The Mary Rose was a royal favorite when it first set sail as the flagship of King Henry VIIIr17;s fleet in 1512.
Nearly 500 years after the vessel sank in 1545 during a battle with a French fleet, the shipwreck is revealing what life was like in Tudor England.
After the Mary Rose came to rest at the bottom of a strait in the English Channel, a layer of silt cloaked the ship and the hundreds of crew who died on board. The sediment preserved everything it covered. Underwater archaeologists carefully collected items and remains from the warship before raising the hull in 1982 and putting it on display in a museum in Portsmouth, England.
Now, researchers are studying the objects and bones from the wreck to better understand who the men were and how they lived.
Scientists now see how the tasks of life on a ship shaped the bone chemistry of 12 crew members from the Mary Rose by analyzing their collarbones. Collarbones capture information about age, development and growth as well as handedness, or which hand crew members favored.
The clavicles showed that all the men relied on their right hand, but they may have done so due to left-handedness being associated with witchcraft at the time, researchers said.
The findings of this new study are not only opening a window into the lives of the sailors but contributing to modern medical research by providing a better understanding of age-related changes in human bones.
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