The hand of Lunow-verification of an ancient tale using DNA analysis
Introduction
Verifying (or refuting) tales and legends, like that of the Tsar family [1] or Kaspar Hauser [2] is one side aspect of forensic genetics. We have employed sex determination of mummified muscle tissue to investigate an ancient tale from Lunow, a small village in the north–east of Germany.
Section snippets
The tale of the hand of Lunow
In the church of Lunow, a mummified hand is kept in the sanctuary. According to an ancient tale, the hand once belonged to a man who lived in the village some centuries ago: after having been a good father and husband for many years, a strange disease killed his wife and nearly himself. After having recovered his personality was completely changed: he started drinking and neglected his farm. When his father reminded him of his duties, the drunken man attacked him with his fists and seriously
Materials and methods
One gram of mummified muscle tissue was cleaned with ethanol, cut into small pieces, and extracted using the QIAamp tissue kit (Qiagen, Hilden, FRG).
The extracts were concentrated using microcon spin devices (Amicon, Beverly, USA) and 5 μl of the remaining extract was used for PCR for the Amelogenin locus as published [3]. The only modification was that 35 instead of 30 cycles were used. Moreover, two STR loci, TH01 and VWA, were typed as described [4].
Results and discussion
It is out of question that this ancient legend is beyond scientific reasoning. In the present case however, one additional aspect made the story even less plausible: the mummified hand is very slim (Fig. 1) and could very well be that of a woman rather than a man. The parson of the community thus approached us, and we agreed to perform a gender determination of the hand. As we were not allowed to use bone, we had to confine our study to the mummified soft tissues. Using PCR for the amelogenin
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Cited by (2)
PMCT investigation of mummified forensic evidence from medieval Germany
2016, Journal of Forensic Radiology and ImagingCitation Excerpt :The hand was discovered in the 16th century and dated between 13th and 16th century. According to a local legend it represents the hand of a man who attacked and injured his father and was cursed by his sister for his acts [17]. The following day he was found dead and after the burial the hand appeared on the surface of the grave and no matter how hard they tried they could not rebury it [5,16].
Defining an anthropological biohistorical research agenda: The history, scale, and scope of an emerging discipline
2017, Studies in Forensic Biohistory: Anthropological Perspectives