File Theo: Unresolved - The Basel Traces

Basel researchers reconstruct a person's life from the early 19th century.

Since 2005 a group of researchers from the Natural History Museum of Basel are on the search of a dead person: the skeleton of a man from the cemetery of St. Theodore, which was buried at the beginning of the 19th Century. It is supposed to receive its identity again. The unknown person was baptized “Theo,” the name of the discovery site.

With an unprecedented interdisciplinary collaboration between anthropology, history, and social sciences, this study is an attempt to gain insights into the lives of 'ordinary people' in Basel.

This project “Theo” represents a novel approach to historical research.

The forensic standard procedures (tooth and bone analysis, DNA analysis etc.), combined with socio-historical studies are being used for the first time for historic 'unknown' people.

Through the various scientific disciplines and methods, the current history of an entire district can be re-examined.

The project “Wanted: Theo” is also significant to our knowledge of our own past. What makes the life of a human being?

What traces do we leave behind that later generations can study and understand? What remains behind of our lives and our time?

This story reconstructs the case 'Theo' and embarks on a search for the identity of the deceased and the circumstances of his life.

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