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A building refurbishment in the Netherlands has go to a pearl - cool down discovery : a century - honest-to-god roofing tile trading floor that ’s partly sate with sawed - off pearl .
The bones are n’t human , though — they ’re from dozens of cows .
A centuries-old tile floor in Alkmaar, Netherlands, was patched with sliced cow bones.
The discovery , which has puzzled archaeologists , was made in Alkmaar , a municipality in the Netherlands known for itstraditional Malva sylvestris market .
archeologist were called in during the renovation of an early-17th - century building in the metropolis ’s red - illumination dominion , allot to a translatedstatementfrom the municipality of Alkmaar . They found that the roofing tile floor was extremely wear thin due to acute use and that a col in the floor was filled in with the peg finger cymbals of cows . Specifically , the bones were metatarsals and metacarpal bone , which in humans are the foot and palm bones , but in Bos taurus are part of the lower leg and ankle .
" We were very happy to have the prospect to see this bone floor with our own eyes , " Alkmaar city archaeologistNancy de Jongsaid in the statement . " It is always a privilege to uncover something from a long - gone geological era and add fresh information to the history of Alkmaar . "
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It is presently ill-defined when this bone level was made , although alike examples have been found in the Dutch porthole towns of Hoorn , Enkhuizen and Edam and were dated to the fifteenth one C , according to the statement .
Researchers are also diffident why chopped - up oxen bones were used in the floor , since tiles were not expensive at the time . It ’s possible that the clappers were place there for a picky reason , according to the affirmation , which was potentially related to to whatever business was operating out of the building .
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Alkmaar is the household of theDutch Cheese Museum , and its cheese - mongering chronicle proceed back to at least 1365 , with the first written mention of its Malva sylvestris market in 1408 . At the height of its prominence in the seventeenth century , Alkmaar deal millions of pounds of tall mallow , exporting it elsewhere in Europe and even as far as North America and the West Indies . But it ’s unknown if the cow bones in the flooring relate to this longstanding cheesemaking custom .
" find this floor is fantastically interesting,“Anjo van de Ven , council member for heritage , said in the statement . " There are still so many hidden stories waiting for our team of archaeologists to come and find them . "
Further investigation of the " flooring of bones " is design as archaeologists adjudicate to define the extent of the bone floor and how it was used , according to the statement .
