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It may sound like something out of a horror film, but a grave dating back to the early Bronze Age has been discovered in Oppin, Germany, seemingly with measures put in place to stop the body from rising from the dead.
Yes, like zombies.
The State Museum of Prehistory in Saxony-Anhalt, Halle (or ‘Landesmuseum für Vorgeschichte Halle’ in its original German) shared the discovery to Facebook in April 2024, with a man believed to have been between 40 and 60 years old found with a stone placed over his legs.
The stone was 100 (3.2 feet) centimetres long, 50 centimetres (1.6 feet) wide and 10cm (around four inches) thick. The man was placed on his left side.
“It must be assumed that the stone was placed there for a reason, possibly to hold the dead in the grave and preventing it from coming back,” a translation of the post reported by Popular Mechanics reads.
The outlet states the discovery dates back around 4,200 years.
Speaking to Newsweek at the time, archaeologist and project manager of the excavations Susanne Friederich said: “We know that already in the Stone Age people were afraid of revenants. People wanted to prevent this with magic.
“Back then, people believed that dead people sometimes tried to free themselves from their graves. Sometimes, the dead were laid on their stomachs. If the dead lies on their stomach, he burrows deeper and deeper instead of reaching the surface.”
A revenant, when it’s not the name of a 2015 film starring Leonardo DiCaprio, refers to a corpse or spirit which returns from the dead to haunt the living, by the way.
Spooky.
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