Howburn Digger wrote: tiompan wrote: moss wrote:
It's likely that there was more to the rituals than just excarnation ,if contemporary practices from differing cultures are anything to go by .
Smearing yourself in the more liquid remains of the ancestors , takes a bit of beating .
There seems to be a fair bit of defleshing activity happening in the sky burials as opposed to simply leaving an entire intact corpse to the birdies.
Don't watch this if you are in any way queazy about such things.
https://youtu.be/BUp4jUMIy68
Perhaps the carving up of the main course on the video could explain some of the "chops and scrapes" on the Orkney bones. While sky burials/excarnation can be seen simply as the removal of the dead flesh on an empty vessel... it would make sense to assist/ ease the work of the birds. Some of the sky burial reports describe the de-fleshing by birds taking mere minutes after the partial carving up of the main course. That is a very quick job indeed.
The smearing does take some beating though.
Phew .
Not quite in the same league , but J.M.Synge of "Playboy of the western fame World " fame described the burial of sailor , he attended in the Aran Isles at the turn of the century . The ground was too rocky for any depth of internment and the digging quickly uncovered an earlier burial ,a woman realising that it was her father grabbed the skull from the skeleton and ran off wailing , clutching it to herself .
Only just over a century ago in our part of the world , couldn't imagine that happening in the UK today .
Reply | with quote | Posted by tiompan 14th June 2016ce 17:05 |
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