War scars on skeleton point to Richard III

LONDON: Archaeologists searching for the body of England’s King Richard III under a city centre parking lot said yesterday they had found remains that could be those of the monarch depicted by Shakespeare as an evil, deformed, child-murdering monster.

Richard was killed in battle in 1485 and his bones reportedly ended up in a Franciscan friary known as Greyfriars, now under a car park in the centre of Leicester.

A team from the city’s university said they had discovered a skeleton with, apparently, combat wounds.

“Clearly we are all very excited by these latest discoveries,” Richard Taylor, the university’s director of corporate affairs, told reporters.

“It is proper that the university now subjects the findings to rigorous analysis so that the strong circumstantial evidence that has presented itself can be properly understood.”

The bones were found in good condition in the choir area of the friary’s church, which was documented in historical records to be Richard’s burial place.

“The skeleton on initial examination appears to have suffered significant perimortem trauma, near-death trauma, to the skull, which appears to be consistent with, although is not certainly caused by, an injury received in battle,” Taylor said.

“A bladed implement appears to have cleaved part of the rear of the skull.”

A barbed metal arrowhead was also found between vertebrae of the skeleton’s upper back.

Richard, who reigned for only two years, was portrayed as a power-hungry hunchback in one of William Shakespeare’s most famous plays, The Tragedy of

although contemporary chroniclers suggest he was a tough soldier.

Taylor said the skeleton had spinal abnormalities, believed to be severe scoliosis, a form of spinal curvature, which would have made his right shoulder appear visibly higher than his left one, which matches contemporary accounts of Richard.

However, the individual was not a hunchback. Archaeologists have access to Richard III’s DNA after swab samples were taken last week from a direct descendant of the king’s sister, Michael Ibsen.

“We are not saying today that we have found Richard III,” Taylor said. “Our focus is shifting from archaeological excavation to laboratory analysis.

Debate rages to this day as to whether Richard was responsible for the murder of two young princes in the Tower of London, the sons of his elder brother, Edward IV. – Reuters