A skeleton was found in the Penn Museum basement in Philadephia,USA , which has been reported to been there for 85 years (since 1929-30) with no document to identify it. It was actually excavated in Ur, an ancient city close to the modern-day Nasiriya, Southern Iraq by a group of researchers from Penn Museum/British Museum led by the British archaeologist, Sir Leonard Woolley, where the body with other 48 were buried about 60 feet under the ground in a layer of fine silt deposited by great flood, dated to the Ubaid period. This depicted a culture feature by a large village settlements that started on the alluvial plains of the south Mesopotamia around 5500 -4000B.C. After Woolley discovered the cemetery, concluded to be royal, Woolley decided to dig the ground and on getting to about 40 feet, he reached a layer of clean, water-lain silt. As he went on digging, he met with the graves cut into the silt and later another silt which is above 10 feet deep and made Woolly conclude that the ancient Ur was originally a small island surrounded by marsh,but a great flood later wash the land away.
Woolley poured wax on this skeleton, transferred it to London and the to the US where its identity was misplaced with other 150,000 bone specimens in the museum. Guess this happened due to obsolete technology compared to modern day. This skeleton was actually recovered when the Ur Digitization Project Manager at Penn,Dr. William Hafford,got a document about the skeleton during his work, "Ur of the Chaldees: A Virtual Vision Of Woolley's Excavation," a project that digitized Woolley's excavation record.
The skeleton was now named "NOAH" after it has been rediscovered due to the fact that it has existed far earlier than the Bible. He has some unique features such as his height (5"9), and age above 50 years for his ancient period. He was also buried in silt which suggests he was able to live after a major flood.
Archaeologist revealed that complete skeletons from Ubaid period are very scarce and the re-discovered skeleton will definitely open up for new research possibilities , getting new information like its ancestral origin,diet, stress,trauma and disease that may have been suffered by this unique creature. And if possible to extract his DNA sample, they will check if Noah is related to the tribes of Marsh Arabs who live in the area today.
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