Yes, sometimes when I'm in bed in that realm skirting the edge of sleep an awake I can have some odd thoughts. This morning or sometime in the night I started thinking about exhumation. For those of you not familiar with the term that is digging up a buried person. You'll typically see it in some crime show where they get a court order to dig up a person that was buried. It usually occurs in those shows because they come to believe they missed some important evidence such as a poisoning.
Okay, that is all pretty standard fare. Let's now begin my trip into the weird.
I started thinking about Archaeology. I am often watching shows where they are excavating ruins, digging up old burials, and entering forgotten tombs. The corpses are rarely (if ever) left where they were found. They can end up in any number of places. There are occasions where they are put back where they were found, but it seems often to not be the case at all. I witnessed an exhumation growing up near the town I spent most of my youth at, and that was of exhumation of victims of a somewhat famous 1800s cannibal Alferd/Alfred Packer. I lived a couple of miles from the site of that. A bunch of archaeologists exhumed the bodies to try to confirm the stories that came out in the trial. When they were done they put them back with a nice fancy new marker. That doesn't seem to be the norm.
So what I found interesting is this idea that so many people decide to be buried and they buy lavish coffins, etc. At what point in the distant future will those people's graves become fair game for archaeologists? If you think your body has something of value you would like to share with the future then perhaps this is a good reason for such a burial. You become like a time capsule for some future civilization.
"That is horrible, they would disturb a grave?" - Uhm, yeah I watch them doing it frequently. If it is old enough then digging up graves seems to be a popular past time for trying to recover lost information, and sometimes to correct information that was likely intentionally altered.
"I don't want them messing with my grave!!" - Neither did the Pharaoh's and most people that went for burial. That didn't stop it from happening. Some people even went to pretty elaborate schemes to try to prevent it. That doesn't typically work either.
This made me think about burial. I've told my wife before if I had my preferences for what is done with me when I pass away someone would take me unembalmed out into the forest somewhere and drop me there for animals to feast upon. Returning to nature as it were. Though I'm also fine with my remains being used for science too, as long as some jerk doesn't turn me into a zombie or something. :)
Many people may find this squeemish, but other things seem artificial to me. I could consider cremation but even that is stupidly expensive. I also like the idea of that which I am no longer using being of use to someone or something (animals, insects, worms) else.
I supposed being buried in a peat bog to later be exhumed by archaeologists would be a worthy disposal method as well if I thought my bones would actually offer anything new for the future to study that is not already neatly resting in millions of caskets six feet under the ground all over the place.
Yes, this topic is a bit morbid, and definitely weird. I often dwell in both of those places. Morbid, and weird. Though I spend far less time in morbid than I did when I was younger.
So there you have it... another bizarre train of thought. Hopefully some of you enjoyed it, and hopefully the rest of you were not too disturbed by it.
