FRANKENSTEIN MUMMIES

I came across an interesting article on bodies that was buried with parts from several individuals. The article was called Scottist "Frankenstein" Mummies. These bodies were about 3,000 years old, and one of male and one of female found in the fetal position. It shows traces that it was intentionally preserved in the peat bogs. For the male body, it was made of three seperate men, its torso, skull and lower jaw. The female skeleton was a composite formed from a male skull, a female torso and the arm of a third person, whose gender cannot be determined. The carbon dating indicate that the skull of the female mummy is 50 to 200 years older than the torso.
The archaeologists hypothesize that the mixing of the remains could have belonged to a different ancestry or families into a single line of descent. However, it should never be presumed to think so. It's fascinating to think about how the people who buried this "individual(s)" could have placed it so it looked like A person, and that to put it into a fetal position. I wonder if the archaeologists thought differently when they first excavated the site. Did it really look like it was just one individual? Or were the placement of certain parts.. a little off? And if we do find more of these, what other theories will archaeologists think of? Haha.

http://www.archaeology.org/issues/63-features/top-10//272-top-10-2012-frankenstein-mummies

Cannibalistic Neandertals

I was looking through follow classmate's blog: Krystal Groves and inspired me to talk about it on my blog. You can check her blog here: http://archofdeath.blogspot.ca/2013/03/today-i-was-working-on-discussion-for.html

I am also in the Neandertals class (Anth 394) and we are having a discussion on "Neandertals eat Neandertals world". We read through three papers:

• Trinkaus E. 1985. Cannibalism and burial at Krapina. Journal of Human Evolution 14(2):203-216.
• Rosas et al. 2006. Paleobiology and comparative morphology of a late Neandertal sample from El Sidron, Asturias, Spain. PNAS 103(51):19266-19271.
• Underdown S. 2008. A potential role for Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathies in Neanderthal extinction. Medical Hypotheses 71: 4-7.

They are all short, so have a look at them.

So what the articles suggest are that the evidences of the cannibalistic behaviours found in Neandertals were the human-induced modification of human bones like: cut marks, flakes, percussion pitting, conchoidal scars and adhering flakes. Also they show skull bones with cut marks that possibly indicate the skinning of the bodies. Some of the long bones were broken, which is related to processing for marrow. Lastly, there are few with signs of burning of the bones and scattered bone fragments mixed with other bones of other mammals.

The reasons why archaeologists think that Neandertals were practising cannibalism is that the bone breaking for marrow and brains suggest the nutritional exploitation. There were signs of high levels of developmental stress, shown on the bones and teeth enamels, perhaps suggesting cannibalism was a way for survival. Few have fought these discussions on the "what if they were ritualistic behaviours?" But since we cannot ask the dead, this still remains puzzling.

Personally, there might have been evidences of cannibalistic behaviours, but I don't quite agree 100% of all those suggestions. The skulls and other bone fragments are very old. It is hard to tell what exactly happend to them. So this appealing idea should be kept on the low key, until they find more evidences.

Underdown's hypothesis is that Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathis was involved in Neandertal's extinction. Comparing the Neandertals with the Fore tribe in Papua New Guinea who practices the cannibalistic rituals, he suggests that it is possible for this could have happened to the Neandertals as well. I agree that it is plausible that this could have happend, but however, even in the paper, it mentions briefly about how TSE might have spread by using infected tools from cutting off other animals that carried it. Unfortunately, this is not testable, since last population of Neandertals are extinct and you cannot simply compare it with the Kuru (Fore Tribe) and the population that last died off 30,000 years ago.

Neandertals: Medicinal (wo)Men?

Recently, Karen Hardy of the Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies in Spain and Stephen Buckley of the University of York in the United Kingdom did analysis on the teeth that were found in El Sidrón Cave in Piloña, Asturias, Spain. Few the "gunk" that was found on the teeth, they were able to do a DNA analysis to figure that the Neandertals who lived in this area consumed medicinal plants and knew what they were consuming. The calcified plaque on the teeth dated to about 50,600-47,300 years ago. The results showed that "the Neanderthals inhaled wood smoke, probably from a campfire, and that they had eaten cooked plant foods as well as the bitter-tasting medicinal plants chamomile and yarrow." “They had to have a body of knowledge about plants to select yarrow and chamomile,” says Hardy.

It is interesting to find that researchers have thought to analyze as well as able to get the results. How well was the teeth preserved to be able to find such results as this? It is questionable, since depending on how they tested for this analysis and would there have been a default in this type of model of sampling? How accurate is this data? However, it is fascinating that one can get a glimpse of how people lived in this era, especially Neandertals. (I believe this is a recent find -December of 2012?)

http://www.archaeology.org/issues/61-1301/features/top-10/266-top-10-2012-neanderthal-medicine

Horse meat is Pagan food?

Reading through Archaeology.com, one article stood out to me.
"Why Brits stopped eating horese meat"
It was interesting because the article itself was very short with few facts saying that eating equine meat had fallen out of practices during th late 8th century. Poole, a doctorate candidate for Nottingham University, suggested that it was because the practice was drive out by Christianity and that horse meat was associated with Pagan practices, which would have been supressed at the time.
Horse is related to Pagan gods and known to have eaten the meat for religious purposes.

Ross Bay Cemetery

This is a picture of my group members.
I was busy wandering off by the Presbyterian section that I could not feature myself in this wonderful photo. Oh shame.

Ross Bay was SO beautiful. It was my first time ever to step in a cemetery, so my group had to deal with my squeals and constantly yelling, "AH I AM SO SORRY FOR STEPPING ON YOU, DEAD PERSON!"

We chose a pretty good day to do the field work. It was sunny, but still COLD. Most of the field was shadowed off and since it's by the water, the sea breaze did not help either. We walked about for an hour to see what we wanted to choose for our topic and noticed few particular things. We saw wargraves in the Roman Catholic side that was newly put in (or so it seems like). They were all in line (except for few) and helped linining it up, they had flowers and decorative grass(?) plants going side by side the graves. We figured they were put in recently to recognize the ones who died over seas. We also noticed the differences between the Christian groups. Roman Catholic graves had bigger crosses, mentioning of Mary, and had seperate site for all the M. Sisters. Other Christian sites like Presbyterian and Anglican had Angels featured or had celtic crosses. (It was definately fascinating to see the different ways to 'decorate' the crosses).

We wanted to see what would have effected us to pick the sights of the graves and what could effect our statement for this project. One of the things that all of our group members agreed on was... that the sunlight manipulated us to choose spots. It was so cold in the shade, that I chose two of the graves just because they were in the sunlight.

This definately was an interesting experience. I think I might come back to Ross Bay just for a walk or so. I was trying to convince my boyfriend and some of my friends to go to the Ross Bay Cemetery for a date or a stroll, and they thought I was crazy. This place was so peaceful and beautiful. Thanks Erin for this amazing experience!

Different Burials

There was a youtube video that I saw by vsauce, titled "Taxidermy". However, I believe any of the practices done to taxidermy people have failed, because even though there are practices for the animals. If that animal was close to you, the taxidermists could not get it exactly the same for the outcome to look like when it was alive. In this video, Michael (the youtuber) talks about Lenin's body (and I believe Mao as well) and how it is preserved exactly the same. The scientists made a specific liquid that you can inject it into the body, for it not to deteriorate. The other people who have tried this are either very rich or higher ranking mobs.

Green burial is a new alternative for people who are worried about the environmental impact the traditional burials might cost. Body is placed in a casket made of cardboard or biodegradable materials and laid to rest in a park or woodland known as a natural burial ground or eco-cemetery.

I also found myself fiding "Top 10 Fascinating Funerals" list, which has funerals like :Drive thru funeral, sky burial, etc. You should definitely check it out!

link:
http://listverse.com/2012/08/18/top-10-fascinating-funerals/

My Burial

To present myself and what I believed in, I would like to include objects and certain items that are very precious to me. I did have a close family member that passed away and what we did with her was to bury her in her favourite clothes. I would like to do that.. but to think of it, I would like someone close to me to have that with them. I would like to be buried with my "second" choice of clothing, perhaps a picture of myself and family(if science improves and are able to preserve my picture FOREVER). I will try to send that I am a very family based person (so having something that belongs to each family member material to be dear to me as well!) I can't live without a laptop, so perhaps my laptop? And later, if my loved one (perhaps husband in the future?) if he passes away, I would like to be buried next to him and later the whole family. Heck, I would buy a whole cemetery for my family! haha!

When I took the time to put it on facebook, I got a few jokes such as a banana, chopsticks and a llama. A friend even suggested putting my boyfriend... Some said that I should put beauty supplies and make up so that I can dress up even afterlife. Really close friends of mine suggested that I should be buried with a camera (since I take pictures of everything I do, eat, etc.), jam a classic old school Beyonce (a CD), and lastly noodles/pasta (since I cannot live without them, I need to take them with me to afterlife!)
The grave goods I picked out and my friends picked out are completely different. I think I was more thinking of a family based, and wanted what was so dear to me, but my friends thought of things that "literally" represented me, such as my favourite foods, singer, activities etc. There would be a conflict in the future when they do dig my grave up, because they would be able to know who I was in relations to the things I liked, but not WHO I was as a person.