[Faline]

Archaeologists have made a gruesome discovery which could be straight out of a horror movie.
A number of 8th Century human skeletons have been found with large stones stuck in their mouths - something researchers believe locals did to stop the dead from returning to walk the Earth as zombies.
The research started more than six years ago in what was supposed to be a survey of medieval churches in County Roscommon, Ireland.



But a group of the experts stumbled on more than 120 skeletons in a cemetery which dates between the 7th and 14th centuries.

Chris Read, from the Institute of Technology in Sligo, Ireland, has been leading the team during a series of digs carried out between 2005 and 2009 at Kilteasheen, near Loch Key.

He said that two male skeletons, one aged between 40 and 60 and the other a young adult probably in his twenties, had been found among hundreds of other remains.
'One of them was lying with his head looking straight up. A large black stone had been deliberately thrust into his mouth.
'The other had his head turned to the side and had an even larger stone wedged quite violently into his mouth so that his jaws were almost dislocated,' he told Discovery News.
The two men were lying side by side and discovered together.
The team first thought they had stumbled across a Black Death burial ground when remains of people buried at the end of the Middle Ages had stones stuck in their mouths because they were involved in vampire slaying rituals.
It is thought about 3,000 skeletons buried from 700 to 1400 are still buried at the site.

[Faline]

The belief that zombies can return from the grave as living dead has its roots in Haitian culture, where it is linked to voodoo magic and witchcraft.
The superstition is so strong on the Caribbean island that relatives of the dead will dismember a corpse so that it cannot return as a zombie. Others will stand guard over a grave to protect the body until decomposition has set in.
According to believers, a zombie will rise up from its grave in a hypnotic trance, capable of responding to stimuli but lacking self-awareness.
Initially, archaeologists believed the ritual of placing a stone in the mouth may have related to vampire slayings, where a stake is driven into the heart of a victim. Vampires were believed to spread plague and a stone placed inside the mouth was thought to prevent this. Practitioners also believed that placing a stone in the mouth of a corpse would starve it.
In 2009, the remains of a 60-year-old woman with a rock thrust in her mouth were discovered in a mass grave from the 1500s on the Venetian island of Lazzaretto Nuovo.
But vampire culture did not evolve until the 16th Century and therefore does not explain why stones were found in skeletons dating from the eighth century.
'In this case, the stones in the mouth might have acted as a barrier to stop revenants from coming back from their graves,' Dr Read said.
According to the archeologist, the mouth 'was viewed as the main portal for the soul to leave the body upon death'.
'Sometimes, the soul could come back to the body and re-animate it or else an evil spirit could enter the body through the mouth and bring it back to life," he said.

[Kim]

Interesting.

[BigFoot]

That'd definitely be anti-zombie move.

[kellyhound]

It is thought about 3,000 skeletons buried from 700 to 1400 are still buried at the site

cool.

superstition ruled back in those days and as a matter of fact it still does in sum places on earth

[Viking64]

Better stones than cocks.

[GODREKR]

Two 8th-century skeletons with stones shoved in their mouths suggest that the people of the time thought so.

By Rossella Lorenzi
For Discovery News
Fri Sep 16, 2011

Two early medieval skeletons were unearthed recently in Ireland with large stones wedged into their mouths -- evidence, archaeologists say, that it was feared the individuals would rise from their graves like zombies.

The skeletons, which were featured in a British documentary last week, emerged during a series of digs carried out between 2005 and 2009 at Kilteasheen, near Loch Key in Ireland by a team of archaeologists led by Chris Read from the Institute of Technology in Sligo, Ireland and Thomas Finan from the University of St. Louis.

The project recovered a total of 137 skeletons, although archaeologists believe that some 3,000 skeletons spanning from 700 to 1400 are still buried at the site.

The "deviant burials" were comprised of two men who were buried there at different times in the 700s.

One of the men was between 40 and 60 years old, and the other was a young adult, probably between 20 and 30 years old. The two men were laid side by side and each had a baseball-sized rock shoved in his mouth.

"One of them was lying with his head looking straight up. A large black stone had been deliberately thrust into his mouth," Chris Read, head of Applied Archaeology at IT Sligo, said.

"The other had his head turned to the side and had an even larger stone wedged quite violently into his mouth so that his jaws were almost dislocated," he added.

Initially, Read and colleagues thought they had found a Black Death-related burial ground. Remains of individuals buried at the end of the Middle Ages with stones stuck in their mouths have hinted at vampire-slaying rituals.

It was believed that these "vampire" individuals spread the plague by chewing on their shrouds after dying. In a time before germ theory, the stone in the mouth was then used as a disease-blocking trick.

Since the vampire phenomenon didn't emerge in European folklore until the 1500's, the archaeologists ruled out this theory for the 8th century skeletons.

"In this case, the stones in the mouth might have acted as a barrier to stop revenants from coming back from their graves," Read told Discovery News.

Revenants or the "walking dead" tended to be people who lived as outsiders in society, according to Read.

The two Irish men could have been considered potentially dangerous people, such as enemies, murderers, rapists or they could have been ordinary individuals who died suddenly from a strange illness or murder.

Anything outside the norm would have caused the community to fear that these people could have come back to life to harass their loved ones or others against whom they had a grudge.

The mouth was seen as a key part of the body for such a transformation.

"It was viewed as the main portal for the soul to leave the body upon death. Sometimes, the soul could come back to the body and re-animate it or else an evil spirit could enter the body through the mouth and bring it back to life," Read said.

According to Kristina Killgrove, a biological anthropologist at the University of North Carolina, the burials' dating is particularly interesting as it appears to predate historical records on revenants.

"I'm also intrigued by the fact that the two males were not buried at the same time but were nonetheless buried side-by-side in this non-traditional manner, which suggests these burials were not accidental or careless," Killgrove told Discovery News.

[Weatherly]

What? That's how we should bury people now... Fucking zombies. You laugh til one eats your arm.

[souris]