Remains from Mannar mass graves to be sent to US for carbon dating

The Mannar Magistrates Court has granted permission for human remains samples from two mass graves in Mannar to be sent to the University of Florida laboratory in the United States for carbon dating. 

The decision was made during hearings on the cases this week concerning human remains found near the Mannar Sathosa site and the Thiruketheeswaram area. 

The Court’s ruling follows a request from legal counsels to send the samples abroad, citing insufficient facilities in Mannar and Sri Lanka to determine the gender, time, and manner of death of the persons whose remains were recovered. The carbon testing in the US is expected to provide crucial details that local resources were unable to uncover. 

The court ruled that a few skeletal remains would be sent to the US, as additional tests including carbon-14 dating, a scientific method that can accurately determine the age of organic materials as old as approximately 60,000 years are required. 

The next hearing was postponed to 21 October due to the absence of three officials who were expected to submit a full report into the mass graves. The Court ordered all relevant parties to be present before the Court on the day. 

While the Thiruketheeswaram site was found in 2013, the mass grave site near the Sathosa building was discovered during construction activities in 2018. Skeletal remains from the Sathosa site were also previously sent to Beta Analytics Inc. in Florida for carbon dating, which dated the grave between 1477 and 1719. But local investigators, including Professor Raj Somadeva, have disputed these findings, believing the grave to be much more recent.