By Shin Na-yun

Scientists have claimed mummies 3,000 years ago unearthed in 2001 on an island off the coast of Scotland are a combination of several corpses, the Huffington Post reported on July 9.

The mummies were found during excavations beneath the foundations of a house on South Uist, an island in the Outer Hebrides off the west coast of Scotland.

According to the U.S. online paper, Terry Brown, professor of biomedical archaeology at the University of Manchester, said the remains of a male and a female were a mixture of bones from other corpses.

Researchers claimed that the woman's skeleton was a combination of six brothers and sisters who had different mothers when they checked DNA from the skull, lower jaw, right upper arm and right thigh bone of the female mummy at that time. In the case of the male's remains, they were comprised of bones from three others who died during the time span of 100 years.

The two mummies were buried in a fetal position, and they were preserved well because of peat bogs, which contain high acidity and low oxygen, the online paper reported.

However, it is not known why ancient Scots combines the bones through a complex process.

There are several different opinions about the mummies with a combination of bones from others. "Maybe bones were dropped off and the people brought bones from others to stick them on,” Prof. Brown said. Another expert said, "They combined the bones from others for one skeleton to show it as a collection of several families in one village or roundhouse".

They are called Dr. Frankenstein's mummies in academia after the 244cm monster which Frankenstein made with body parts from the dead in the novel written by Mary Shelley in 1818.