Enlarge image
When the jawbones were found around four months ago on the banks of the Elbe near Drage, the police investigated (symbol image)
Photo: Philipp Schulze / dpa
A case for research instead of justice: about four months after the discovery of human jawbones on the banks of the Elbe near Drage in Lower Saxony, they were given to a museum.
As the police in Buchholz in the Nordheide announced, the bones are around 2800 years old and date from the Bronze Age.
As the officials further reported, scientists determined the age through radiological examinations.
A criminal or missing person is therefore excluded.
The bones were found on the Elbe beach at the end of March and had sparked an investigation.
The remains from the later Bronze Age then went to the Archaeological Museum in Hamburg, where experts rated them as "scientifically valuable".
According to researchers, people often lived in small villages near rivers in the later Bronze Age.
They practiced agriculture.
Such prehistoric settlements and urn graves have also been discovered in the region not far from where the bones were found south of Hamburg.
In general, relatively little is known about the way of life of the people of that time.
nek / AFP