Detecting medieval skulls

According to an Italian archaeologist who directed the excavation, they recently discovered the remains of a medieval vampire in a body of a plague victim in the 16th century.

The body of the woman is located in a large tomb on the island of Lazzaretto Nuovo in Venice city. According to anthropologist Matteo Borrini of the University of Florence, suspecting that this person is a vampire, the people believed that grave digers had stuffed bricks into the skull to prevent the ghost from swallowing cloth and infecting them. others.

In the absence of medical science, vampires were just one of many explanations for the spread of the disease in Venice in 1576, the disease spread throughout the city and took birth. network of 50,000 people.

However, the famous canal city of Italy is not necessarily the place where the evil medieval Draculas was trampled.

According to Borrini, with hundreds of Venetians dying every day, grave-digers seem to have misunderstood the bodies at different stages of decay they see when opening new tombs.

In response to LiveScience, Borrini said : 'The stages of turning the body into skeletons are very little known because they occur in graves. The graves are usually opened after many years when the body has completely turned into bone.

Death is exposed

Vampire superstition is characteristic of European culture when the plague reappeared on the sprawling continent that lasted in the late 1500s. According to historians, the ancient image of vampires Immortal blood sucking probably originated in eastern Europe and has spread westward, transformed and changed based on the belief of the locals where they spread.

In the large tomb dating back to the 1500s on Venice's Lazzaretto Nuovo island, a woman's skull was found with a brick stuck in her mouth. Researchers believe that grave digers saw the skeleton and panic that this person was a vampire. (Photo: Matteo Borrini posted on New Scientist).

Without knowing the natural stages of the decaying process that gave life to vampire legends, vampire history documents also repeated the bodies buried in an outlandish appearance.

Borrini said: 'There are characteristics that are always present in reports of vampire excavations (often written in the 17th and 18th centuries by church attendants and intellectuals, some even the work of scientists) for example: the body is not rotten, the limbs are flexible, the skin is soft and stretched, the nails and beard are replaced '. At that time it was thought that death meant that the body had to be hard and cold, or that there must be silver and white bones (dry bones), so any evidence to the contrary was thought to be worrisome when the exams That can be excavated for testing.

The grave diggers were shocked

A phenomenon that occurs during the decomposition process is the abdomen, which, according to Borrini, seems to be what scares Venice graves. When we die, the body releases a myriad of microbial gases that cause the body to expand because of fluid, usually only a few days after death if no protective measures are applied in the coffin.

Borrini said: 'In this stage, the digestion of the gastrointestinal tract as well as the lining fabric produces a dark liquid, it flows from the nose and mouth and can easily be confused with blood'.

The tomb site dating back to the 1500s on the island of Lazzaretto Nuovo in the city of Venice contains the 'vampire' body (in the circle). Removable photo is a 3D computer illustration of a female skeleton with a brick inserted in her mouth. (Photo: Matteo Borrini posted on New Scientist).

If the vampire woman spilled blood from her mouth, this fluid would moisten the shroud causing it to shrink into the jaw cavity, easily decomposed by fluid so one could assume that the body was try to swallow that shroud. Researchers believe that when discovered in this condition, people put bricks into the mouth of the body as a spell to prevent vampires from spreading the disease.

Medieval skeletons have recently been discovered in a similar situation in different parts of Europe.

Dark times = Superstitious

Borrini admits that it is difficult to answer the question of whether to put bricks in the mouth in Venice is really based on the great fear of vampires or simply a precautionary measure during the difficult time. .

He said: 'From a legal point of view, we can accept reports of vampire corpses as practical descriptions, but we also realize why these legends spread so specifically. during the plague. The fact that the tombs are large and small are often opened during the pandemic period to bury new victims, exposing corpses that have only partially decomposed, which has increased fear. like superstition in those who are suffering from the disease and hold on to death '.

Borrini announced her findings in a recent meeting of the American Court of Science, along with Emilio Nuzzolese - legal orthodontist.