Elmore County Identifies Age of Bodies Found Near Mountain Home

The bodies of two people found in a badger hole back in April this year have been studied and thanks to carbon dating testing from three different agencies including BSU, they’ve identified the age of the two bodies…and they are really old.

First of all the age of the two people at the time of their death was young. Estimates are that one was around 14 or 15 and the other was in his or her early twenties.

However the bodies have been dead for over 300 years, possibly as long as 500 years…that’s right they could predate Christopher Columbus and his discovery of the Americas, according to Elmore county sheriff's officials in a report aired on KTVB.

Testing has revealed the pair died sometime between 1436 and 1632. The sexes and causes of death are still unknown at this time. One interesting fact about the bodies is that researchers figured out that both of them had largely corn-based diets.

The sheriff’s office said the skeletal remains looks to be an isolated incidence and not a part of a larger burial site, but they did say they have reached out to local native American tribes in hopes of possibly finding out more information on their heritage.

This discovery of the bodies’ ages at the time of death ends theories that sought to connect the bones to missing persons cases around Idaho.