I just watched a documentary about how King Richard III was found and I was wondering like how do they know that the skeleton is him?
It’s not like there are DNA samples to compare with.
Do they just rely on recorded documents or they use other kinds of methods?
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Well Richard III isn’t exactly *ancient*, he was buried in 1485. That’s well into the era of record keeping and map making, and so the location and details of his death and burial were preserved.
He was killed in battle in 1485 and buried beneath a monastery. Researchers found the location of the monastery with old maps and notes, and uncovered a 30-something male skeleton with severe combat injuries.
To confirm that it’s him, they did do a DNA sample on the remains – specifically a mitochondrial DNA sample since that passes directly from mother to child unchanged with each generation.
That means that a string of daughters that can trace back to Richard’s mother would have identical mitochondrial DNA.
Since nobility were sticklers about tracing ancestry, this information isn’t that hard to dig up and they were able to match his DNA with modern descendants of his mother.
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