Wounds on the hands

Since medieval times, the crucified Christ has been depicted with nails driven into his hands. Since photography revealed that blood found on the Shroud of Turin (the supposed cloth in which Christ was wrapped) had pooled around the wrists, some stigmatics have displayed wounds on the wrists.

Experiments conducted on human corpses between 1930 and 1950 by the French surgeon Pierre Barbet showed that bare hands could not support the weight of a crucified body.

It has therefore been suggested that the nail penetrated the wrist (between the radius and ulna) rather than the hand, or passed through a place called "Destot's space".

On the first-century skeleton of a crucified victim, a man known as Jehohanan, the nail was likely driven through the heel bone, indicating that he was forced into a "semi-sitting position," quite unlike the familiar depiction of the crucified Jesus.

However, crucifixion, which was a widely used method of capital punishment by the Romans and other peoples from the 6th century BC to the 4th century AD, was probably carried out in different ways depending on the place and circumstances