They're [I]old[/I] !

[gekkogecko]

URL:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070206/sc_nm/italy_embrace_dc

Text:
Eternal embrace? Couple still hugging 5,000 years on Tue Feb 6, 1:28 PM ET

ROME (Reuters) - Call it the eternal embrace.

Archaeologists in Italy have discovered a couple buried 5,000 to 6,000 years ago, hugging each other.

"It's an extraordinary case," said Elena Menotti, who led the team on their dig near the northern city of Mantova.

"There has not been a double burial found in the Neolithic period, much less two people hugging -- and they really are hugging."

Menotti said she believed the two, almost certainly a man and a woman although that needs to be confirmed, died young because their teeth were mostly intact and not worn down.

"I must say that when we discovered it, we all became very excited. I've been doing this job for 25 years. I've done digs at Pompeii, all the famous sites," she told Reuters.

"But I've never been so moved because this is the discovery of something special."

A laboratory will now try to determine the couple's age at the time of death and how long they had been buried.

[jseal]

Good for them! Inspirational. :thumbs:

[Oldfart]

CNN said that couples had been found holding hands, but this is the first cuddle.

[dicksbro]

I saw the picture and it is remarkable. Somehow, I wish my wife and I (when the day comes in another 150 years or so) could go together like that.

Then PF could dig us up and post something appropriate on Pixies ... like, wow, Mrs. DB looks great but who's that guy with her? :(

[PantyFanatic]

:nod:












He knows mew too well.
:rofl:

[Neige]

Interesting...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070212/sc_nm/archaeology_italy_embrace_new_dc
Scientists to save 5,000-year-old embrace By Phil Stewart
46 minutes ago

VALDARO, Italy (Reuters) - Italy won't split up its Stone Age "lovers."


In a Valentine's Day gift to the country, scientists said they are determined to remove and preserve together the remains of a couple buried 5,000 to 6,000 years ago, their arms still wrapped around each other in an enduring embrace.

Instead of removing the bones one-by-one for reassembly later, archaeologists plan to scoop up the entire section of earth where the couple was buried, they told Reuters.

The plot will then be transported for study before being put on display in an Italian museum, thereby preserving the world's longest known hug for posterity.

"We want to keep can them just as they have been all this time -- together," archaeologist Elena Menotti, who announced the discovery a week ago, told Reuters.

Their removal will be a relief for archaeologists who had to hire extra security to guard the rural site outside the northern city of Mantova after the discovery made world headlines.

STAR-CROSSED LOVERS?

More importantly, it will give scientists a chance to figure out what was has become one of Italian archaeology's greatest mysteries: the first known Neolithic couple to be buried together, hugging.

Was it a sudden death? A ritual sacrifice? Or maybe they were prehistoric, star-crossed lovers who took their own lives.

That is a crowd-pleasing theory in these parts, since Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet was set in nearby Verona.

But scientists acknowledge they still know precious little about the now-famous Stone Age couple, whose embrace has become a subject of world newspaper headlines and chat shows.

Italians dubbed them the "Lovers of Valdaro" after the Mantova suburb of farmland and factories. But even their gender is a open question until scientists confirm the theory that they were a man and a woman.

Archaeologists seem certain the couple died young, since their teeth are intact and that they died during the Stone Age because of an arrowhead and tools found with the remains.

But new evidence indicates the couple were not alone and that the remains may have left been near a Stone Age settlement.

A CULT? DEATH GRIP?

Archaeologists on site showed Reuters photographs of another skeleton found nearby, suggesting the couple were in some sort of prehistoric burial ground.

While the single body was buried East-West, possibly following the daily path of the sun across the sky, the Stone Age couple were buried "the wrong way."

"They were buried North-South, and we don't know why," said archaeologist Daniela Castagna, standing over the grave site.

John Robb, lecturer at Cambridge University and an expert in Neolithic Italian remains, says the trouble with the Stone Age couple is the singularity of the find -- which makes it difficult to explain using known historic data.

He said Neolithic burials are almost always single burials.

"There are a couple of mass burials. There are couple of examples of heads being found under houses. And then, about one burial in every 20 or 30 sites is completely unique," he said.

"And these are probably things that have strange ritual circumstances of one kind or another."

But until scientists get a closer look at the bones, all anyone has are loose theories.

The discovery generated Internet conspiracy theories with some taking a darker interpretation of the hugging skeletons.

One reader on AOL, said it was absurd to assume "this couple is in eternal bliss."

"Maybe it is eternal hatred that had them locked together in a death grip," wrote another reader.

Other people have called for the couple to be left alone -- something that Italian archaeologists say would leave the remains vulnerable to looters, vandals and even bad weather.

There is also a practical reason, the owner of the land hopes to soon build warehouses on it.

"We say rest in peace -- unless you're dead long enough to be interesting," wrote another reader, Jim Noonan.

[wyndhy]

"We say rest in peace -- unless you're dead long enough to be interesting,"

:roflmao: too true