By WILIAM HUNTER, SENIOR SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY REPORTER
Published: 13:45 BST, 13 August 2026 | Updated: 13:58 BST, 13 August 2026
Scientists have found the remains of a soldier in Scotland's Stirling Castle who may be one of the unluckiest people in history.
This man in his 20s has the dubious honour of being the first confirmed victim of a trebuchet attack, according to new evidence presented at the European meeting of the Paleopathology Association.
These fearsome weapons of war are similar to a catapult, and capable of hurling a projectile weighing over 100 kg hundreds of metres over castle walls.
Now, archaeologists have uncovered the grisly reality of what happens to someone unfortunate enough to catch a direct hit from one of those flying stones.
The soldier, known to scientists as skeleton 150, bears the evidence of an enormous, high-velocity impact that shattered his bones and pinned him to the ground.
Dr Jo Buckberry, from the University of Bradford, found over 160 different fractures on the 160-cm-tall remains.
The skull was cracked in 61 places, there was a deep, zigzag break on the shoulder, and nearly 60 bizarre, jagged breaks on his ribs.
Dr Buckberry told Science: 'The breaks indicate a very large area of impact and devastation. It’s likely the individual was killed by a siege engine.'
A skeleton of a soldier found in Scotland's Stirling Castle has been identified as the first confirmed victim of a trebuchet attack, which broke their skull (pictured) in 60 places
During the siege, English forces deployed the largest trebuchet ever constructed, a terrifying weapon known as War Wolf . Pictured: A modern reconstruction of War Wolf
Skeleton 150 was discovered in 1997, when scientists unearthed the graves of nine skeletons beneath the chapel in Stirling Castle.
Five of these were found to date back to the early 1300s, and all bore the injuries and cut marks that indicated violent lives and deaths.
However, those signs of violence were hardly surprising, given that Stirling Castle was besieged and changed hands five times between 1296 and 1304, when it finally fell to English forces.