The skeleton, nicknamed Noah, spent 85 years hidden inside a box before being rediscovered

Aug 7, 2014 08:31 GMT  ·  By

Not too long ago, staff at the Penn Museum in Philadelphia, US, decided to do some late-summer cleaning and ended up finding a 6,500-year-old skeleton hidden inside a box in the basement.

A photo of the skeleton is available next to this article. This picture, shared with the public by folks at the Penn Museum, shows the remains covered in wax and dirt from the area where they were first discovered and unearthed decades ago.

Information shared with the public says that, before being rediscovered, the 6,500-year-old skeleton spent about 85 years hidden from view inside its little box. It's a good thing that skeletons aren't claustrophobic.

According to Live Science, these human remains were unearthed sometime between 1929 and 1930 at an archaeological site dubbed Ur, in present-day Iraq by a team of archaeologists working with the Penn and British Museums.

By the looks of it, the skeleton was left behind by a man who was about 50 years old at the time he passed away. This man likely stood somewhere between 5 feet and 8 inches (173 centimeters) and 5 feet 10 inches (178 centimeters) tall.

Evidence at hand indicates that the archaeological site that coughed out these human remains was hit by a massive flood thousands of years ago. Because of this, specialists with the Penn and British Museums saw fit to nickname this skeleton Noah.

This 6,500-year-old skeleton was pulled from the ground by a British archaeologist by the name of Sir Leonard Woolley. After being coated in a layer of wax meant to protect it, it was sent to the city of London and eventually to Philadelphia.

Having ended up at the Penn Museum, the human remains failed to be properly documented. It was researcher William Hafford who, while digitalizing the museum's records, found that a skeleton included on the list of artifacts recovered by Sir Leonard Woolley and sent to this facility was missing.

The specialist contacted Janet Monge, the Penn Museum's curator of physical anthropology, who remembered that a mysterious box was hidden in the facility's basement. The human remains laid to rest in this box were eventually identified as the skeleton that was unaccounted for.

Now that it has been rediscovered, the skeleton is to be closely examined by scientists and historians. It is expected that information obtained while studying these human remains will help shed new light on the life – possibly even the cause of death – of the man these bones belonged to.