Skeleton found in beach tomb is 5,000 years old

ARCHAEOLOGISTS have found the skeleton of a warrior from up to 5,000 years ago floating in a tomb filled with sea water on a beach near Rome.

The bones – believed to date from the third millennium BC – were discovered in May as art hunters were carrying out routine checks of the region’s archaeological areas, Carabinieri art squad official Raffaele Mancino said.

Archaeologists believe the warrior was likely killed by an arrow, part of which was found among his ribs, Mancino said.

There was also a hole in the back of the skull, and six vases and two daggers were found buried nearby.

The tomb of the warrior, nicknamed ‘Nello’ after the archaeologist who found him, could be part of a wider necropolis lying just a few steps from the sea, Mancino told a news conference.

“We will check the area to see whether this tomb is isolated and the warrior was buried here because this was the battlefield where he died,” Mancino said. “Or maybe there is a bigger necropolis, as we indeed believe.”

The tomb, hidden in the bushes on a public beach in Nettuno, about 65 kilometres south of Rome, was excavated in less than one day to preserve it from sea water erosion, Mancino said. Part of it has already been damaged.

The warrior’s bones will be examined and will eventually be put on display, officials said.

The beach remains open, although the area where the discovery was made has now been cordoned off.

“We thought it was that of a Roman solider, but then the experts identified it as dating back to the third millennium BC,” said Mancino.

Six small vases were found buried alongside the skeleton, whose feet are missing.

The young man probably lived just within a few hundred years of ‘Otzi’, the prehistoric iceman whose corpse was found frozen in the Italian Alps in 1991.