People Used to Mutilate Corpses to Keep Them From Coming Back to Life in Our Latest Reminder That Midieval Life Was Fuckin' Rough

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Sometimes, I feel like people get caught up in the sensationalism of Game of Thrones, King Arthur, and Princess Bride and think the medieval age was one of prime galavanting and raw sex. That couldn’t be further than the truth, and thankfully, science is here to give us our annual reminder that life back then was like entering the Royal Rumble at #1. Just plain tough.

Courtesy of The Guardian:

A study by archaeologists has revealed certain people in medieval Yorkshire were so afraid of the dead they chopped, smashed and burned their skeletons to make sure they stayed in their graves.

You know, I’m going to be honest. There’s only one way to be sure a dead person stays in their grave, and it’s very clearly to burn the corpse. So, in that regard, I don’t really blame the medieval people. They were just doing the best they could at the time – they didn’t have autopsies, heart monitors, and real doctors back then. They didn’t know any better – they just listened to the town warlock and you know that motherfucker was always talking crazy.

I mean, at a time when the world was just figuring itself out, these warlocks were really all you had to go by. Look to Merlin for proof. These guys came out of the damn woods scaring people in every town. I think that’s what the history books say – every town had its own warlock. And, basically, that was the closest thing to a doctor they had according to history, I think.

The research published by Historic England and the University of Southampton may represent the first scientific evidence in England of attempts to prevent the dead from walking and harming the living – still common in folklore in many parts of the world.

Still common? See? Maybe these people had something to fear. It’s been hundreds of years, and we still haven’t solved this problem. We still can’t say for sure that the dead won’t come back to life and spread their yucky corpse lice. I don’t like that this implies that medieval England was ONLY concerned about the dead harming the living. In my opinion, it would be highly disrespectful for them to harm the already dead, too. If I was dead, I’d be offended that medieval England was not concerned about zombies harming me.

The archaeologists who studied a collection of human bones – including the remains of adults, teenagers and children excavated more than half a century ago, and dated back to the period between the 11th and 14th century – rejected gruesome possibilities including cannibalism in times of famine, or the massacre of outsiders.

Y’all – I totally forgot about cannibalism in the medieval ages. Can you imagine? Talk about real problems. I get frustrated when I take wine glasses out of the dishwasher and they have water spots on them. Back then, people got so hungry they had to EAT OTHER PEOPLE. Bru-tal.

Medieval sources offer various remedies for dealing with the restless dead, believed to be individuals who were evil or cursed in life and still bore a grudge against the living in death. Solutions included digging up and decapitating or burning the skeletons. The condition of the Wharram Percy bones suggests that the bodies were decapitated quite soon after death, when the bones were still soft, and burned.

Shit. Digging up, decapitating, and burning skeletons? That’s brutal. Absolutely brutal.

I don’t mean to make light here, but this sounds like what Kentucky basketball fans do in Lexington after a tough loss, am I right? Also, who are these medieval sources and how are they still alive? The Guardian thought they were just going to slip this one through without anyone noticing, but not your boy Big Natural. Nope – I’ve got a keen eye for detectiving, and I noticed this right away. #StayWoke.

Stoney Keeley is the editor of the SoBros Network and covers the WWE for WrestlingNews.co. Follow on Twitter @StoneyKeeley@WrestlingNewsCo

Follow us on Twitter @SoBrosNetwork

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