Is there an estimate as to how many peoples skeletons are in the catacombs under Paris?

Answer 1

According to the Smithsonian Magazine (Geiling 2014), there are approximately 6 million skeletons and 200 miles of catacombs. There are some unproven estimates as high as 7 million skeletons. The catacombs opened in 1809 to the public (Legacey 2017). As David Lawrence Pike has noted, men of science like Georges Cuvier and the Comte de Buffon had recently begun to interpret the subterranean content of Paris as something constitutive of “history and meaning rather than merely pecuniary gain” (2011). These catacombs are a rich source of both archaeology knowledge and historical/cultural information regarding life in Paris pre-the- French revolution.

There are markers that show how the city of Paris is mapped onto its underground. As they reconstructed a revolutionary migration of the dead in which ten generations of bones had been relocated into a new “bizarre city” (Ramette and Giles, 2012).

There are two major archeological studies in the catacombs. First, the vast number of human remains which gives Archaeologist and Socio-cultural Anthropologist clues to life centuries ago. Second is the construction of the tunnels. From how the catacombs were excavated, the use of quarry materials, and manual labor involved when these underground cemeteries were constructed.