WEBVTT - Human Remains: Past, Present and Future 0:00:03.120 --> 0:00:06.000 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff 0:00:06.000 --> 0:00:13.319 Works dot com. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow 0:00:13.360 --> 0:00:15.640 your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and up Joe McCormick, 0:00:15.680 --> 0:00:17.200 and right at the top of this episode, we want 0:00:17.200 --> 0:00:19.640 to just hit three quick things. First of all, Stuff 0:00:19.680 --> 0:00:22.080 to Blow your Mind dot Com. That's our mothership. That's 0:00:22.079 --> 0:00:24.840 where you'll find all the podcast episodes, blog post videos, 0:00:25.320 --> 0:00:28.400 et cetera. And you know it's currently for the month 0:00:28.400 --> 0:00:30.680 of October. We're gonna have it front loaded with a 0:00:30.680 --> 0:00:34.320 lot of cool Halloween content. And along those those lines, 0:00:34.840 --> 0:00:37.599 we have a new season of Monster Science coming out, 0:00:37.680 --> 0:00:42.040 four new episodes looking at the connections between fictional monsters 0:00:42.159 --> 0:00:45.280 and real world science. So there's one about werewolves, there's 0:00:45.280 --> 0:00:48.320 one about Big Trouble Little China. Hopefully a lot of 0:00:48.320 --> 0:00:50.640 great stuff in there. I think you'll all enjoy it. 0:00:50.880 --> 0:00:53.520 And hold on, you gotta tell me what's the science 0:00:53.560 --> 0:00:56.400 of David Lopan. Oh well, it's not so much David 0:00:56.440 --> 0:01:02.279 Lopan as one of his minions. Okay, very explosive minion um. 0:01:02.600 --> 0:01:05.200 Just to give you a hint. Uh So, yeah, Dr 0:01:05.240 --> 0:01:07.480 Anton Jessup will look into that and and draw some 0:01:07.640 --> 0:01:10.679 interesting comparisons between that and something in the natural world. 0:01:11.400 --> 0:01:15.000 And finally periscoping, Uh, stuff to blow your mind me, 0:01:15.560 --> 0:01:19.360 Joe Christian, we will be on the periscope October twenty 0:01:19.440 --> 0:01:24.120 three attending to our build up of listener mail, which 0:01:24.160 --> 0:01:26.600 is his built up under the sands like a like 0:01:26.640 --> 0:01:29.039 a like a prespice mass just ready to blow to 0:01:29.080 --> 0:01:32.680 the surface. So again October twenty three on that stuff 0:01:32.680 --> 0:01:34.959 to blow your mind dot com. And now let's move 0:01:35.000 --> 0:01:39.880 on with today's episode. So it's October, our favorite month. 0:01:39.920 --> 0:01:43.200 It's my favorite month. I assume it's yours. Okay, Yeah, 0:01:43.240 --> 0:01:45.240 I often get into trouble by placing I think too 0:01:45.360 --> 0:01:47.960 much emphasis on it, Like I build it up all year, 0:01:48.000 --> 0:01:50.400 and then when it comes I kind of forget that. Yes, 0:01:50.440 --> 0:01:53.480 there's extra cool stuff and the weather is hopefully getting 0:01:53.480 --> 0:01:57.280 a little cooler. Uh, and there's Halloween. But on the 0:01:57.280 --> 0:01:59.360 other hand, all the other stuff in life is still 0:01:59.400 --> 0:02:02.640 happening and uh and isn't gonna make it this just 0:02:02.800 --> 0:02:06.480 idyllic kind of scenario. In our house, we treat Halloween 0:02:06.680 --> 0:02:10.880 the way malls treat Christmas, where like the entire month 0:02:10.960 --> 0:02:13.600 leading up to it, it's Halloween every day, So we 0:02:13.600 --> 0:02:18.240 we watched monster movies all all October. It's it's our 0:02:18.280 --> 0:02:21.160 favorite part of the year. And so it being October, 0:02:21.200 --> 0:02:23.880 now we thought we'd talked about some corpses. Yeah, I 0:02:23.880 --> 0:02:26.920 mean it's part and partial to the holiday, right, Contemplations 0:02:27.760 --> 0:02:33.640 of death inform our our monsters are our traditions, and uh, you, 0:02:33.639 --> 0:02:36.280 you can't separate it from Halloween. So we might as 0:02:36.320 --> 0:02:38.680 well just get right down to the nitty gritty and 0:02:38.680 --> 0:02:41.120 talk about what what we do when it when a 0:02:41.200 --> 0:02:43.359 human being dies? What have we done in the past, 0:02:43.560 --> 0:02:46.000 what are we doing now, and what might we do 0:02:46.120 --> 0:02:49.720 in the future. Yeah, so our inspiration for this episode 0:02:49.760 --> 0:02:52.320 was I think it was two weeks ago, I don't know, 0:02:52.320 --> 0:02:54.919 a while ago. Robert and I were in here one 0:02:54.960 --> 0:02:57.840 morning looking for a cool story to talk about, and 0:02:58.080 --> 0:03:01.400 my wife Rachel had sent me this worry about a 0:03:01.400 --> 0:03:04.640 tree in Ireland that got blown over in a storm 0:03:04.720 --> 0:03:06.640 and as it was blown over in the storm, it 0:03:06.840 --> 0:03:10.400 pulled up a large clod of topsoil with its roots, 0:03:11.040 --> 0:03:13.120 and hanging there in the roots was half of a 0:03:13.200 --> 0:03:15.640 human skeleton, and the other half was still left in 0:03:15.680 --> 0:03:18.840 the ground below the tree. But a tree had grown 0:03:18.960 --> 0:03:22.720 up out of this dead body that had supposedly been 0:03:22.760 --> 0:03:26.640 somebody probably murdered in the Middle Ages, and that the case. Yeah, 0:03:26.639 --> 0:03:28.840 he you know, he was probably killed either in combat 0:03:29.000 --> 0:03:32.560 or some sort of you know, bloodthirsty Irish duel, who knows. 0:03:32.680 --> 0:03:35.560 But then you buried in a shallow grave, and over 0:03:35.600 --> 0:03:38.680 time a tree grows there or adjacent to it, and 0:03:38.720 --> 0:03:41.360 when that tree falls over rips up a portion of 0:03:41.360 --> 0:03:44.520 his skeleton remains. Yeah, so what began is grizzly into 0:03:44.720 --> 0:03:47.800 kind of oddly beautiful with the tree coming up out 0:03:47.800 --> 0:03:50.160 of the ground. And and we found out while looking 0:03:50.200 --> 0:03:52.360 a bit further into the story in this topic of 0:03:52.480 --> 0:03:55.720 trees growing out of human corpses, that some people are 0:03:55.760 --> 0:03:59.280 actually seeking this on purpose. And so that got us 0:03:59.320 --> 0:04:03.120 thinking about the whole idea of of new ways of 0:04:03.160 --> 0:04:06.320 dealing with our dead. Yeah. I mean, there are lots 0:04:06.320 --> 0:04:08.400 of weird things you could do with the dead body. 0:04:08.440 --> 0:04:10.480 I mean, you might just take a corpse and put 0:04:10.520 --> 0:04:13.240 it in a rocking chair on your front board, let 0:04:13.240 --> 0:04:16.080 it scare the trick or treaters, or you might throw 0:04:16.120 --> 0:04:18.360 it into a volcano, or I don't know, what are 0:04:18.400 --> 0:04:20.520 some other good things to do. Well. I always like 0:04:20.560 --> 0:04:23.279 the danger diabolic model, where you just where you're just 0:04:23.320 --> 0:04:26.640 sealed in gold, right, just alive, just mummified as a 0:04:26.680 --> 0:04:29.360 golden statue. Oh that's a really good one. So it's 0:04:29.400 --> 0:04:32.240 like the inverse of the person who gets molten gold 0:04:32.320 --> 0:04:35.800 poured down his throat. Yes, yeah, yeah, And you know 0:04:35.800 --> 0:04:37.360 it ties in, of course, our need with a lot 0:04:37.360 --> 0:04:40.279 of burial practices, to to make something offous that will 0:04:40.320 --> 0:04:43.240 stand the test of time. We have died, our name 0:04:43.360 --> 0:04:45.880 is going to die. But hey, show me the solid 0:04:45.920 --> 0:04:48.360 gold statue of me. Nobody's gonna come around and claim 0:04:48.400 --> 0:04:52.680 that and reuse that those materials, right, I mean, wouldn't 0:04:52.720 --> 0:04:56.040 that be ironic if the Great Memorial to the to 0:04:56.160 --> 0:04:59.000 the Dead Beloved Leader ends up in the electronics of 0:04:59.040 --> 0:05:01.159 the future there go, I was just thinking about that. 0:05:01.320 --> 0:05:03.760 I end up getting broken down again, and then my 0:05:03.839 --> 0:05:07.839 gold is used in various little wearable gadgets, so I 0:05:07.880 --> 0:05:12.160 gotta make a catalytic converter, come on. But yeah, anyway, 0:05:12.240 --> 0:05:14.360 So one of the things that we found is interesting 0:05:14.400 --> 0:05:17.119 looking into this is how much some of the new 0:05:17.200 --> 0:05:22.400 and exciting ways of disposing of our dead actually mimic 0:05:22.520 --> 0:05:25.599 some of the oldest ways that we're sort of coming 0:05:25.640 --> 0:05:27.840 full circle, and so I think we should start by 0:05:27.839 --> 0:05:32.239 looking at some ancient practices for disposal of the dead. Yeah, 0:05:32.279 --> 0:05:34.120 I mean, first of all, just thinking, like the most 0:05:34.160 --> 0:05:38.960 basic scenario possible, just some primordial human wandering around out 0:05:39.000 --> 0:05:42.120 in the waist waste plans, you know, dressed in furs, 0:05:43.480 --> 0:05:47.440 he or she keels over dead. What happens. Nature takes 0:05:47.480 --> 0:05:53.640 its course, decomposition, insects moving in, laying their eggs, sat scavenging, 0:05:53.680 --> 0:05:56.800 animals coming in, tearing it apart, the Sun, the elements, 0:05:56.839 --> 0:06:00.440 all of it working to just erase that body from 0:06:00.520 --> 0:06:02.920 the face of the Earth, like all signs of it. 0:06:03.240 --> 0:06:05.760 I mean, it's one of those, uh, the situations when 0:06:05.760 --> 0:06:07.760 you look at the fossil record, Like, one of the 0:06:07.800 --> 0:06:11.719 reasons that the fossil record is inherently incomplete is because 0:06:11.839 --> 0:06:14.800 you have to have a certain set of conditions met 0:06:15.120 --> 0:06:18.920 for the skeletal remains of an ancient beast to fossilize 0:06:18.920 --> 0:06:22.240 and therefore stand the test of time um and potentially 0:06:22.560 --> 0:06:26.800 wind up being discovered by explorers or paleontologists. Yeah, definitely, 0:06:26.839 --> 0:06:30.000 most terrestrial animals do not die under conditions that are 0:06:30.040 --> 0:06:32.960 conducive for fossilization. Yeah. They come from nothing and they 0:06:33.040 --> 0:06:35.120 return to nothing. And it just is all part of 0:06:35.160 --> 0:06:39.719 the the recycling UM. And so we see some some 0:06:39.880 --> 0:06:43.480 of our our older models of dealing with the dead, 0:06:43.760 --> 0:06:48.479 you see them UH working in synergy with this, with 0:06:48.560 --> 0:06:53.000 this kind of recycling of the body UM. One of 0:06:53.040 --> 0:06:56.800 my favorites, of course is his sky burial or celestial 0:06:56.960 --> 0:07:02.360 burial UM, which is a form of exposure burial or excarnation, 0:07:02.520 --> 0:07:05.080 if you will. The most famous example of this UH 0:07:05.279 --> 0:07:08.800 is probably the Tibetan model, which is called tour or 0:07:08.839 --> 0:07:11.400 the giving of alms to the birds. So and this 0:07:11.440 --> 0:07:13.200 is this is when you have the body of a 0:07:13.200 --> 0:07:19.240 deceased individual and it's um essentially dismantled, taken apart by 0:07:19.280 --> 0:07:23.240 a chosen individual so that it can be quickly consumed 0:07:23.320 --> 0:07:26.400 by the vultures. And there are a number of scenarios 0:07:26.400 --> 0:07:29.560 that play into into this. Okay, for starters, just the 0:07:29.560 --> 0:07:34.480 Tibetan environment. The ground is um is rocky or it's frozen. 0:07:34.800 --> 0:07:37.440 It's so available soil as at a premium. So any 0:07:37.480 --> 0:07:41.640 any available soil in the Tibetan landscape, you're you're probably 0:07:41.720 --> 0:07:44.280 using it to produce food. You can't waste a lot 0:07:44.320 --> 0:07:47.720 of it on on burial grounds. And imagine you're farming 0:07:47.800 --> 0:07:50.360 or grazing your animals on it right now. Meanwhile, you 0:07:50.440 --> 0:07:53.240 have natural scavengers in the era you have you have 0:07:53.280 --> 0:07:58.080 some wolves, you have carrying hungry uh um lamba guyers 0:07:58.080 --> 0:08:01.640 and vultures that are unting the air overhead. We'll hold on. 0:08:01.680 --> 0:08:05.640 What's a lambur guy Oh, lambur guyer is wonderful um 0:08:05.840 --> 0:08:09.000 scavenging bird that depends on on the bones and I'll 0:08:09.040 --> 0:08:11.400 take the bones up to a high height, drop them, 0:08:11.480 --> 0:08:14.120 let the drones that the bones crack open, and then 0:08:14.160 --> 0:08:18.000 go down and uh and have at them. So that's genius. Yeah, 0:08:18.040 --> 0:08:20.520 I mean, it's banned and perhaps serves as some of 0:08:20.520 --> 0:08:25.400 the inspiration for the practice of sky burials about about 0:08:25.440 --> 0:08:30.080 to relate here. The other aspect is that the while 0:08:30.440 --> 0:08:32.880 we tend to associate the bat today, you know, very 0:08:32.920 --> 0:08:37.400 strongly with Tibetan Buddhism, but the region's earlier bond religion 0:08:37.559 --> 0:08:42.520 was animistic and viewed non humans as spiritual beings. So 0:08:43.720 --> 0:08:45.880 in this case, you would have you know, it's not 0:08:45.920 --> 0:08:49.640 just a scavenging bird, it's a it's a holy animal, right, 0:08:49.960 --> 0:08:53.280 and so it's it's all the more appropriate that it 0:08:53.360 --> 0:08:55.960 consumed the dead. That kind of practice seems to me 0:08:56.080 --> 0:09:00.120 like it's especially acceptable to people if you view the 0:09:00.160 --> 0:09:03.280 animals that are scavenging as holy in some way, because 0:09:03.600 --> 0:09:05.640 we don't really tend to look at vultures that way. 0:09:05.679 --> 0:09:08.480 I think maybe we should, but but we think of 0:09:08.559 --> 0:09:11.880 vultures is kind of like nasty creatures, I don't know, 0:09:11.920 --> 0:09:14.600 like sewer rats or something. But if you look at 0:09:14.600 --> 0:09:18.040 a vulture as a as a noble beast, having to 0:09:18.120 --> 0:09:20.320 consume your flesh seems like a cool thing. And yeah, 0:09:20.360 --> 0:09:23.120 even if there's some defensive vomiting involved, Yeah, we spent 0:09:23.160 --> 0:09:25.960 our whole lives wanting to to fly, and hey, here's 0:09:25.960 --> 0:09:29.000 your chance in the belly of the vulture. Um. But 0:09:29.880 --> 0:09:31.880 so that the approach here is kind of like that 0:09:31.920 --> 0:09:34.960 of the dismantling that I mentioned with the lambur guyer. So, yeah, 0:09:35.200 --> 0:09:37.000 you have a period of mourning and prayer. Then the 0:09:37.040 --> 0:09:39.400 body is blessed, it's cleaned, it wrapped in white cloth, 0:09:39.440 --> 0:09:42.080 and finally the spine is broken and this allows the 0:09:42.120 --> 0:09:44.720 body to be folded into a smaller bundle, and then 0:09:44.760 --> 0:09:47.640 it's carried to a sacred burial site on the back 0:09:47.640 --> 0:09:50.040 of a close friend or a family member. And then 0:09:50.400 --> 0:09:55.360 the actual sky burial itself falls to either a rogyapa 0:09:55.760 --> 0:09:59.559 whose work is uh, it's more straightforward rendering of the corpse, 0:09:59.840 --> 0:10:03.679 or a lama burial master who has a monk, recites prayers, 0:10:03.720 --> 0:10:06.440 doing the ritual in addition to breaking the body. So 0:10:06.480 --> 0:10:09.880 we're talking about taking the body, putting it face down 0:10:09.880 --> 0:10:13.960 on the stones. Um. So it's not literal burial, no, No, 0:10:14.200 --> 0:10:17.160 it's it's more like I am bearing you well in 0:10:17.200 --> 0:10:19.199 the sky, in the vulture, in the birds and the 0:10:19.240 --> 0:10:22.800 scavengers that will take off. But there's there's some aid 0:10:22.960 --> 0:10:28.120 applied here. So talking about using a flaming knife for axe, 0:10:28.280 --> 0:10:31.240 cutting off the hair, then slicing up the body, eviscerating it, 0:10:31.559 --> 0:10:35.840 chopping off the limbs. Uh, just a ritual dismantling of 0:10:35.880 --> 0:10:39.920 the body. Um, to allow easier consumption by the birds. 0:10:39.960 --> 0:10:41.920 So you just don't have a bunch of dead bodies 0:10:42.040 --> 0:10:44.600 lingering about and then um, I mean they'll even go 0:10:44.720 --> 0:10:48.560 so far as to pulverize the remaining bones with a hammer, 0:10:48.640 --> 0:10:51.840 then mixing them with like a barley flower so that 0:10:51.920 --> 0:10:54.600 the birds can easily consume that as well, basically doing 0:10:54.640 --> 0:10:59.480 the lamberguier's job for Yeah, but it's but it's beautiful 0:10:59.520 --> 0:11:01.440 and it's its way, you know, because I mean it's 0:11:01.520 --> 0:11:06.599 it's very different from especially the modern Western idea of 0:11:06.600 --> 0:11:10.160 of bearing the body and this little tomb and embalming it, 0:11:10.200 --> 0:11:13.480 which we're gonna get into all that shortly. Um, but 0:11:13.679 --> 0:11:18.600 it's more in keeping with that the basic reality of death. Well, 0:11:18.679 --> 0:11:21.640 it's it's not only more in keeping with the natural 0:11:21.679 --> 0:11:25.920 process of decomposition, but it's actively encouraging it. It's going 0:11:25.920 --> 0:11:28.440 in the opposite direction of embalming. So if you look 0:11:28.440 --> 0:11:32.800 at modern Western burial practices with caskets and involving as 0:11:33.360 --> 0:11:37.319 essentially trying to prevent the onset of decomposition or put 0:11:37.400 --> 0:11:40.160 up a big halt sign for nature, this is not 0:11:40.200 --> 0:11:43.360 only allowing nature to take its course, but it's trying 0:11:43.400 --> 0:11:47.120 to hasten nature's access to the body. Yeah. Yeah, it's 0:11:47.160 --> 0:11:49.800 it's saying, let's speed this up a bit. Because of 0:11:49.960 --> 0:11:53.080 the human bodies are fairly large body, uh, you know, 0:11:53.160 --> 0:11:55.120 compared to a lot of creatures out there, So it 0:11:55.160 --> 0:11:57.839 does their fauna. Yeah, we are and uh and there 0:11:57.880 --> 0:12:00.600 are a lot of us and be if you have 0:12:00.679 --> 0:12:03.160 a region that's engaging in this kind of sky burial, 0:12:03.360 --> 0:12:05.400 you know, it would be easy for the bodies to 0:12:05.480 --> 0:12:09.440 build up at these sacred sites. Now, another famous model 0:12:09.520 --> 0:12:13.880 of exposure burial is uh the Zoroastrian model, uh, the 0:12:13.880 --> 0:12:17.800 scoff Sky burial via a Tower of Silence. This is 0:12:17.920 --> 0:12:21.880 so interesting and cool and also the Tower of Silence 0:12:21.880 --> 0:12:24.320 has always sounded to me like the name of a 0:12:24.360 --> 0:12:27.320 great strategy game that doesn't exist, Like you should have 0:12:28.040 --> 0:12:31.600 Chess and Go and Tower of Silence. I was thinking 0:12:31.640 --> 0:12:34.360 like a Dungeons and Dragons module, Like we're gonna play 0:12:34.400 --> 0:12:38.040 the Tower of Silence is a classic campaign uh adventure here, 0:12:38.160 --> 0:12:40.000 you know, just because it sounds like a place you 0:12:40.000 --> 0:12:44.800 would go and encounter a wizard but gelatinous cube. But 0:12:44.800 --> 0:12:47.000 but the Tower of Sunds. You actually still find these 0:12:47.040 --> 0:12:49.760 in modern day Iran. Uh. This form of exposure burial 0:12:49.800 --> 0:12:52.880 is still practiced up in parts of India. And the 0:12:52.960 --> 0:12:56.000 model for this Tower of Silence basically you have a 0:12:56.440 --> 0:13:00.640 this cylindrical tower looks like a big stone drum um 0:13:00.760 --> 0:13:03.920 and on top of the the roof slopes slightly in towards 0:13:03.920 --> 0:13:06.040 the center, you know, and keep things from falling off 0:13:06.040 --> 0:13:08.720 because that's where you arrange the bodies of the dead 0:13:09.080 --> 0:13:12.040 in three concentric rings from men, women, and at the 0:13:12.120 --> 0:13:16.200 innermost region the children. And uh, basically you just let 0:13:16.200 --> 0:13:19.960 the sun, insects and scavenging birds do their work stripping 0:13:20.000 --> 0:13:22.840 the unclean body. And that's key here because in the 0:13:22.880 --> 0:13:29.400 Zoroastrian worldview, the dead body is just an inherently unclean thing. 0:13:29.920 --> 0:13:33.160 That is um that not only is it susceptible. I mean, 0:13:33.320 --> 0:13:37.000 in reality, of course, their diseases associated with the dead body, 0:13:37.640 --> 0:13:42.120 but within this uh, this magical worldview that also you 0:13:42.120 --> 0:13:44.800 could have an evil spirit enter into the body. The 0:13:44.800 --> 0:13:48.640 the just nastiness of the body could could not only 0:13:48.679 --> 0:13:53.120 make its surroundings physically unclean, but spiritually unclean. So like this, 0:13:53.760 --> 0:13:56.280 they just want the natural elements to take care of 0:13:56.320 --> 0:13:59.520 that blight as soon as possible. So they just let 0:13:59.559 --> 0:14:02.320 the scaven to do their work, and then the remaining 0:14:02.320 --> 0:14:05.520 bones are taken and stored in an assilary. I love 0:14:05.559 --> 0:14:09.280 the idea here that nature is a sort of cleansing 0:14:09.320 --> 0:14:12.040 agent too. Yeah, so it's not just allowing nature to 0:14:12.080 --> 0:14:14.880 do its work, but it's allowing nature to do something 0:14:15.000 --> 0:14:18.439 useful for you, you know, to to not only get 0:14:18.520 --> 0:14:22.359 rid of this uh, this stinking and uh and potentially 0:14:22.400 --> 0:14:28.480 disease causing mass of flesh, but to potentially remove spiritual danger. Yes, totally. Now, 0:14:28.520 --> 0:14:30.760 of course, in the ancient world, we don't want to 0:14:30.760 --> 0:14:33.360 say that it was all natural and stuff, because some 0:14:33.400 --> 0:14:36.840 people in the ancient world had very similar ideas to 0:14:36.880 --> 0:14:40.840 the modern embalming mentality. Yeah, I mean the obvious example 0:14:40.920 --> 0:14:44.160 here is Egyptian mommification, which Christian and I just did 0:14:44.560 --> 0:14:47.280 a big episode about. I think by the kind of 0:14:47.400 --> 0:14:50.240 airs it will be like the episode before it. Uh 0:14:50.320 --> 0:14:52.840 So go back and listen to that if if you're interested. 0:14:53.160 --> 0:14:56.040 But even that model, even this model that eventually evolves 0:14:56.040 --> 0:14:59.400 to the point where elaborate means are being taken to 0:14:59.560 --> 0:15:02.040 ensure that the body remains in kind of like a 0:15:02.160 --> 0:15:06.840 lifelike state for all eternity. It's its origin still lie 0:15:07.320 --> 0:15:12.120 in the natural process of decomposition or the natural mummification 0:15:12.240 --> 0:15:14.880 of this in this case of the body, because the 0:15:14.920 --> 0:15:19.120 earliest models of Egyptian burial that you find there's there's 0:15:19.200 --> 0:15:23.160 no casket, there's no housing, it's just a few belongings 0:15:23.160 --> 0:15:26.240 and a dead body buried in the sand and in 0:15:26.280 --> 0:15:29.040 the dry sand. This is where you end up with 0:15:29.080 --> 0:15:33.400 these really the incidental uh preservation of internal organs, the 0:15:33.440 --> 0:15:38.040 crisping of the skin, um the natural mummification of the body. 0:15:38.280 --> 0:15:42.600 And then it's only as their funeral practices evolved they 0:15:42.200 --> 0:15:45.720 so they start throwing in caskets and other enclosures, and 0:15:45.720 --> 0:15:48.600 then they're interfering with the natural process that had just 0:15:48.640 --> 0:15:51.520 been a part of living and dying in that environment. 0:15:51.840 --> 0:15:54.960 Then they return to mummification as a means to to 0:15:55.120 --> 0:15:58.880 reclaim what was happening naturally. Yeah, that's interesting. I've never 0:15:58.960 --> 0:16:01.200 thought about it that way. But we could think about 0:16:01.320 --> 0:16:05.160 decomposition not as a feature of the animal that has died, 0:16:05.240 --> 0:16:08.040 but as a feature of the environment that it dies in, 0:16:08.600 --> 0:16:10.640 or at least wherever its body is stored. I mean, 0:16:10.760 --> 0:16:13.440 I suppose you could take a body from one environment 0:16:13.440 --> 0:16:16.400 to another. But yeah, if you are in ancient Egypt 0:16:16.520 --> 0:16:19.680 or at least a very dry, sandy desert, part of it, 0:16:20.320 --> 0:16:24.880 mummification is almost a natural process. Yeah. Yeah, and it's 0:16:24.920 --> 0:16:27.480 it's really like the the mummification as we think about 0:16:27.560 --> 0:16:32.320 the unnatural mummification, the the funeral mummification, it simply means 0:16:32.360 --> 0:16:35.680 to reclaim the natural process. Yeah. And then of course 0:16:35.720 --> 0:16:39.520 we've got cremation, right. This is something that's popular now 0:16:39.560 --> 0:16:42.320 in the modern world, and it has existed for a 0:16:42.320 --> 0:16:45.400 long time, though it's in different cultures, come in and 0:16:45.400 --> 0:16:49.000 out of fashion over the millennia. Cremation just means, of course, 0:16:49.040 --> 0:16:52.600 burning the body into ashes, and it's existed for thousands 0:16:52.640 --> 0:16:55.480 of yours as a funerary practice. We find evidence of 0:16:55.520 --> 0:16:58.480 it going back to the Stone Age. Just one example 0:16:58.560 --> 0:17:02.560 of very ancient cremation. And is this skeletal remains found 0:17:02.560 --> 0:17:06.280 in Australia known as Lake Mungo One or the Lake 0:17:06.400 --> 0:17:10.320 Mongo Lady, discovered in nineteen sixty nine by Australian archaeologists. 0:17:10.359 --> 0:17:14.240 Have you heard about this? It's very interesting, So more 0:17:14.320 --> 0:17:16.439 than twenty thousand years ago. And I phrase it that 0:17:16.480 --> 0:17:19.920 way because I've seen wildly conflicting dates on this could 0:17:19.920 --> 0:17:23.160 be around twenty thousand years ago, forty thousand years ago, 0:17:23.240 --> 0:17:26.879 we're up to sixty thousand years ago, and I think, uh, 0:17:27.000 --> 0:17:29.439 this seems to reflect a debate about the dating of 0:17:29.480 --> 0:17:31.840 these remains. But I think the most agreed upon date 0:17:31.880 --> 0:17:34.359 now is about forty thousand years ago. I could be 0:17:34.400 --> 0:17:38.920 wrong about that anyway. At that time there was a 0:17:39.000 --> 0:17:43.359 civilization living near Lake Mungo in Australia, and and the 0:17:43.440 --> 0:17:46.800 Mongo lady was one of these people. Evidence shows that 0:17:46.840 --> 0:17:50.320 her body was cremated, but not just cremated, It was 0:17:50.400 --> 0:17:54.520 burned and then the leftover bones were crushed and then 0:17:54.560 --> 0:17:58.760 burned again before being buried. And this definitely, to me 0:17:58.840 --> 0:18:01.680 indicates some kind of ritual. But what did it mean. 0:18:01.800 --> 0:18:04.919 I don't know if anybody has any good speculation about this, 0:18:05.000 --> 0:18:08.040 but it's fascinating to imagine what would cause this. I mean, 0:18:08.080 --> 0:18:11.879 can you imagine this being done out of respect for 0:18:11.920 --> 0:18:13.880 a dead loved one. It might have been some kind 0:18:13.920 --> 0:18:15.960 of ritual along those lines, or it could have been 0:18:16.000 --> 0:18:19.199 to prevent the returning from beyond the grave of a 0:18:19.760 --> 0:18:21.800 of a haunting or something like that. Well, you know, 0:18:21.880 --> 0:18:26.560 at heart, they're using the technology of fire to dispose 0:18:26.600 --> 0:18:28.960 of the dead, and maybe we can sort of compare 0:18:29.000 --> 0:18:31.920 that to the more modern approaches where it's like, oh, well, 0:18:32.000 --> 0:18:36.320 this is a technological, a modern cultured means of disposing 0:18:36.320 --> 0:18:38.800 of the dead, and therefore I can get behind it 0:18:38.840 --> 0:18:41.400 as opposed to just you know, wolves eating a dead 0:18:41.480 --> 0:18:43.919 loved one. And so you know that this is this 0:18:44.000 --> 0:18:46.480 is like the high tech means of the day, Like 0:18:46.520 --> 0:18:48.159 we're not this is not just going to be a burial. 0:18:48.200 --> 0:18:49.280 This is not going to be just left in the 0:18:49.280 --> 0:18:53.720 woods for animals. We're going to use our greatest technological achievement, 0:18:54.480 --> 0:18:58.360 our mastery of fire, to do nature's job for it. Yeah, 0:18:58.400 --> 0:19:00.639 and I think we should definitely not fall into the 0:19:00.640 --> 0:19:04.800 trap of thinking like, oh, what a bizarre funeral practice 0:19:04.880 --> 0:19:07.199 they had were more advanced now. I mean, look at 0:19:07.200 --> 0:19:10.040 all the strange stuff we do now. I mean, funeral 0:19:10.119 --> 0:19:12.840 practices change over time, and this is what they did 0:19:12.960 --> 0:19:15.560 for some reason. Yeah. I mean when I was talking 0:19:15.560 --> 0:19:20.359 about ancient Egyptian mummification with Christian were many times we're like, yeah, 0:19:20.359 --> 0:19:24.880 this is this sounds grotesque and weird to an outsider, Uh, 0:19:24.920 --> 0:19:27.040 you know, across time and space. But is it really 0:19:27.080 --> 0:19:30.560 that different from what goes on inside a mortuary today 0:19:30.600 --> 0:19:33.080 with the involving of a corpse. Not really. I mean 0:19:33.200 --> 0:19:37.440 I can't imagine anything weirder and grosser than modern evolving 0:19:37.920 --> 0:19:41.639 But anyway, So more about cremation. Cremation was practiced in 0:19:41.720 --> 0:19:45.320 parts of Asia on and off throughout history. Hinduism has 0:19:45.359 --> 0:19:49.520 actually traditionally viewed cremation is the proper ritual for the 0:19:49.560 --> 0:19:54.359 body of a dead adult. So they had cremation ceremonies 0:19:54.400 --> 0:19:58.480 called antimas sanscar I apologize if I'm pronouncing that wrong, 0:19:58.600 --> 0:20:01.760 or the anti s d and those are sort of 0:20:01.800 --> 0:20:04.600 meaning the last rites or the last sacrifice. And this 0:20:04.680 --> 0:20:08.439 is one of the sixteen life rituals of Hinduism. So 0:20:08.480 --> 0:20:12.840 it was believed that when you performed cremation on a 0:20:12.880 --> 0:20:16.119 dead adult Hindu that it sort of ushered the soul 0:20:16.400 --> 0:20:18.879 into the next life. Yeah. And that's, of course and 0:20:19.240 --> 0:20:20.959 an important fact to keep in mind when looking at 0:20:21.000 --> 0:20:25.720 any funeral model, particularly in uh In, when Hinduism and 0:20:25.720 --> 0:20:31.040 Buddhism is the essential journey into the next phase of existence. Yeah. 0:20:31.119 --> 0:20:33.480 And I also found several sources saying there's evidence of 0:20:33.520 --> 0:20:36.680 ancient cremation practice in China going back to eight thousand 0:20:36.800 --> 0:20:40.120 b C. And that cremation seems to have often been 0:20:40.160 --> 0:20:45.200 an accepted practice in Buddhist societies. In Western civilization, it's 0:20:45.240 --> 0:20:49.280 a little different. So the pagan Skandinavians were all about 0:20:49.400 --> 0:20:54.280 burning their dead. They loved some cremation until those societies 0:20:54.359 --> 0:20:57.480 largely converted to Christianity in the later Roman period and 0:20:57.480 --> 0:21:00.439 then the Middle Ages. Because then you're having this idea 0:21:00.680 --> 0:21:05.200 of not only resurrection but a physical resurrection of the dead. Yeah, 0:21:05.280 --> 0:21:08.560 and Christian and Jewish theology has differed on this, and 0:21:08.720 --> 0:21:10.199 I'll say something about that in a minute. We can 0:21:10.240 --> 0:21:13.760 see examples of cremation in Greek literature, like if you 0:21:13.800 --> 0:21:16.800 look back at the Iliad, So it's a ritual cremation 0:21:16.880 --> 0:21:20.199 as an honor extended to heroes and great leaders. And 0:21:20.280 --> 0:21:23.920 this may have actually emerged as a response to necessity 0:21:24.040 --> 0:21:27.679 for cremation in wartime conditions. So imagine you're having a 0:21:27.720 --> 0:21:31.040 big battle with somebody you know, on on alien soil 0:21:31.400 --> 0:21:34.159 and a great Greek hero falls on the battlefield, and 0:21:34.160 --> 0:21:36.240 the war is still going on, and you want to 0:21:36.560 --> 0:21:38.760 you want to honor the hero, but you can't take 0:21:38.840 --> 0:21:41.720 him home at the moment, and you don't want to 0:21:41.720 --> 0:21:44.960 bury him on foreign soil, So you have a funeral 0:21:44.960 --> 0:21:47.840 of flames, and then you carry the ashes back after 0:21:47.880 --> 0:21:50.560 the war is over, the ashes or the bones or 0:21:50.640 --> 0:21:54.199 something like that. And this may have caused cremation to 0:21:54.200 --> 0:21:58.520 be associated with a the valorous elite of society, and 0:21:58.560 --> 0:22:01.000 the same thing seems to have happened in ancient Romes. 0:22:01.000 --> 0:22:04.640 A ritual cremation was seen as this honorable, prestigious thing 0:22:04.720 --> 0:22:07.520 to do with the body, and thus it became very popular. Well, 0:22:07.520 --> 0:22:09.920 I mean you're talking, we're talking about skybarrow earlier, right, 0:22:09.960 --> 0:22:13.199 and you are physically becoming one with the birds that 0:22:13.240 --> 0:22:15.600 ascend into heaven. Like here you get to ascend into 0:22:15.600 --> 0:22:18.119 heaven or at least up into the sky as a 0:22:18.160 --> 0:22:20.600 pillar of smoke. You know. It's it's it's beautiful and 0:22:20.640 --> 0:22:23.000