Philip's Remains Confirmed. Others in tombs are not!

[amyntoros]

I'm surprised no one else has posted this.

Remains of Alexander the Great's Father Confirmed:

[Xenophon]

Perhaps because this report is the second to reach these conclusions regarding Philip II, and the information is not at all new. The team that originally examined the bones revisited the issue after the suggestion that the occupant might have been Philip Arrhidaeus emerged.

Musgrave, Prag, Neave et al conclusively demonstrated what is referred to in that news report regarding Philip back in 2010 [ Int. J. Med. Sci. 2010 no. 7]. The identity of Tomb II's occupant has never been in doubt since.

The information about the 'forgotten' bones from Tomb I and the female from Tomb II etc is interesting, though.

[Zebedee]

Seems like Angeliki Kottaridi and her team are really cooking on gas at the moment. Keep hoping more information about the Temenid cluster slips out!

I find Dr.Killgrove's blog interesting in itself, but she makes some interesting points about these results here.

[amyntoros]

I find Dr.Killgrove's blog interesting in itself, but she makes some interesting points about these results here.

I agree with the above - definitely an interesting blog - but in this case I was also drawn to the response of a reader. Well, "drawn to" is probably not the right expression. "Surprised by" might be more appropriate, however I shouldn't be surprised as people are free to post what they like on blogs and twitter, etc., without lunch room monitors descending on them and telling them to play nice! In this instance the commenter obviously has strong feelings that the remains do NOT belong to Philip so she had a go at the head of the research team:

To add to the absurdity of this debate--the latest analysis was done by a veterinarian who reportedly specializes in horses.

The CV of Professor Theodore G.Antikas can be found here and although it doesn't say what he's been doing since 2008 it is still obvious that the Professor is much more than a veterinarian, which is why I cross posted here. There seems to be a general nastiness amongst professionals concerned with Greek archaeology which is a shame and a distraction also. I don't know about anyone else, but when a posting (anywhere) gets personal I tend not to pay as much attention to the rest of the details as I would otherwise.

Best regards,

[Zebedee]

I'm waiting on some of the academics in entrenched positions to pop their heads above the parapet again to lob a few grenades.

Even though Killgrove highlights that certainty is far from being achieved, her point holds true that there's a convergence of circumstantial evidence to the identification of this skeleton as Philip II. There's always a danger that evidence gets fitted to an already fixed belief, and academia is no less prone to it than anywhere else, so knowing the limits of what can be said for sure is frequently useful to me. As Killgrove mentions, in her polite reply to the comment, sometimes knowing the precise question asked can shed a lot more light on the answer obtained.