Thousands of skeletons found in London pit

London -  Thousands of skeletons found in a mass grave in London were of people who died due to climatic changes after a 13th century volcanic eruption, according to  archaeologists.

An excavation, which took place between 1991 and 2007, discovered 10,500 medieval skeletons at Spitalfields Market in east London, the Daily Mail reported.

Experts says there could have been as many as 18,000 bodies.

At that time, experts assumed the people had died during the Black Death or the Great Famine.

However, after performing radiocarbon dating of the bones, scientists have come to the conclusion that they were in fact victims of a 13th century volcanic eruption, one of the largest in the  past 10,000 years.

The daily said the eruption was so big that its sulphurous gases created a veil of dry fog across the earth's stratosphere which blocked out sunlight, altered the atmosphere and cooled the  earth's surface causing famine, plague and death.

As many as 15,000 people in London could have perished, the scientists said.

Though the location of the volcano has not yet been discovered, researchers believe it could have been as far away as Mexico, Ecuador and Indonesia and was up to eight times higher that  Indonesia's Krakatoa eruption in 1883.