O Hai Richard III

[SimKey]

After all the time that has passed it seems small-minded to think of his bones in such a way. No one is going to war with the Windsors for the throne and Richard isn't going to challenge Elizabeth II from a vault in York.

Ridiculous. Bury the man properly. Royalty is royalty.

[ChuckF]

Originally Posted by SimKey

No one is going to war with the Windsors for the throne and Richard isn't going to challenge Elizabeth II from a vault in York.

True, true. But how awesome would it be if one or both of those things did happen?

An undead usurper leading an attack on Buckingham palace backed by an army of his own descendants would be enough to make me give a shit about the British royal family for the first time.

[Watser?]

[SimKey]

Originally Posted by Watser?

Love the smilies here. Love the smilies.

[Vivisectus]

It's here! It's here!

Scholars to Say Whether Bones Belong to Richard III - NYTimes.com

They will announce today if what the results of the tests are.

[livius drusus]

Livebloggin' it!

[Pan Narrans]

@Mr. X III

[Vivisectus]

Wow - so not only is it him, we now also know for sure he really was hunchbacked rather badly, and that this at least is not something invented later.

[livius drusus]

Actually scoliosis and hunchackery are two very different things. He would not have had a humped back or been bent over. One shoulder was markedly higher than the other, though.

Think 300. It's pretty much impossible for hunchbacks to wield broadswords on a battlefield. Richard was an accomplished soldier.

[ceptimus]

I'm interested in how the DNA results are interpreted.

I understand that the DNA from the skeleton matched the DNA of a family living in Canada whose family tree showed that they were descendants of Richard III. Fair enough.

But the people in Canada will have four grandparents, eight great-grandparents and so on. If we allow for a generation each 25 years then there are about 20 generations back to Richard III so people now living will each have about a million great-great-... grandparents from Richard III's time. How can the researchers be sure that the skeleton is Richard III and not one of the other million?

By the way, I understand that there is other evidence that supports the skeleton being Richard III - so it probably is him - but I don't understand why the DNA evidence is being touted as 'proof'.

[livius drusus]

It's mitochondrial DNA, so you can cross out all the males in the line. They also found a second maternal line and the mtDNA of the scion from that line matched exactly the mtDNA from the Ibsens. That means the Canadian folks, the anonymous other person and the skeleton all had a single female ancestor in common. There aren't millions of people left with that single strain of mtDNA.

In fact, had this skeleton been dug up a generation later, there wouldn't have been any people left as all of the modern descendants are the last of their lines. All you need for the line to die out is for a generation to be all male or for the females to have no surviving offspring. That's pretty easy.

[ceptimus]

Ah okay.

Each woman has only one mother but two grandmothers. So we have to go on 'grandmother generations' of about fifty years - a woman living today will only have about a thousand great-great... grandmothers from Richard III's time - and if there are two independent lines back, that's much better evidence.

ETA: No - that's wrong. We're only interested in the mother of each mother so the grandmother on the father's side is immaterial.

I suppose that one additionally needs to know that the mitochondrial DNA strands matched from the skeleton were rare around 1450: if lots of people from that time had the same DNA strands then the tests still wouldn't establish identity. Ultimately we all share a single common female ancestor - 'mitochondrial Eve' - so I suppose the researchers must have identified strands of mitochondrial DNA that were not common in the population at the time of Richard III.

[ceptimus]

I suppose the archaeologists who found the skeleton were just pursuing a hunch.

[The Lone Ranger]

I heard about this on NPR this morning; quite a fascinating story.


"Hunchback" and "scoliosis" are indeed different things. Both are abnormal spinal curvatures, but they'll have different effects.

A "true" hunchback is someone suffering from kyphosis, an abnormally exaggerated curvature in the thoracic portion of the vertebral column. It can be greatly debilitating, so someone suffering from severe kyphosis is indeed unlikely to be a successful warrior.

Scoliosis, by contrast, is a lateral curvature of the vertebral column. It will frequently result in one shoulder being higher than the other, but is usually not debilitating unless the curvature is so great that the heart and one of the lungs is compressed.

As livius points out, since mtDNA is passed down only in the female lineage, and since the line is broken every time one of the descendants of the original ancestor has only sons (or has no children at all, obviously), mtDNA makes a near-ideal way to trace relationships through the maternal line.*

Given the sheer number of base-pair sequences that are available, and given that mitochondiral DNA -- just like nuclear DNA -- mutates occasionally, it's usually possible to find a sequence that's unique to a particular family and then track its transmission from generation to generation.


*Of course, you couldn't use this method to determine that someone was a descendant of Richard III, since he passed on no mtDNA, being a male. You could, however, use it to determine that someone was descended from the lineage that included Richard's mother, sister, maternal grandmother, etc.

[Anastasia Beaverhausen]

Psst! Liv!

5:24 – Jo Appelby’s conclusion is that the skeletal evidence as a whole provides a highly convincing case for identification as #RichardII

So cool!

[Ensign Steve]

HOLY SHIT SLAM DUNK PROOF THEY FOUND FRIKKIN RICHARD III

That's some quality academic blogging right there. God damn I love new media.

[BigBlue2]

Looks like he copped a halberd to the head. That will hurt

[vremya]

[Pan Narrans]

Not to piss on his parade, but I think Ötzi has him beat.

[thedoc]

Originally Posted by The Lone Ranger

I heard about this on NPR this morning; quite a fascinating story.


Scoliosis, by contrast, is a lateral curvature of the vertebral column. It will frequently result in one shoulder being higher than the other, but is usually not debilitating unless the curvature is so great that the heart and one of the lungs is compressed.

Being a warrior Richard III would have been physically active and that could have aided in keeping the Scoliosis from developing to the point of being debilitating. Keeping the back muscles strong would tend to keep the spine straighter than if they were not storng enough to pull on the spine. On TLR's illustration the back muscles to the left side of the curve would be noticably larger than the muscles to the right of the curve.

[The Lone Ranger]

That's some pretty pronounced scoliosis. Lots of people have scoliosis without even knowing it, but Richard's scoliosis was sufficiently severe that it would have been very obvious to anyone who saw him. It was sufficiently severe that he probably had some difficulty in breathing.

[thedoc]

Originally Posted by The Lone Ranger

That's some pretty pronounced scoliosis. Lots of people have scoliosis without even knowing it, but Richard's scoliosis was sufficiently severe that it would have been very obvious to anyone who saw him. It was sufficiently severe that he probably had some difficulty in breathing.

If that illustration is an accurate representation of his spine in life, it might have caused him enough difficulty, that his scoliosis may have contributed to his death in battle.

[thedoc]

Reading the Wikipedia account of the Battle of Bosworth Field, Richard III didn't seem to be much inhibited by his scoliosis.

[livius drusus]

Originally Posted by The Lone Ranger

That's some pretty pronounced scoliosis. Lots of people have scoliosis without even knowing it, but Richard's scoliosis was sufficiently severe that it would have been very obvious to anyone who saw him. It was sufficiently severe that he probably had some difficulty in breathing.

You probably know this already, but for the record, the vertebra are arranged with larger gaps between them than they would have had in life. Researchers don't want them to rub against each other for conservation reasons.

There are more pictures including details of individual vertebra on this page.

Originally Posted by thedoc

If that illustration is an accurate representation of his spine in life, it might have caused him enough difficulty, that his scoliosis may have contributed to his death in battle.

It's not an illustration. It's a picture of his skeleton laid out in the laboratory.

[livius drusus]

Originally Posted by Ensign Steve

That's some quality academic blogging right there. God damn I love new media.

Evidently so does Mary Elizabeth Williams at Salon.