The Battle of Waterloo cost the lives of around 40,000 soldiers, including 25,000 French.
Yet only a complete skeleton has been found by archaeologists at the site.
A mystery that is about to be elucidated thanks to the work of a researcher, reports
Discover Magazine
in an article relayed by
Slate
.
Mass graves near the battlefield
Professor Tony Pollard, director of the Center for Battlefield Archeology at the University of Glasgow, Scotland, published his study in the Journal of Conflict Archaeology.
According to him, the bodies were dug up to make fertilizer.
This researcher initially found documents attesting to the presence of mass graves near the battlefield into which the bodies were thrown.
Looting of bones common in the 19th century
Then he got his hands on newspaper clippings dating from the 19th century that evoke the looting of human bones to make bone meal, a popular fertilizer at the time.
"More than a million bushels of 'human and inhuman bones' were imported from the European continent into the port of Hull", reports a press clipping from the London Observer dating from 1822, 7 years after the Battle of Waterloo. .
Tony Pollard concludes that this cargo could have been produced from the bodies of the soldiers.
Health
The mystery of the geographical origin of the Black Death solved seven centuries later?
Company
Aisne: German soldiers immured in 1917, the mystery remains after a week of research
Waterloo
Story
Science
Mystery