The entire excavation revealed 9 walls, mostly built of adult femurs and shin bones.

According to the Dutch company’s expert, Ruben Willaert, these scary structures appear to have been created by workers hundreds of years ago clearing a cemetery to make room for other people’s burials or to renovate a church. , and because when the church yard area was cleared, the skeletons could not be thrown anywhere.

It is believed that bones are the most important part for the dead to be revived. The protection of human remains was so important that people sometimes built stone houses against the walls of cemeteries, to house the skulls and long bones.

These bone walls were found on the north side of St. Bavo’s church, formerly the church of St. John the Baptist, also known as St. Jan. Radiocarbon dating shows that the skeletons date from the second half of the 15th century, but the walls were later rebuilt in the 17th or early 18th century.

Historical documents also prove that the time was appropriate. One document states that the church cemetery was vacated in the first half of the 16th century and then in 1784, when the cemetery no longer accepted any more people.

No matter how old they are, these walls are still a unique discovery. The researchers said they found no similar construction anywhere else in Belgium. Most ancient cemeteries have many pits or layers filled with messy human bones, and bones arranged into wall-like structures like this, meaning that the builders had it on purpose, have never been seen before.

Whoever built these walls must have been in a hurry, because they included small and fragile bones such as ribs, vertebrae, and bones in the hands and feet. However, what is curious is that archaeologists have not found any arm bone fragments and they are trying to find out why. Is it because of the convenience of arranging the bones tightly or is there another religious or spiritual reason?

These bone walls contain adult bones of both men and women but no children’s bones, which contradicts the longevity of people at that time, when children often died of disease. But it can also be explained that due to the work of cleaning the graves, the children’s bones were small and fragile, so the workers did not collect them.