Comment on Why Was This 17th-Century Polish Woman Buried With a Padlock on Her Toe and an Iron Sickle Across Her Neck?

csolisr@hub.azkware.net ⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

• givesomefucks@lemmy.world@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  Yeah, the blade on the throat is the same as a stake in the heart…

  “This body might come alive, so we’re making sure”

  If a body reanimated, the blade was supposed to just cut the head off. But the move from actual “just in case” routine decapitation and just putting a blade there is a pretty huge leap.

  So yeah, primative, but primative because they were advancing, this was the line between an actual decapitation you believed was required, and a ritual just to reassure everyone we didn’t have to keep mutilating every dead body. If modern people started doing it because of legitimate zombie concerns, it would be different.

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  • captainlezbian@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    I know what you mean by modern, but it should be asserted that this happened in the modern era

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• robottoaster@mander.xyz@mander.xyz ⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  Could be they thought she was a witch or changeling? Cold iron has long been thought to block magic.

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