Relics on display in a German treasury are believed to contain bones belonging to the Frankish king Charlemagne.
In honor of the 1,200 year anniversary of Charlemagne's death on Jan. 28 researchers gave a summary of the research that has been conducted on the king since 1988, LiveScience reported.
The king's bones are scattered, but most are believed to belong to the treasury at the Cathedral of Aachen.
The remains are kept in a "bejeweled bust." The king ruled over the majority of Western Europe between the years of 768 and 814 A.D. He worked to covert the Germanic people to Christianity and unify them. He was nicknamed "the father of Europe," the Huffington Post reported.
Evidence suggests the bones held in the treasury belonged to the great king.
"The evidence is that the isolated bones fit the ones in the sarcophagus, also that they belong to an older male individual," Frank Rühli, who heads the Centre for Evolutionary Medicine at the University of Zurich. "There is always doubt about this kind of bones, still I am quite sure (but not 100 [percent]) that they may belong to him."
The king died in his 70s and may have walked with a limp in his old age. The team found bony deposits on his kneecap and heel bone that may be consistent with this information, LiveScience reported. The king was said to have an "impressive physique" in his younger years despite the fact that he was the son of "Pippin the Short."
He was believed to have died of pneumonia but researchers failed to find any evidence of the illness in his bones.
The researchers do not plan to conduct further tests on the bones, but a DNA analysis could help them determine if all of the bones on display all belong to the same person.
