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An ancient site in Laos, known as the Plain of Jars, is finally beginning to give up its secrets, as the first major excavation effort since the 1930s digs into its mysteries.
Strewn over hundreds of square miles in central Laos, thousands of ceramic jars ranging from three to nine feet in height pepper the landscape, scattered in clusters of anywhere between one and 400 individual pieces.
[...] And while the specific function of these jars is still to be determined, those involved in the most recent work have their theories.
One such theory is that the pots were actually used for decomposition, as lead researcher Dougald O'Reilly of Australian National University in Canberra explained in a statement.
The professor hypothesized that once the process was complete, the bones would then be buried nearby. But whatever the details, he is now convinced that the jars "were used for the disposal of the dead."
Wikipedia says, "[Grave sites] are one of the chief sources of information on prehistoric cultures, and numerous archaeological cultures are defined by their burial customs."
What does it say about ancient cultures in Laos that they put their dead in big stone jars?
(Score: 4, Interesting) by RamiK on Saturday April 09 2016, @11:11PM
Rich Jews would dig up a hill side and lay their kin's corpses on a flat stone bed. A year later, they would collect the bones and stick them in a jar and rack 'em up on a shelf in the cave. Richer Jews would use stone carved boxes called γλωσσόϰομος \ גלוסקמאות and the richest would use a full body sized stone casket similar to a sarcophagus and referred as such by some contemporary archeologists.
Around Jesus time, people started noticing the bones would turn to dust after a few centuries. They also worried about no being rich enough to afford this or that people would disturb their bones... That's what the whole Heavenly Kingdom thing was about for the people of the time. A way to circumvent Ezekiel 37:1-14 .
There's a whole lot of misconceptions and misinterpretations in Christianity over this sort of things because country priests and even better educated priests didn't know about these sorts of things. About 50 years after the printing press was invented, academic circulation of what was previously only known to Jewish Rabbis made it clear just how much of Catholicism is a result of misinformation... While there are a lot of economic and political factors, these sort of revelations were what gave academic legitimacy to the likes of Martin Luther to leave Catholicism.
Regardless, the practice was picked up from the Egyptians, but everyone around the Mediterranean used to do this sort of things. Rome and Greece included. Separately, some English and Celtics developed similar practices with their burial hills.
compiling...