4 ms·

Surely if this practice is so widespread, at some point it should have happened, or at least seemed to have happened right? Perhaps so many people lived in nea

by tinco 10y ago

Surely if this practice is so widespread, at some point it should have happened, or at least seemed to have happened right? Perhaps so many people lived in near death circumstances due to plague and such that some persons simply looked dead for a while, and then came back as the disease relented a little? I can imagine someone suffering late stage bubonic plague certainly looked like zombies.

StavrosK 10y ago
Yes, because humanity has never held a belief that wasn't firmly grounded in fact!
- tinco 10y ago
  Humanity certainly has not suffered greatly from curiosity towards the grounds of beliefs.
M_Grey 10y ago
Someone suffering from late-stage plague looks like a rotting, moaning, stinking pile in a bed, it's not mobile. It's possible that this was a result of the difficulty in determining the difference between near-death, and death, but honestly lets be realistic... this was probably just the usual terror and anxiety.
angry-hacker 10y ago
Indeed, safety coffins and such were a great deal. Also a long wake when someone died. Thankfully measuring pulse ended the deal.
- nkrisc 10y ago
  Hammering coffins shut and burying them also ensured they were dead.
djscram 10y ago
Actually there are a lot of reasons for dead people apparently coming back. Burying bodies so they stay down is actually a big effort for most cultures, wild animals and weather conditions can easily pull a body from a shallower grave and redeposit it somewhere else. Add that to the tendency of bodies to continue to change after death, or at least appear to (gums receding looks like teeth growing, etc.) and it's not hard to see how people in earlier culture s might get the impression that the dead are up and walking around. Factor in also how diseases can take members of a family or others close to the dead person invisibly, and, well...
- awinter-py 10y ago
  Disagree -- agriculturists & hunter-gatherers are way more familiar with death than moderns because they slaughtered their own livestock. We don't even experience human birth & death at home; it's packaged for us by hospitals and funeral parlors. The basic anatomical knowledge in a society where everyone has killed a goat is arguably higher than industrialized 2017 where we get our steaks pre-cut. I'd be interested in an argument that says wealthy, artistic, anatomically modern humans in the stone or bronze age aren't aware of the symbolic content of their death rituals. But I haven't heard one yet.
jszymborski 10y ago
I mean, graves that aren't consistently below the frost line can eventually move and shift to the surface. That's a sight that'll have you chopping up the corpses of loved ones, I bet. Edit: speeling
heurist 10y ago
It was a big enough problem that technological solutions were invented to solve it: https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Safety_coffin https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Safety_coffin It still happens today: http://www.businessinsider.com/man-rescued-after-being-buried-alive-in-brazil-2013-11 http://www.businessinsider.com/man-rescued-after-being-burie... Bodies can also move from gassing or various parts of their nervous system being prodded shortly after death.

by tinco 10y ago

StavrosK 10y ago

Yes, because humanity has never held a belief that wasn't firmly grounded in fact!

tinco 10y ago
Humanity certainly has not suffered greatly from curiosity towards the grounds of beliefs.

M_Grey 10y ago

Someone suffering from late-stage plague looks like a rotting, moaning, stinking pile in a bed, it's not mobile. It's possible that this was a result of the difficulty in determining the difference between near-death, and death, but honestly lets be realistic... this was probably just the usual terror and anxiety.

angry-hacker 10y ago

Indeed, safety coffins and such were a great deal. Also a long wake when someone died. Thankfully measuring pulse ended the deal.

nkrisc 10y ago
Hammering coffins shut and burying them also ensured they were dead.

djscram 10y ago

Actually there are a lot of reasons for dead people apparently coming back. Burying bodies so they stay down is actually a big effort for most cultures, wild animals and weather conditions can easily pull a body from a shallower grave and redeposit it somewhere else. Add that to the tendency of bodies to continue to change after death, or at least appear to (gums receding looks like teeth growing, etc.) and it's not hard to see how people in earlier culture s might get the impression that the dead are up and walking around. Factor in also how diseases can take members of a family or others close to the dead person invisibly, and, well...

awinter-py 10y ago
Disagree -- agriculturists & hunter-gatherers are way more familiar with death than moderns because they slaughtered their own livestock. We don't even experience human birth & death at home; it's packaged for us by hospitals and funeral parlors. The basic anatomical knowledge in a society where everyone has killed a goat is arguably higher than industrialized 2017 where we get our steaks pre-cut. I'd be interested in an argument that says wealthy, artistic, anatomically modern humans in the stone or bronze age aren't aware of the symbolic content of their death rituals. But I haven't heard one yet.

jszymborski 10y ago

I mean, graves that aren't consistently below the frost line can eventually move and shift to the surface. That's a sight that'll have you chopping up the corpses of loved ones, I bet. Edit: speeling

heurist 10y ago

It was a big enough problem that technological solutions were invented to solve it: https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Safety_coffin https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Safety_coffin It still happens today: http://www.businessinsider.com/man-rescued-after-being-buried-alive-in-brazil-2013-11 http://www.businessinsider.com/man-rescued-after-being-burie... Bodies can also move from gassing or various parts of their nervous system being prodded shortly after death.