According to a recent study, according to the journal Live Science, a Byzantine warrior who was beheaded when the Ottomans conquered his fort in the 14th century had a jaw interwoven with gold.
The warrior's lower jaw had previously been severely broken, but a skilled doctor had tied it back together with a wire that was probably made of gold until it healed, according to the study, which was directed by Anagnostis Agelarakis, an anthropology professor in the Department of History at Adelphi University in New York.
The surgeon who performed the jaw surgery appears to have followed the guidelines from the fifth century B.C., according to the article. Hippocrates, a Greek physician, wrote a book on jaw injuries about 1,800 years before the warrior sustained his wounds.
Study author Anagnostis Agelarakis stated, "The jaw was shattered into two pieces."
The nearly 650-year-old mended jaw is an amazing discovery because it reveals the precision with which "the medical professional was able to put the two major fragments of the jaw together."
The medical professional appears to have followed the advice laid out by the fifth-century B.C. The Greek physician Hippocrates, who wrote a treatise covering jaw injuries about 1,800 years before the warrior was wounded. Photo: Anagnostis P. Agelarakis
In Polystylon fort, an ancient site in Western Thrace, Greece, Agelarakis and his associates discovered the warrior's skull and lower jaw in 1991. In the 14th century, when the fighter was alive, the Ottomans were waging war against the Byzantine Empire, also known as the Eastern Roman Empire. The warrior probably fought until the Ottomans overcame the fort at Polystylon, as evidenced by the fact that he was beheaded.
The Ottomans probably captured and beheaded the warrior as the fort collapsed; subsequently, an unidentified person stole the warrior's head and buried it, perhaps without "consent of the subjugators, given that the remainder of the body was not recovered," Agelarakis wrote in the report. At the Polystylon fort, a 5-year-old child was buried in the middle of a 20-plot cemetery, and the warrior's head was placed in his pre-existing tomb there. Agelarakis found a broken ceramic cup near the warrior's burial, maybe used to help excavate the space for his head.
