A coffin carrying the remains of a woman whose name nobody knew was lowered into the ground in western Germany in 2022. Around it stood students, teachers and local residents paying their respects. For decades, the woman had been part of a school biology classroom, helping generations of pupils learn anatomy. Most knew her only as a skeleton suspended in a corner of the room. Then students discovered that the teaching aid was not a replica but the remains of a real person, likely from India. Their attempt to understand who she was led them into a forgotten global trade that once supplied human skeletons to classrooms around the world.
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