Some works on the Vía Laietana in Barcelona have made it possible to find a well-preserved skeleton of a man who died in the 5th century. Antoni Maura more medieval and also Roman remains have been discovered.
The adult corpse from Roman times is in a very good state of preservation, although the lower part of the legs and a fragment of the right arm are missing, as reported by Betevé.
After exhumation, the bones will be transferred to a laboratory for further analysis. Archaeologists from the Municipal Archeology Service work to carefully unearth the skeletal remains.
The physical anthropologist Julia Benet supervises this meticulous work that has already allowed us to determine some characteristics of what this Roman from Barcelona was like: “The bones are thick and long; therefore, he is a robust individual. We also know that he is an adult because the bones have finished fusing and he has his permanent teeth."
Experts believe that he was between the ages of 35 and 60 when he died. Once the exhumation of the corpse is complete, it will be transferred to a laboratory to analyze the bones in depth and determine the cause of death.
Although it dates from the fifth century after Christ, when Christianity had already become the official religion of the Roman Empire, the remains have been found with a fragment of a coin near the mouth.
It is a donation for the boatman Charon, to pay for the trip to the afterlife, as marked by the Greek and Roman pagan tradition. The body has been found very close to ancient Barcino, outside the Roman walls.
At that time it was not possible to bury the dead in the city, and for this reason, it was usual to do it in the communication or access roads. In Ciutat Vella it is common to find human remains from that time. A necropolis with a hundred bodies has already been found in the Santa Caterina market.
What is extraordinary about Vía Laietana is that it is an area that has undergone many transformations, such as the opening of the street at the beginning of the 20th century or the construction of the metro, and archaeologists did not expect to find remains of this type.
