A team of Romanian archeologists has unearthed two skeletons of a young man and a woman buried together with their hands clasped in the city of Cluj-Napoca .
Found at the site of a former Dominican monastery in Cluj-Napoca , the skeletons belonged to a couple lived between 1450 and 1550, according to the grave’s position and proximity to the monastery which are typical of this period as researchers say.
The excavated skeletons belonged to “a young couple of around 30 years of age, facing each other and holding hands. It’s a strange case, a sort of Romeo and Juliet,” the lead archeologist Adrian Rusu explained.
The couple’s death is estimated between 50 and 150 years before Shakespeare wrote Romeo and Juliet.
“The man appears to have died in an accident, as the sternum was broken by a blow from a blunt object and the woman buried with him could have had a heart attack on hearing the news, there is not really any other explanation for her death,” Adrian Rusu said.
The team also uncovered the skeleton of a child along with a fourth incomplete skeleton in the area.
The findings were discovered during an archeological digging program which was part of a restoration project carried out at the medieval monastery.
FGP/FGP