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

I'd love to know what people would think of us at that time distance.

Someone upthread mentioned being buried in fetish gear to give people a shock - after a couple of thousand years you'd probably have archaeologists looking wisely at each other 'aaah, yes, of course, the latex, clearly a practical rainproof, and this whip thing is evidently some kind of sceptre used in solemn ceremonies ...'

They'd be able to cut into my stomach and tell what I ate for my last meal! They would think everyone in our society just ate chips.

I didn't manage the Hunterian Museum very well. Really interesting but a bit and sat badly with me.

It's a form of immortality, innit?

Sausage and egg Random

I've read about climbers going up deliberately in order not to attempt the summit, but to bury people or move them out of sight. I think that's good.

I find it really odd when people aren't freaked out, actually. Not in a judgy way, I just mean I can't relate. When the Franklin expedition ship was found a few months ago, someone on my twitter timeline was merrily tweeting pictures of the dead crew members (who were buried in permafrost, and have to date been dug up, post mortem'd, and reburied twice). And they didn't get why some people found it upsetting.

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(Btw, this is totally self-centred, but MrsT, how do you know about Jeanne de Montbaston?! Not that there's any reason you shouldn't, but she's not exactly well known and I am curious.)

I just want all the bodies down off there and buried/cremated and laid to rest. IIRC some of the relatives of the climbers want them left up there. All on their own in the freezing cold. You see that is why I am a bit weird about all this, that's a really strange thing to think isn't it?

Just imagine if they cut into your stomach and found a pasty! They'd call it the Greggs Era. That would have the naice MN posters spinning in their organic graves.

Two weeks ago I went to the "Mummies of the World" exhibit at my local museum. (mummies.cincymuseum.org/)

The museum treats the bodies very respectfully; they are displayed nicely, people are forbidden from taking photographs or videos. They spoke specifically about respecting the families of the deceased. I think we can learn a lot from them.

No, it's not strange.

I can see people wanting them up there, in that if you're a mountineer it might feel like a place you'd want to be. But I read it's also just incredibly hard to bring people down rather than burying them.

TBH, I think people shouldn't be going up, but that's just me.

Nobody is cutting into anyone's stomach. Okay?!

Time Team will need to dig a trench around you and do some geo fizz first anyway.

Oops, link fail:

mummies.cincymuseum.org/

Jeanne I am ashamed to say that it was Googling after a thread (I think in Feminism Chat) about historical figures. I get all my history from MN. Better than Wiki, I suppose

Was it a burial, or was it a mummy? Because most of the Inca child mummies seem to have been sacrificed?

Completely off topic but there is a point of no return in Everest. A point where if you fall ill or die there is no getting you back. A point where you cannot be rescued. It is known for people to carry on to the summit and leave friends to die.

Anyway, I think most people would feel emotion when examining a body, especially that of a child. But that doesn't mean it shouldn't happen.
I had three rounds of IVF and each time I allowed my unused blastocysts to be used for tests. Is that so different?

If you travel by road, rail, or air you are almost certainly going to be using land that was once a graveyard. Live with it, if you'll pardon the expression.

I plan to be buried with an air-tight box containing photos from my life, a copy of my birth certificate, marriage certificate, children's birth certificate & a letter to whoever finds it in the future about my life, what society is like, etc. Basically, I plan on doing the future archaeologists' jobs for them!

I actively want to be dug up in a few centuries. Too much Time Team!

I think I'm correct in saying that in certain other countries, you don't get a permanent burial plot. you get buried for a specific term then your bones are exhumed and put in charnel houses. its the norm in those places.

Apart from the numerous good points made already about their scientific value and what we can learn from those who have gone before us, I also cannot understand all this reverence for the dead when there is still so little care for those still living!
Once you're dead you're dead, you have no use for your bag of bones and flesh any longer, even if you have a religious belief in souls or an afterlife, the body itself has no further involvement in that. Why the worship and reverence?

Oh, god, don't be ashamed, knowing who she is puts you ahead of most historians I know.

pip - Edmund Hillary has gone on record saying that's not necessarily true, and that he'd always have turned back with someone sick. Though I know people have said in specific cases, if you can't move someone, you just can't.

I'll worry about the rights of the dead once the living are sorted. Unfortunately while there is war, abuse, famine, poverty etc the dead will have to wait.

Seriously though, the dead are dead, they are just a mass of organic material. They should not be given more rights nor paid more respect than the living. The only reason we are not falling over dead bodies is because their disposal is well managed. And the treatment of dead children should be the same as that of adults. Death is rather equalitarian....

We'll wish they'd all been cremated once the Zombie Uprising starts.

They'll have a job digging me up, as I'll have been burnt to dust.