Amyntoros wrote:
Forgive me for butting in, but it appears from the above that there isn't any evidence to absolutely rule out the ankylosis being caused by a wound. Or is there, and I've missed it?
Forum posts are an imperfect communications medium at the best of times, and I think you may have misread or misinterpreted what I wrote...” In the Vergina tomb 1 case, it is not possible to ascertain the cause, as I pointed out in my post of Aug 9, as there is no evidence of trauma or injury ( or disease ), hence the cause in this incidence cannot be determined.” I am suggesting the cause of the ankylosis cannot be determined with any certainty.....I did not rule out trauma.
I don't find Bartsiokas' attributing the injury to a wound to necessarily be 'wishful thinking' given that the ancients were constantly at war during the time(s) of the tombs' inhabitants. As you have pointed out, there is no evidence of disease, so those viewing/examining the remains choose the most likely cause (in their opinions) and then follow this with their reasoning. May I suggest that a weapon may have struck the individual right in the knee joint where the trauma would not be apparent after the build up due to the ankylosis. A little far-fetched? Absolutely. But once in a while hoof beats do indicate a zebra.
What I am saying is : “Bartsiokas is going beyond the evidence and into the realm of wishful thinking to definitely attribute the injury to a ‘wound’ ”. It is Bartsiokis’ conviction that the cause can ONLY be a wound. He states that the ‘hole’ (present in all ankylosis examples I can find – admittedly not a large number) – must be a wound, because he wishes/wants it to be so. This is because his methodology, as in previous cases by him, is flawed. He is quoted in several publications as saying : “"When I found the femur fused to the tibia at the knee joint, I suddenly remembered the leg injury of Philip, but I could not recall any details," Dr. Antonis Bartsiokas, the study's lead author and an associate professor at the Democritus University of Thrace, told Live Science. "I then ran to study the historical evidence ... I knew the bone must belong to Philip!"
And this conviction has been formed prior to any examination of the bones !!!! That is putting the cart very much before the horse, and hardly scientific, to arrive at a conviction before actually examining the evidence! Note also that there is a similar hole in the female’s leg bones ( see below). Was she too ‘wounded’ ? To decide that the hole in the man’s ankylosed leg must be from a wound, and that it MUST therefore be Philip II ( despite the fact that this postulation runs contrary to the literary and other evidence) is indeed ‘wishful thinking’.
I would recommend readers wishing to grasp the whole question of the identity of the occupants to read Miltiades Hatzopoulos paper summarising the controversy and the evidence of both camps over 30 years ; “The burial of the dead (at Vergina) or the unending controversy over the identity of the occupants of Tomb II” ( which obviously does not take into account Antikas et al’s recent lengthy study of the Tomb II bones concluding that the Tomb II remains are most likely to be those of Philip II or Bartsiokis’ paper regrding the Tomb I bones, and also Jolene McLeod’s thesis “UNIVERSITY OF CALGARY Understanding the Bones:The Human Skeletal Remains from Tombs I, II and III at Vergina” both available online. For those not wishing to study these papers, here is a short epitome of some of McLeod’s conclusions.
“Although features such as the Abduction of Persephone fresco in Tomb I seem to
indicate female burial, the existence of both the infant remains and the male skeleton have
forced some academics to construct creative hypotheses that make the evidence fit with a preconceived narrative, such as the infamous ‘tomb-robber’.”.........”
Rather than deriving a conclusion from the available facts
(the grave goods and the cremated bones) then determining a possible identity, opinions seem
to have developed the other way around. As a result, some scholars have constructed circular
arguments.”........
”The existence or absence of antemortem injuries on ancient skeletal remains should not be used as definitive proof for identity. Without knowing exactly what happened to a particular person while he or she was alive, it is impossible to corroborate proposed injury sites with the historical record, which is likely incomplete. Additionally, the physical effect on development and morphology that any supposed injuries might have had on the person must be understood.”......
“The evidence provided by the human remains from Tombs I, II, and III is far from certain and cannot be used as the basis for establishing the identity of the occupants of the tombs except in the most speculative way. Much more hazardous is the use of these
speculative identifications for further interpretation of the individual tombs or chambers or, even more, for establishing the identities of the individuals in adjacent tombs, and by this
extension, the entire Vergina site. Methodologically, much of what has been done is either a case of putting the cart before the horse or creating circular arguments. Furthermore, forced linkages between speculative identifications and the evidence of other tombs leads to a house of cards......”
“For the three Vergina tombs, although the ancient bones found within must be left unidentified, the impetus to determine the true identity of the six individuals from the Great Tumulus will continue........”
Both Hatzopoulos and McLeod point out that osteological evidence ( the bones) cannot alone positively identify the occupants, and in Tomb1 all there is, is incomplete disarticulated skeletons, a few bones only, and Bartsiokis did not even have access to all of these. As they also point out out, there has been far too much emphasis on the osteological evidence and its interpretation, which can never conclusively identify a person. If a student such as McLeod knows this, shouldn’t Bartsiokas?
In his book “Forensic Cremation Recovery and Analysis” Scott I. Fairgrieve at p181 also briefly considers historical examples, namely Philip II and Hitler and arrives at the same conclusion – that osteological analysis alone cannot provide positive identification.
Since, contra Bartsiokis, osteological evidence can never provide conclusive identification we can only have regard to circumstantial evidence ( i.e. indirect evidence) and as Hatzopoulos concludes, this is consistent with, and points very strongly if not conclusively to the male occupant of Tomb II being Philip II.
Obviously I'm not convinced the cause of the ankylosis is a wound - just suggesting how it might be so. I've never been as concerned about the cause of the ankylosis as I am of the lack of discussion (not necessarily on Pothos) of how the man got into the tomb with that damaged leg if he didn't belong there in the first place.
See below for a perspective drawing of the tomb as found. The robbers failed to get in by the tunnel visible, and ultimately broke in by removing roof slabs. The tomb was left open and gradually 'silted up'.
I would make several suggestions as to how he might possibly have got there:
1. He might be an original occupant as might the woman.( they are close to the bottom of the ‘silt’ which gradually accumulated over time, and was over a metre deep).
2. The ‘tomb robber’ hypothesis may be correct. Our skeleton, like the other robbers, was lowered in by rope. As the robbers were finishing ( and they did a thorough job of looting the contents), they might have been disturbed and fled, abandoning their comrade in the tomb, since he obviously couldn’t flee. He was perhaps left to his fate by the guards ( or whoever chased off the robbers). Later still his skeleton was disturbed by other ‘treasure hunters’ looking for valuable items, who might have removed his prosthesis, assuming he had one. ( The ‘silt’ shows the tomb was left open for a considerable time )
3. The skeletons could all have been ‘dumped’ into the open tomb over time after the robbery, re-using it, which is what the presence of five infants suggests.
According to Antikas: “Surprisingly, it emerged that Tomb I contained the remains of at least seven individuals: an adult male, a female, a child, four babies aged 8-10 lunar months and one fetus of 6.5 lunar months.This find automatically disproves every previous hypothesis of historians and archaeologists alike that Tomb I was intended for Philip II and his last wife," Antikas said. ( As others noted, Bartsiokis only had access to some of the bones, spread out as they were between several institutions.) In his conviction that the female is Kleopatra, and one foetus Europa, Bartsiokas ignores this ‘inconvenient truth’. Which of these is Europa, and who are the others, who obviously could not have had the same mother?
There are obviously other possibilities, but that’s enough to be getting on with !