Skeletons Found Hugging: The Couples Buried Together

The Lovers of Valdaro were found in 2007 at Valdaro, on the edge of Mantua in northern Italy, in a late Neolithic double grave. The Mantua archaeological museum dates the burial to about 5,500 to 5,100 years ago (Museo Archeologico di Mantova).

According to the regional museums of Lombardy, the skeleton on the left is a woman aged 16 to 20 and the one on the right is a man aged 18 to 22 (Direzione regionale Musei Lombardia). They were buried in a crouched position, with flint tools beside them.

How they came to look so close is part of the story. The two bodies were wrapped in textiles when they were buried. As the cloth decayed over the centuries, the skeletons shifted toward each other, and that movement helped create the hug seen today (Direzione regionale Musei Lombardia). They were buried together, and the final closeness of the pose is partly the work of time.

Were they a couple? Nobody knows. They are real people, two young adults of the same generation buried in one grave, and the museum is careful not to claim more about their relationship than the grave can tell. The Spanish-language web often calls them "el abrazo que duró 6000 años," the hug that lasted 6,000 years. That is a rounded figure for a burial the museum dates to about 5,500 to 5,100 years ago.

If you want to see them, they are on permanent display at the Museo Archeologico di Mantova, according to the museum's own page. Check the museum's current hours before you travel.

The Hasanlu Lovers were found in 1972 during the Penn Museum's excavations at Hasanlu, a settlement in northwestern Iran, and their remains came into the Penn Museum's collection in 1973. Page Selinsky, an archaeologist with the Penn Museum, dates the destruction of Hasanlu to around 800 BCE (Penn Museum). The two people died during that violent destruction and were found lying face to face in a bin made of mudbrick and plaster.

From the bones, one was a young adult aged 19 to 22 and identified as male. The other was estimated at 30 to 35 years old and assessed as probably male, although the skeletal signs were less clear. Later ancient-DNA work, published by Lazaridis and colleagues in "The genetic history of the Southern Arc," identified both as genetically male (Lazaridis et al.).

How did they die? The exact cause is unknown. The Penn Museum reports injuries around the time of death but no wounds on the skeletons that were clearly fatal. Suffocation from smoke or from collapsing debris has been proposed, but that is an interpretation, not something the bones prove (Penn Museum).

Their relationship is also unknown. Selinsky's article on the pair is titled "Lovers, Friends, or Strangers?", and that title sums up the question well. They may have been partners, relatives or friends, or two people who reached for each other as their town was destroyed.

The pair was displayed at the Penn Museum from the mid-1970s until the mid-1980s and remains in the museum's care. If you hope to see them, ask the Penn Museum whether they are currently on view.

In southern Greece, at a spot called Xagounaki beside Alepotrypa Cave at Diros, archaeologists uncovered an undisturbed double burial of a young adult man and woman lying in each other's arms. The Greek Ministry of Culture reports that carbon-14 dating places the burial at about 3800 BCE, which is roughly 5,800 years ago, and that DNA analysis identified one male and one female (Greek Ministry of Culture).

The burial is close to, though technically just outside, the main entrance of Alepotrypa Cave. The wider cave and Diros complex was used for living and for burying the dead from about 6000 to 3200 BCE. The Diros Project was directed by Giorgos Papathanassopoulos, working with Anastasia Papathanasiou and other Greek and international archaeologists (Field Museum).

The ministry describes the burial as an unusually rare double grave, and it does not say what the two people were to each other. Carbon-14 dating, the method used here, is explained in our story on how old are these bones.

In 2021, Quanchao Zhang, Xiaogang Hou and colleagues published a burial from Shanxi Province in northern China dating to the Northern Wei period, 386 to 534 CE, about 1,500 years ago (Zhang et al., Wiley). It held an adult man and an adult woman with their arms around each other. The woman wore a ring on the ring finger of her left hand.

The authors read the arrangement as an expression of the wish for lasting love, while noting that other explanations cannot be ruled out. They also suggest that the woman may have died, or chosen to die, so she could be buried with her husband. That is their interpretation, and they present it as one.

The Lovers of Modena were found in 2009 in a Late Antique cemetery in Modena, Italy, dating to the fourth to sixth centuries CE. They were buried side by side, holding hands. A 2019 study in Scientific Reports, led by Federico Lugli, used proteins in their tooth enamel to estimate sex and found that both were male (University of Bologna).

Both the study and the University of Bologna say their relationship remains unknown. Possible explanations include relatives, companions, or soldiers who died together. The study sees the hand-in-hand position as a sign of a significant bond, without claiming to know whether it was romantic. Since 2014 the pair has been on view at the Museo Civico Archeologico Etnologico di Modena.

It is natural to look at these photos and feel tenderness. That feeling is part of why they are shared so widely, and archaeologists understand it. What they add is a sense of how many stories a single pose can hold.

Page Selinsky says the Hasanlu pair could show comfort between lovers, relatives, friends or strangers facing extreme danger, and she points out that the nickname "lovers" invites assumptions (Penn Museum). The Northern Wei study reads its couple as an expression of marriage and continuing attachment, but leaves the door open. The Modena study sees a meaningful relationship without being sure it was a romantic one. The Greek ministry describes the Alepotrypa pair as rare and leaves their relationship unnamed.

Put together, a hugging or face-to-face burial may reflect affection, family ties, protection, ritual, the circumstances of a death, or simply the way bodies shift as wrappings decay, as at Valdaro. Each grave is read through its own setting: who was buried, when, with what objects, and how the bodies were placed. The word "lovers" is a modern label that people gave these pairs, not a finding.

The sex of each person comes from careful work too. Bones give one kind of evidence, and newer methods such as ancient DNA and enamel proteins give another; at Hasanlu, DNA confirmed what the bones of the older individual could only suggest. For how archaeologists estimate age and sex from a skeleton, see our story on what bones tell archaeologists.

Here is how the best-known hugging burials compare, as the museums and studies describe them.

Short answers to the questions people ask most.

Two people lying close after thousands of years speak to something everyone understands, whether they were partners, family, friends or strangers sharing a terrible moment. The facts, kept as the museums and scientists give them, make the stories richer rather than smaller: two young people wrapped in cloth at Valdaro, two men who died together when Hasanlu was destroyed, a ring on a woman's finger in Shanxi. They were real people, and the care archaeologists take in describing them is a kind of respect. If stories of people found together in moments of disaster interest you, read about the Pompeii skeletons.

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