“Stop! This is the empire of death.” These words from the poem “The Aeneid” by the Roman poet Virgil are engraved in large letters at the entrance to the Catacombs in Paris. This phrase represents a warning to thousands of visitors who are not allowed to exceed two kilometers inside the catacombs.
But this has not stopped researchers who, since 2022, have been spending continuous days in this dark and cold underworld at a depth of more than 20 meters underground, and in a maze of walls of corpses and skeletal remains extending over a distance of 300 kilometers within a long network of quarry tunnels filled with the smell of death. Narrow corridors that are difficult to navigate, and dark halls that are sometimes decorated with murals.
In the first scientific study of the catacombs led by the anthropologist and archaeologist at the University of Paris-Sacly, Philippe Charlier, a multidisciplinary team of anthropologists, biologists, doctors and archaeologists seeks to uncover the mystery and mysteries that revolve around the millions of bodies contained in these catacombs, and to know the number of people buried in them, and how and why. They died, and how their bodies got to the bottom of the streets of Paris.
Charlier says, in statements to Al Jazeera Net, that their research project aims to reveal what human remains can hide about the secrets of the health of more than 6 million Parisians buried inside these tunnels, and the diseases and infections they suffered that may have led to their death over the past centuries.
A haunting remnant of the past
Going back two and a half centuries to the time of Louis XVI, when Paris faced a series of disturbing events, we find that the Parisian catacombs arose as a result of For two main events In the eighteenth century; The first relates to the collapse of the underground quarries from which the stones used in building the city were extracted for a long time.
This collapse created a dangerous network of voids under the streets of Paris, especially on the city’s Left Bank. In response, King Louis XVI established the Inspectorate General of Cemeteries in 1777 to map underground infrastructure and reinforce unstable areas.
The second incident that led to the creation of the catacombs was a horrific public health crisis; In 1780, the giant “Cemetery of the Innocents” in the Halles district became so overcrowded that decomposing bodies spilled into nearby crypts, a terrifying sight for the people of Paris.
With fears of the spread of diseases, the authorities decided to exhume bodies from crowded Paris cemeteries. In 1785, over a period of 15 months, and accompanied by religious rituals, huge bullock carts transported the remains at night to the abandoned quarry shafts on the outskirts of the city. They were dropped into the abandoned quarry shafts and left piled on top of each other.
It was not until the early 19th century when Inspector General of Quarries Hericard de Thuriy, wanting to show profound respect to those who had died, took on the task of organizing the arrangement of bones into decorative walls using long bones such as femurs and skulls to create a more visually organized display. However, behind these carefully designed facades, the remaining bones were lying in a messy pile.
In this context, Charlier points out that there are other bone cemeteries in the world, but the one located below Paris and its suburbs represents the largest mass grave discovered so far, and an open museum of human bones, adding that this makes it the best place to conduct an anthropological and pathological study, especially since there are no A serious scientific study of the catacombs of Paris.
A thousand years of illness
Charlier’s team is not only interested in the technical arrangement of the bones, but their research, which began after part of the bone wall collapsed 3 years ago, aims to uncover why the deceased ended up where they did, how these individuals lived and how they died, to find out the history of public health in Paris and its suburbs.
This comes in the context of studying a very long history of the disease, as the bodies found in the catacombs date back to different stages, and some of the oldest remains are more than a thousand years old, from the Merovingian era.
By studying the skeletal remains, the team hopes to understand how diseases developed over the centuries, and how the medical practices that Parisians underwent, such as trepanation, amputations, dissection and mummification, were performed.
One of the main approaches used is paleopathology, where the team examines bone samples for traces of conditions such as rickets, syphilis and leprosy, which leave recognizable marks on skeletal remains.
The research and findings can lead to incredible insights and treatments for the diseases we suffer from in the modern world today. For example, it can be verified whether the syphilis that killed someone in the 16th century is the same disease we know today, or whether the causative agent of the disease has evolved significantly.
Understanding DNA
Researchers extract DNA from teeth to determine the infectious agents of diseases and whether they have developed over the past centuries, such as the plague that killed many people very quickly without leaving visible traces.
Charlier’s team is also investigating cases of poisoning resulting from exposure to large amounts of heavy metals such as mercury, arsenic, lead, antimony or antimony.
It is expected that radiocarbon dating will enable knowing the age of the bones, and simple counting will enable a more accurate count of the number of individuals buried in the catacombs, which Charlier expects to exceed 6 million.
The team’s research, now in its third year, is expected to provide its first preliminary results by the end of 2024, and could take decades to complete.
