Archaeologists have discovered the skeletal remains of a medieval “vampire” at an excavation site in Poland. The remains of a female were buried on her back with a sickle above her throat; Experts say this arrangement was made to ensure that if the dead woman rose again, her head would be separated from her body.
As Professor Dariusz Polinsky of Nicolaus Copernicus University explains: “The scythe was not laid flat but rather placed on the neck in such a way that the deceased would have tried to stand most likely to have been cut or injured.”
Additional details so far include the fact that the woman wore a silk hat – a possible indicator of high social status – and one of her front teeth was considered “prominent”. There was also a padlock attached to the big left toe – perhaps as a symbol of life ending permanently.
Today’s horror magics such as vampires (or zombies, werewolves, and other supernatural monsters) were a part of medieval (and beyond) mythology. Scientists have routinely found examples in different cultures around the world of the dead being buried or buried with some precautions in place to ensure they cannot escape from the grave and terrorize the living again.
Professor Polinsky explains that “methods of protection against the return of the dead include cutting off the head or legs, placing the deceased face down to be bitten in the ground, cremation, and smashing with a stone.”
Dark legends about the dead coming back to life and/or spreading their death along with the misfortunes of antiquity – vampires were an obvious metaphor for the plague, for example. Dr. Leslie Gregorica, of the University of South Alabama, detailed it:
“People in the post-medieval period did not understand how disease spread, and instead of a scientific explanation for these epidemics, cholera and the deaths that resulted were explained by the paranormal – in this case, vampires.”
This method of burial has been discovered in Poland before: in 2014 six skeletons were discovered in a 400-year-old cemetery all buried – a middle-aged man and woman in the group were found buried with a scythe above their throats.
We hope that the people of medieval Poland were overly superstitious and paranoid. Because if they really go into all those troubles with burial because they know something we don’t… the vampire horror genre is about to move to the non-fiction section…
source: UK metro
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