To think dead bodies should stay buried

[myusernameisusername]

Ive just read yet another story about an inca baby been exhumed and studied for "science" to learn about the culture at the time and one a few weeks ago about bodies been exhumed in the UK to make way for a railway line AIBU to think they should stay buried and it's unbelievably sick and disrespectful to do this to a sacred resting place of someone's mothe father child etc

Well, there are burials all over the land which are ancient/not so ancient so what happens if you want to build a house OP and they dig up an ancient burial?

I presume they had permission from the authorities to exhume this ancient Inca burial?

I would LOVE to be dead and buried for 500 years and then unearthed as a specimen to teach future people about my culture/life etc

In fact, I thought that was the only 'Pro' of a burial.

Yes!

I wanna be a "specimen"!

That's really all we are good for after burial anyway tbh!

username at various times in history staying buried has been regarded as quite a luxury. Citizens in cities such as Paris could only be buried for a matter of months before they were dug back up again to make room for someone else. There just wasn't enough room for all the bodies.

It's not 'science', it's just science.

I'm going to be buried in s&m gear in case I get dug up in 500 years.

That'll give them a shock.

Well yes they had permission but who are the people who decide to give this position who think its ok to defile a burial site and display those people in a museum or cut them up im sure as a human race we are better than stuff like this and should know better it literally makes me sick to the stomach its twisted and vile and evil that was someone's baby they lost that baby and had to bury it and grieve im sure if someone went to the local cemetery and dug up a baby to see how it died there would be uproar it shouldn't be any different because its mummified. if someone digs up land and finds a burial ground it should be restored to how the found it noted and left for say another 100 years to make sure decomposition takes place and nothing is left only then should the earth be put to use obviously this doesn't apply to bodies that are mummified they should have a special status in place protecting them.

And im not sure what can be learned from a dead body about the time it lived in since clothing coffins etc decompose after about 5 years of burial it would just be a skeleton resting

A lot of the time what goes on is something we call 'salvage archaeology' (I'm an archaeology/history major and have been on quite a few digs). Here in the US, archaeologists have to inspect the site/path of building works and if anything significant is found, the project is delayed until a decision is made to 'salvage' (i.e., remove artifacts/disinter burials to a museum, university or other place equipped to properly store them), 'mitigate' (continue the project with controls put in place to protect the archaeological site) or if the site is too big/important, the project will be routed around it or moved elsewhere. Every archaeologist I've met has had a great reverence for the dead and we do not disinter unless it's absolutely necessary. In the digs I've been on, we've uncovered only enough to make a positive ID as human remains and, if possible without moving the body, determine age/gender. Burials that are disinterred are treated with the greatest care and, when possible, are reinterred either on the original site or in another site rather than being kept aboveground forever.

Now, I can't speak to what's going on in the Andes, but I'm guessing/hoping these archaeologists operate the same way. They may be disinterring as many burials as possible to prevent them from being looted - I read the article as well and it mentioned there was surprise at the fact the burials hadn't been tampered with. If that's the case my guess would be they'll gather as much information about the deceased as they can and then reinter the majority of them in a hidden location. Some, yes, may be kept and exhibited in a museum, but they're not going to pull up and warehouse them all.

myusername - I'm sure the child they exhumed had been dead for rather a long time.

I am sure that nobody living could actually claim, in all honesty, that it was a relative.

And I am absolutely sure that the scientists treated that child with respect.

If you believe in "souls" I am also absolutely sure that after several hundred years the soul of the child has passed on long ago.

Not 'just a skeleton' after 3.5 thousand years. It is astounding and incredible what can be learned from dead bodies.

Sad as it is that a woman lost her baby, she is also long dead now. And her beliefs about bodies may have been completely different to yours. Likely they were.

It's not 'science', it's just science.

je t'aime

We have no idea the circumstance of this 1000 yr old pre-Inca baby's death or life, let alone any idea of what the mothers attitude to it was. The Incas were quite keen on child sacrifice, so for all we know the preceding culture was too. My point is we have no idea, and to apply our own modern day interpretation is wrong.

I think that it is better that the remains are carefully removed, studied and then kept respectfully in a museum or similar, rather than being looted and destroyed or damaged by the building of a new road/railway whatever.

There's a lot that can be learnt from 'just bones'- diet, disease, population movements, etc.

Archaeologists who deal with human remains do so with the utmost care and respect. The remains of this child won't be cut up or treated as some sort of freak show exhibit.

It is important, too, to remember that you don't know how the parents of this child felt about human remains. Some cultures have great reverence for human remains, others view them as empty vessels that no longer hold any significance. As a PP mentioned, we know of many cemeteries where it was common for bodies to be exhumed and relocated after a few months. People are not always buried with the expectation that they will stay there forever.

I had an archaeology lecturer who used to tell a story about a dig he conducted in the pacific. He was interested in a particular type of pottery. He received proper permission from the authorities and the local elders/chiefs to dig in a particular cave. He put a trench in, and came across a burial. So he stopped digging, went back to the village, and asked the locals if they knew anything. The response? 'Oh yes, that's probably just my grandmother. Just move her out of your way.'

I've always suspected that tale was slightly exaggerated, but the point still stands- other people have very different views about the dead. You're entitled to yours, but please don't assume people who died centuries or millenia ago would have shared your reverence.

every where is somebody's burial ground.we'd never build anything!

Most famous cemetery in the world? Issues 30 year leases. Very sensible in my book.

YABU.

Not only is it fascinating, I'd rather be displayed in a museum than dug up from my resting place to make way for new bodies.

YABVU and naive to think bodies normally get left undisturbed after burial - walk around any church graveyard and you will be hard pressed to find burials older than 18th century. Why? because churches cleared them and deposited the bones if they survived rather unceremoniously in charnel pits all mixed up together to make way for new graves. in places where land was at a premium this happens in a very short time maybe only 10 years after death. London for example was closed for burial in 1854 because it was literally full and now it is very hard to dig anywhere in the city without finding burials.

It wasn't even normal to be left undisturbed in prehistory (if you even got a 'proper' burial) - there was a lot of reuse and revisiting of graves and skeletons - they didn't do things the same as us and burial practices change a lot over the millennia.

the vast majority of excavations of cemeteries or other burials are done in advance of development (often at the request of the church if they want to build a community centre etc) and the skeletons are treated with a lot more respect when this is done by archaeologists carefully removing each skeleton individually than by a clearance company with a jcb (which caused an outcry when it happened many years ago at St Pancras). We are never disrespectful and whatever your personal view, museum exhibitions of human remains attract lots of interest because people are interested in their ancestors and why shouldn't they be? There is nothing wrong with that.

There is a huge amount we can learn from the cultural and scientific study of our ancestors that was not written in history books - the voiceless normal folk never got to write those!

OP the UK one they have no choice but to lift them. Crossrail is the biggest engineering project since them original Underground was built by the Victorians. The burial site of 3000 graves is massively important as it was connected to the original Bedlam hospital and was also a plague pit. Scarily these skeletons have been found only 1.5m below the road surface and nobody knows how it's survived without being disturbed in the heart of the City of London.

They are being lifted, studied and then reinterred in consecrated ground. They are being studied to learn how the died and if we are lucky who they are as the records are very good. One of the aims is to test and record the strains of plague as that is going to be used in the current research to trace how modern plague has evolved as its popping up again.

T

When I was at Sunday school aged about eight( some years ago) our teacher asked if we wanted to visit the crypt under the church . We went down and had a wander round. Some years later the church was demolished and the bodies 're-buried". All the people working on the site had to have smallpox vaccinations as that is what the majority of them died of!

I am with you OP. Leave them be.

There are very strict guidelines about the treatment of human remains (this is just British but I'm sure other countries have similar. Have a look on the icomos website

I kind of get the OP. In ancient Egypt, the belief was that if the body was disturbed and and its riches removed it would disturb their KA (soul). So excavations have never sat right with me. Especially older ones where the riches were stolen and sold on the black market. The archaeologists of a couple hundred years ago, weren't much better than the grave robbers of 2000 years ago. Which is why excavations are so heavily protected in Egypt now .

However done in the right way, its a good thing. I for one would love to go to egypt and look Ramese the second, right in the face as it were. To see someone from history. I have always been on the fence. Its a good thing, but always had made me slightly uneasy.

One tiny point, actually in some sites, fabric, wood and other natural substances have been preserved and gives insight into how that civilisation lived (and died)
My personal feeling? This was so long ago and archeologists treat human remains with respect and there is so much to learn from them.

There have been so many good points made in the answers here - chiefly that internment hasn't always been permanent, and that we cannot project our own feelings about how to treat the dead on people in the past.

Me, I've been thinking about leaving my body to science - students need cadavers to practice on and if it helps people further on down the line then why not.

We can study bones and teeth and find out a LOT about disease and nutrition as well.