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

There is nobody left to mourn the Inca baby. She or he and his family have been dead for hundreds of years. History is important, why did a race die out, what happened, why was infant mortality high or low in a particular area. All of these things are important questions.

I want to be cremated. I don't want Tony Robinson and Time Team digging me up thanks very much.

Thank you sparkling someone else with a normal brain and reverence and respect for the dead. everyone else seems to think "because their are no relatives to protest lets do what we want regardless of morals or human decency" astonishing

It makes me feel very peculiar when I see archaeologists with their scrapers and brushes around human's bones that they are excavating. Like it isn't right, i can't really explain it more than that, seems I am in the minority anyway.

So it's not ok to examine the body of a long dead person in the name of science as that is disrespectful, but it is ok for you to say that everyone who disagrees with you doesn't have a 'normal brain'?

I have a normal brain and am not in the least upset by this - it's you in the minority, OP. Thus you're the weird one.

Archaeology is able to tell us a lot about the past and can help us with present day problems. It's a bit "primitive" to be phased by it.

I don't think it's unreasonable to worry or feel upset about it, actually.

One of the women who works on History Cold Case said she feels uncomfortable with the idea of a child (who'd been used as an anatomy lesson) being kept in a museum. And she's a professional in the subject. She's not saying what the OP is saying, but she wasn't brushing her emotions about it aside, either.

I think sometimes people are really disrespectful about human remains.

Just ignore every other point except for that which agrees with you. No wonder you think it's "science".

Cross post.

Oh, well, them I'm definitely primitive. I'm fazed by it. I hope I never stop feeling emotional about this sort of thing.

Op read Necropolis; London and it's dead. It's a truly fascinating book about how the dead in London were dealt with in the past and the formation of the large graveyards. Bodies have to be moved as people before me have said. Not just for building work but often in the past because the gases emitted during decay made the living sick, because the decomposition caused ground shifting and because there purely isn't enough land to bury singularly and leave EVERY person who has ever lived and died on our planet. There just isn't enough space to do it.

I understand the thought of a baby being dug up to be studied can be painful to some people but all bodies are treated with the respect they deserve, which is better than they were treated in the past! Anecdotally the original Pocahontas was likely dug up and used in the glue factories in Gravesend.

I must be primitive and weird in that case. But I don't think any of us when attending burials of loved ones would like to think of them being exhumed at some point in the future would we?

We've only got a limited amount of land though OP. We need to dig things up and build to keep moving forward.

The more we can learn before we are in the ground too, the better.

This is why cremation is best IMO.

The feeling is normal Sparkling and Jeanne. It is very evolutionarily sensible to be wary of disturbing remains; they could be diseased. But reverence and horror and never building on or excavating anywhere that has remains? It's not practical. And, the science tells us so much.

YY, I know, MrsT. I'm giving a perspective, not agreeing with the OP, because I agree with others its impossible (and wouldn't be sensible if it were).

Science and history though, please! Give us artsy types credit.

I do see that MrsTP, I confuse myself with my feelings.

And, I do feel reverence towards human remains. I think that's appropriate.

sparkling, I think there's something to be said for feeling the way we do. I think it's a form of being respectful and acknowledging that these used to be people like us.

It shouldn't feel totally emotionless, as if we were looking at dug-up stones.

I just Googled and there are very roughly 107 billion dead people. There are 7 billion alive. 100 billion more dead than alive. Of course some would have been cremated, eaten, destroyed but there must be bodies everywhere.

And yes, history as well. Should have known from the name Jeanne!

Yes, true Jeanne. As a child we used to go to the Science Museum in Birmingham and IIRC they had a pickled foetus in a jar or something, and that has stayed with me. I couldn't understand it.

YY I do think see the bones as people. It's a bit strange.

I'd love to be killed and put into fall into a glacier or peat bog and be discovered in a couple of thousand years. At that time distance, everyone who lives in your country is likely to be a descendant/relative of yours anyway.

Oh, yes. Really not keen on pickled foetuses. At all. Purely emotional, I know, but really dislike it.

I don't think it's strange at all to think of bones as people.

MrsT - that's fascinating.

Ooh no Random please don't do that.

i started a thread on here about Everest and all the rubbish the mountaineers/hikers left behind.
It came to light that there are a lot of bodies up there too. People that perished trying to climb. other climbers have to walk past them.

It bothers me.