Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by chromas on Sunday October 14 2018, @07:41AM   Printer-friendly
from the 2spooky4me dept.

Fifth-Century Child's Skeleton Shows Evidence of "Vampire Burial" :

The "Vampire of Lugnano" had a rock in its mouth to keep it from rising from grave.

Archaeologists have discovered the skeleton of a 10-year-old child at an ancient Roman site in Italy with a rock carefully placed in its mouth. This suggests those who buried the child—who probably died of malaria during a deadly fifth century outbreak—feared it might rise from the dead and spread the disease to those who survived. Locals are calling it the "Vampire of Lugnano."

"This is a very unusual mortuary treatment that you see in various forms in different cultures, especially in the Roman world," says Jordan Wilson, a graduate student in bio-archaeology at the University of Arizona who studied the remains. He added that this could "indicate a fear that this person might come back from the dead and try to spread disease to the living."

Pretty much every culture on Earth has some version of a vampire (or proto-vampire) myth. Chinese folklore has the k'uei, which are reanimated corpses that rise from the grave to prey on the living; one type has sharp fangs, the better to bite into the neck of said prey. Russian, Albanian, Indian, and Greek folklore have similar undead monsters. Russian villagers in the Middle Ages often drove stakes into the bodies of suspected vampires upon burial to keep them from rising again.

The most-likely explanation is that the locals did this to ensure the dead child stayed that way. Prior excavations amidst the human remains in the Cemetery of the Babies unearthed various items commonly associated with magic at the time: raven talons, toad bones, and bronze cauldrons filled with ash. The oldest remains found previously were those of a three-year-old girl whose hands and feet were weighed down with stones.

Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn and cauldron bubble...


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 14 2018, @12:06PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 14 2018, @12:06PM (#748569)

    Are you one of those zealots? You won't rest until everyone believes as you do?

    Me, I don't care what anybody else believes because I believe in the 1st Amendment. But don't try to establish that any religion is true or fact. You may believe that your religion is the one and only true religion, but you are wrong because all of them are wrong. But you are free to believe what you want.

    And before you try any of your "but what about ..." wordplay, just remember this: once there is proof, actual proof, it is no longer a religion - it is science.

    Starting Score:    0  points
    Moderation   +2  
       Insightful=2, Total=2
    Extra 'Insightful' Modifier   0  

    Total Score:   2