People have been dumping corpses into the Thames since at least the Bronze Age, study finds

Four backlit people bend over and pick up items from the beach of the Thames at low tide, with buildings in the background.

Hundreds of human bones have been dredged from the bottom of England's River Thames over the past two centuries, and a new study of these skeletons suggests that most of them date back to the Bronze and Iron ages. But why people deposited corpses into the Thames remains an open question.

In a study published Jan. 28 in the journal Antiquity, researchers detailed their analysis of radiocarbon dates from 30 skeletons discovered in the Thames, with a goal of investigating when and why corpses ended up in the river.