews could have occurred centuries earlier than thought.
These findings ultimately provide a solution to who these people were and why they were murdered.
They were unearthed without knowing they were Jewish," Mark Thomas, a professor of human evolutionary genetics at University College London, said in an interview. "The only reason we firmly believe they are Jews is because we did genetic analysis."
The first bones were discovered in 2004 during excavations at a shopping mall in Norwich. The discovery sparked a comprehensive archaeological survey of the site, excavating a medieval well with mixed remains of at least 17 people.
For some time, the remains were preserved at the Norfolk Museum and Archaeological Service. But according to BBC News, according to historical accounts of anti-Semitic killings, there is growing suspicion that the victims may have been Jews, who were reburied in 2013 in a Jewish cemetery on the outskirts of Norwich.
Carolyn Wilkinson, an anthropologist and professor at Liverpool Johns Moore University, used the remains to reconstruct the faces of the two victims.
Many of the victims of the Holocaust were children. The child's face was reconstructed using digital technology through the analysis of the remains.
Christians slaughter Jews
The original radiocarbon dating suggests that the bones came from the 11th or 12th century.
Scientists initially thought the remains came from victims of an epidemic outbreak or mass famine, so the bodies were quickly disposed of.
But the latest research suggests that they all shared similar genetic ancestors to today's Ashkenazi Jews. Historical studies link their murder to the massacre of Jews by the Crusaders in Norwich in 1190, which was described by a recorder at the time, a priest named Ralph de DiSetto.
In his Historical Imagination, published around 1200, Di Setto wrote: "Many of those who hurried to Jerusalem were the first to resolve to rebel against the Jews before they invaded the Saracens (saracens were the medieval Christians' name for Muslims). Thus, on February 6 (1190 AD), all Jews found in Norwich's own home were massacred; Some hid in the castle. ”
Since 1137, medieval Norwich has been home to a thriving Jewish community, with many Jews living near wells where victims were found, BBC News reported; The latest research reports that history found that they were most likely descendants of Ashkenazi Jews from Rouen, Normandy, and that after 1066 william the conqueror invited them to settle in England, supposedly so that he could obtain their taxes using coins instead of the agricultural products normally distributed as taxes in his new kingdom.
Studies have shown that these people were killed in the Holocaust of the Jews in the Middle Ages, and their bodies were thrown into the well.
Researchers now believe that the 17 people found in the well were victims of the violence that took place in medieval Britain, when the Crusaders vowed to commit crimes against the Jews living there in the Holy Land, now Israel.
During the First Crusade, Christian armies conquered the city after defeating the Muslim rulers of Jerusalem in 1099; In the years that followed, Europe launched several more crusades against the Holy Land, the last of which ended in the 1290s.
According to the Encyclopædia Britannica, such anti-Semitic massacres were relatively common in medieval Britain and other parts of Europe; Among the victims of the Holocaust found in wells in Norwich in 1190 were at least 11 children, 3 of whom were sisters, one between the ages of 5 and 10, the other between the ages of 10 and 15, and a young adult. Barnes said the people found in the well appeared to have died before being thrown into the well because there was no indication that one of them was trying to stop themselves from falling.
Genetic bottlenecks
The researchers performed a complete genomic analysis of the DNA of 6 people found in the well.
There are no "genetic tests" to determine whether a person is Jewish or not, but a genomic analysis of these six people shows that they share the same genetic ancestors as many Ashkenazi Jews living today, suggesting that they are also Ashkenazi Jews.
The incidence of certain genetic diseases in modern Ashkenazi Jews is higher than normal, such as Tay-Sachs disease and some hereditary cancers; The genes of the four people in the Norwich well showed the same frequency of the disease, although only a very limited number of victims could draw such a conclusion.
The cause of these diseases is considered a "genetic bottleneck" and may have been caused by a population decline about 600 to 800 years ago. But the frequency with which they were in victims, he said, meant that the genetic bottleneck must have occurred much earlier, perhaps as early as the late Western Roman Empire in the fifth century.
These findings are important, not only because of the historical problems of these remains, but also because there is very little historical genetic data on the modern Jewish population and the particular genetic diseases it faces.