[HN Gopher] Poland's 'anti-vampire' graves
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Poland's 'anti-vampire' graves
Author : Vigier
Score : 127 points
Date : 2023-08-17 02:24 UTC (20 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.atlasobscura.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.atlasobscura.com)
| chc wrote:
| This is also the origin of the "stake through the heart" trope.
| The stake was originally meant as a way to hold a vampire in
| place, just like these instruments.
| rpastuszak wrote:
| Ha, a few of my archeologist friends worked on this!
|
| I remember one detail regarding the decapitated (17th century
| IIRC) bodies they found: one would put a sickle between the head
| and the rest of the body. Some of the local construction site
| workers hired to help with digging were quite upset/scared by the
| view.
|
| Also, I think we can thank Austro-Hungarian civil servants and
| bureaucracy for the amount of documentation we have on the
| subject. Central Europe was much luckier in that regard than the
| regions farther east.
|
| Tangentially related: the WoD (World of Darkness, esp. Vampire:
| the Masqureade) scene in Poland was relatively big in 2010s,
| compared to the rest of Europe IIRC. I used to run one of the
| biggest bi-weekly LARPs in the region, called Totentanz, with 25
| regular bloodsuckers joining the game every Sunday.
|
| Krakow, my hometown is an excellent setting for that: the
| medieval city moved up by one floor, so we have a tonne of old
| dungeons/cellars to dress up as vampires, plot against each
| other, and pretend we like smoking clove cigarettes.
| kstrauser wrote:
| I've never wanted to be in my 20s again so badly. That sounds
| amazing!
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > Krakow, my hometown is an excellent setting for that: the
| medieval city moved up by one floor, so we have a tonne of old
| dungeons/cellars
|
| What does that mean? How did it come to be?
| jacquesm wrote:
| https://www.thefirstnews.com/article/the-fascinating-
| subterr...
| irrational wrote:
| > archaeologists working on a 17th-century cemetery
|
| Maybe it is just me, but 17th century seems way too recent to be
| digging people up. I'm into family history and I know who a lot
| of my ancestors were back to the 1500s and even into the 1400s.
| There are surely people alive right now who could trace their
| family lines back to some of the people being dug up.
| Swizec wrote:
| > but 17th century seems way too recent to be digging people up
|
| My SO recently visited her family tomb in France. It was gone.
| Lease lapsed, no more tomb. Last person was buried there some
| 40 years ago. Church didn't know who to contact to renew the
| lease, good bye.
| irrational wrote:
| That's crazy! What do they do with the bodies?
| Swizec wrote:
| Ossuary. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ossuary
|
| I think this is fairly standard practice in much of Europe
| where space is scarce. Moreso in larger towns and cities
| than rural villages. It's also why family tombs are common
| in the first place.
|
| My grandpa's family, for example, has shared the same
| cemetery plot since before ww1. That's how you fit a whole
| village into one little tiny church cemetery.
| ekianjo wrote:
| You can go back much further in time than 1600s with corpses in
| prehistory found buried with their hands and legs tied. We dont
| know exactly why but the fear that the dead may rise may be a
| thing.
| krapp wrote:
| If you don't know the specifics about how corpses decay, it can
| superficially give evidence that they can rise from the dead
| and turn into monsters or feed on the living - spasms,
| vocalizations from expelled gas, gums receding to look like
| fangs (often dripping with blood,) hair and nails appearing to
| grow (when really the skin is shrinking,) etc.
|
| There are theories that a vampire panic in early New England
| was attributable to misinterpreting the symptoms of
| tuberculosis[0].
|
| [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_England_vampire_panic
| mzs wrote:
| Padlocks are also found in old Jewish cemetery graves in Poland
| (p. 131):
| https://www.researchgate.net/publication/312873550_A_Habit_o...
| RadixDLT wrote:
| Bram Stoker Claimed That Parts of Dracula Were Real
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37144560
| jayp1418 wrote:
| That's why always go with cremation. No Vampire, no viruses
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| But also no body to rapture... actually... wouldn't said body
| be stuck on the padlocks / decapitated when being raptured?
| sacnoradhq wrote:
| Anyone with taphophobia should've avoided dying in 17th c.
| Poland.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| > Taphophobia is an abnormal (psychopathological) phobia of
| being buried alive as a result of being incorrectly pronounced
| dead.
|
| I mean I don't think they care per se if they're actually dead?
|
| That said, there were things like bells on wires as well for
| cases like that.
| etamponi wrote:
| Interesting that they use the word "post-medieval" instead of
| "modern"... And they mention 17th century, well after the middle
| ages ended.
|
| In fact, such superstitious practices were almost non-existent
| during middle ages: they're one of the natural consequences of
| de-christianization, which happened at a faster pace after the
| middle ages.
|
| I know I need to assume good intentions, but "post-medieval"
| seems just misplaced and an attempt to associate these practices
| to the middle ages. I thought we were finally past the times in
| which we demonized the middle ages. At least in Italy, several
| historians are finally talking about how great and important that
| time was.
|
| Look for "Alessandro Barbero" on YouTube for more.
| gpjanik wrote:
| Completely incorrect, the practices were in general not very
| present in middle-aged Poland compared to the Western Europe.
| The reason for emerging anti-vampiric practices in the 17th and
| the 18th centuries were epidemics and folktales from Balkans,
| and it had nothing to do with de-christianisation which never
| happened (Poland has been and is predominantly Christian with
| rate of catholic church members being >90% even today).
| ajuc wrote:
| Yup, I'd even say in medieval period Poland was less
| christian than in 17th/18th century :)
|
| In 1500s at one point majority of nobility went protestant,
| and there was still a lot of orthodox nobles from Lithuania.
| Peasants were orthodox or pagan in the east, catholic in the
| west with some protestants, muslims and jews mixed in. In the
| cities there was a lot of german immigrants who were
| protestant or catholic depending on the city they immigrated
| from. Whole towns and villages were created by importing
| people from the west and giving them religious freedoms and
| tax benefits for a few years.
|
| By 1700s it was mostly gone, because the country kept
| fighting muslims, orthodox and protestant countries. So kings
| turned to catholicism and counter-reformation as uniting
| factor. So religion got a lot of influence.
| Tade0 wrote:
| > (Poland has been and is predominantly Christian with rate
| of catholic church members being >90% even today).
|
| Nowadays that's on paper mostly, especially that apostasy is
| difficult and not really worth the trouble for most.
|
| The pandemic especially revealed that many people were
| attending only because everyone else was.
| Mistletoe wrote:
| Why is it almost any time I see someone citing a YouTube source
| they are wrong?
| yard2010 wrote:
| The middle ages sucked though. I hope we're not in some middle
| ages today.
| WJW wrote:
| If we are then wouldn't that imply better times are to come?
| Sounds pretty nice actually.
| redeeman wrote:
| I sincerely hope we are
| muzani wrote:
| Better middle ages than late ages. Catastrophes always
| happen after the late ages.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| > de-christianization, which happened at a faster pace after
| the middle ages.
|
| This doesn't really agree with my understanding of things. The
| late medieval and early modern period was a time of
| _increasing_ religious control due to the reformation and
| counter-reformation.
|
| This was a new kind of problem, since during most of the
| medieval period the biggest threat was external in the form of
| Islam during the crusades and reconquista, but you could send
| armies to deal with that problem.
|
| Heretics from within, like Jan Hus, John Wycliffe, and
| eventually Luther and Calvin and later the protestants were
| much harder to defeat with armies, since they'd crop up
| anywhere and erode the power of the church from within. To hold
| against the protestants, you needed to control what people
| thought, paying lip service to the church wasn't enough
| anymore. This is when you get the inquisition and so on.
|
| A mirror image of things were happening along the protestants
| since it was very important that everyone held the line when
| the jesuits came a'knocking. There was also a fairly strong
| impetus to enforce protestantism from the temporal powers-that-
| be, since it was basically what allowed them to cut free from
| the pope.
|
| Closet papists among the population was as bad thing for a
| protestant king as closet protestants were for a catholic pope
| (or catholic king).
| jeltz wrote:
| I feel you are overstating your point. There was belief in
| vampires in medieval Europe too. And the origin is likely from
| pagan pre-Christian beliefs in Eastern or South Eastern Europe.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| The article mentions as much, the phrase 'vampire' is only
| been in vogue in the past 100 or so years; the article
| mentions upior, strzyga and strigoi. Which I learned about
| thanks to the Witcher (the video games moreso than the books
| / TV show); its lore feels new because it uses older and
| lesser known in western Europe creatures.
| ajuc wrote:
| They were common in middle ages. And there was a reason for the
| superstition - rabies and other epidemics.
|
| > the natural consequences of de-christianization
|
| Poland in middle ages was less catholic than Poland in 17th
| century. If anything it was over-chrisianized not de-
| christianized in that period.
| OfSanguineFire wrote:
| The article writes: "Apotropaic graves of this sort date back
| to the Early Middle Ages and have also appeared in Slovakia,
| Hungary, Austria, and Romania." So even the 17th-century
| phenomenon is but a late attestation of a practice found
| already in the medieval era.
|
| It is curious that you claim that such practices could only be
| a result of de-Christianization. In the Balkans, fears of
| vampires, incubi, and succubi have always co-existed happily
| with a Christianity that deeply permeated all levels of
| society.
| paganel wrote:
| The Christian practices here in the Balkans had (maybe still
| have) a lot of Manichaeism involved in them which people
| further West might not call that Christian to begin with.
|
| It's a very peculiar type of Christianity, that's for sure,
| and even the local high-placed Christian men are quite
| hesitant to talk about it. Bogomilism is, of course, its most
| famous form, but it has circulated in one form or other for
| many hundreds of years, no matter the official repressions it
| has faced (ever since the 10th century [1], maybe even
| earlier).
|
| Back to the article, the _strzyga_ and _strigoi_ which are
| mentioned there are basically Romanian words, and Romanian
| most probably took them from the Latin _strix_ [2]. In fact a
| local species of owl is called _striga_.
|
| And now back to the local Manichaeism present here, a grand-
| father of a friend of mine (in fact, his corpse) was
| unearthed at some point after his death (I think it was 7
| years) and a spike was put through its (the body's) chest, so
| that his spirit would stop wandering among the living.
| Granted, that was happening in a Romanian region a little bit
| on the more traditional side, you won't find that in
| Bucharest or Cluj anymore. Also, up until very recently there
| was a tradition at the church in my parents' village where
| the most "wealthy" family in the village would have to bring
| a black rooster on Easter inside the church, let it loose,
| people would catch it and then give it to one of the poor
| families, so that that poor family would cook it as an Easter
| meal. Black roosters are, of course, not that Christian to
| begin with.
|
| As I said, lots and lots of Manichaeism beliefs around these
| parts of the continent (in many, many folk tales the Devil is
| on the same level as God), Middle Ages or not, it's quite
| fascinating.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Treatise_Again
| st_...
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strix_(mythology)
|
| [3] https://ro.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strig%C4%83
| [deleted]
| kunley wrote:
| There is a Polish writer Andrzej Pilipiuk and he introduced a
| concept in his fantasy-parody historical-fiction books, that all
| communists were actually vampires, and there was a squad
| eliminating them since 1920s.
|
| So maybe this is an indication, that communist movement started
| already in the XVII century... and the smart village guys tried
| to prevent it from spreading already at that time... huh
|
| PS. It is a joke. (the idea, not the writer & the books).
| HankB99 wrote:
| I listen to their podcast. I'm just a little skeptical of the
| information they publish ever since they relocated Hayward WI to
| MN (episode on the lumberjack competition.) It was still
| interesting and mostly true but I wondered how someone could
| (purportedly) visit Hayward WI and think they were in Minnesota.
| RadixDLT wrote:
| it makes sense, poland is right next to romania
| SapporoChris wrote:
| Poland is not right next to Romania on any current maps that I
| have found.
|
| Poland is bordered by Lithuania and Russia to the northeast,
| Belarus and Ukraine to the east, Slovakia and the Czech
| Republic to the south, and Germany to the west.
|
| Romania does border Ukraine, however if you were to travel from
| Ukraine to Romania the best route is actually through Slovakia
| and Hungary.
| trwired wrote:
| Fun fact, you can see Romania from Poland on a good weather!
| [1]
|
| Also before the WWII, the Second Polish Republic shared a
| border with the Kingdom of Romania. Before the partitions in
| late 18th century, Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth overlapped
| with some territories making up modern day Romania and
| Moldova and the Principality of Moldavia was a vassal of
| Poland and PLC for a time.
|
| This is to say it is reasonable to imply Poland's close
| proximity with Romania, both in geographical and cultural
| sense, even though the borders have shifted.
|
| [1] - https://dalekieobserwacje.eu/rumunia-widziana-z-
| tarnicy-most...
| [deleted]
| f137 wrote:
| Poland was right next to Romania up until 1939.
| rpastuszak wrote:
| I think you might want to give this a go:
| https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/1927594591
| bdcravens wrote:
| Will humanity be digging up our graves in 400 years in the
| interest of archaeology?
| [deleted]
| RNAlfons wrote:
| Maybe we'll come back to those kind of practices.
|
| Exorcisms have been booming in Poland for quite some time:
| https://www.dw.com/en/why-exorcism-is-booming-in-poland/a-36...
| ekianjo wrote:
| > Maybe we'll come back to those kind of practices
|
| We already have to pay respects to the WHO God so religious
| beliefs may come back in strength
| pndy wrote:
| Last time I read about exorcism in the media here was in the
| end of 90s when people were crazy about end of the world due to
| end of 20th century and approaching new millennium. Those were
| times when such fringe things were all around us on a daily
| basis, next to skinheads, sects and circles in the crop.
|
| Exorcisms aren't blooming here nor are popular, or gained any
| widespread attention in last years.
| rcarr wrote:
| If we take the metaphorical view of vampires as those that feast
| on the blood of the young to extend their own lives then as a
| planet (or at least in the West) we have never been more infested
| - how many people are dying young, through overdose or suicidal
| hopeless, or otherwise having their life force drained through
| sky high rents and stagnant wages so that boomers can carry on
| living the high life? How many young people killed themselves
| during pandemic lockdowns, lockdowns that were in place mainly to
| save boomer lives? There's also the related zombie concept - how
| many dead, uncompetitive and mismanaged companies, banks and
| pension funds are we keeping alive through government bailouts,
| which are again, essentially draining the life force of the
| living to feed the dead?
|
| I also like "What We Do In The Shadows" (tv show version)
| extension of the metaphor to the "energy vampire", which is
| essentially a criticism of bloated bureaucracy which is another
| one of the modern monsters draining the life out of us all.
|
| I don't think these terms were ever meant to be taken literally
| by those who created them but as platonic ideals to describe
| personalities and systems, but the education level and lifestyles
| of the time were so barbaric, primitive and rooted in physicality
| that the majority struggled to comprehend them as such.
| smcl wrote:
| Before you scoff and dismiss this as silly, superstitious
| nonsense, know this: there have been ZERO vampire incidents in
| Poland since this practice was adopted.
| ozim wrote:
| So now if they dig them up and essentially freed, there will be
| vampire plague in Poland?
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| _> there have been ZERO vampire incidents in Poland since this
| practice was adopted_
|
| How would you otherwise recognize a vampire incident it one
| were to happen?
| squeaky-clean wrote:
| Classic methods such as blood sucking wounds on victims or
| witness reports of hearing Toccata and Fugue in D minor
| playing in the background suddenly.
| [deleted]
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| We didn't need to, we had official letters from the Vampire
| Provisional Government that they're packing up and moving to
| (what we today call) Romania.
|
| (That's also historically the first recorded incident of
| organizational rage-quit after losing the game to a cheese
| strategy.)
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| [flagged]
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > there have been ZERO vampire incidents in Poland since this
| practice was adopted.
|
| Have you considered a career with Homeland Security?
| jychang wrote:
| [flagged]
| crossroadsguy wrote:
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu.
| .. (I thought I'd keep the t word out of it to make the
| search URL sound different)
|
| As if HN is some sort of intellectual silver snowflake and
| apparently better than Reddit. It's actually not. But I guess
| it's not worse either. Isn't that nice?
| yreg wrote:
| Define 'better'.
|
| The average HN discussion is more substantive and on-topic
| than the average reddit thread, especially a default one.
| crossroadsguy wrote:
| No, it's not.
|
| As for on-topic - HN starts talking about Kotlin and
| Swift and pretty soon it's discussing relatively theory
| and Madam Curie and what not on the same thread. And no,
| that's not better and that's not on-topic unless HN tries
| to define its own "on-topic" and it's own "better" and
| then applies it to Reddit.
|
| > Define 'better'
|
| No, I won't. Because yours would ne different from mine.
| sheepscreek wrote:
| Last paragraph in HN guidelines:
|
| > Please don't post comments saying that HN is turning into
| Reddit. It's a semi-noob illusion, as old as the hills.
| yreg wrote:
| The rule stating it is an illusion doesn't make it untrue.
| smcl wrote:
| There's a 16+ comment discussion on whether or not an
| innocent, on-topic and factually correct comment is
| appropriate. HN is not becoming Reddit, it's becoming
| more HN than ever.
|
| Personally I think it's a little suspicious that there
| are HN users who appear to be attempting to discredit or
| silence comments praising the efficacy of a proven anti-
| vampire technology.
| yreg wrote:
| :)
| smcl wrote:
| You're a good sport :)
| pfannkuchen wrote:
| > It's a semi-noob illusion
|
| The evidence provided for this is example comments from 10+
| years ago complaining that HN was becoming Reddit way back
| then.
|
| However, Reddit 10+ years ago was very different from
| Reddit today. It is arguably(?) much worse today.
|
| HN may be turning into Reddit continuously, it's just that
| Reddit keeps moving the goal posts.
| [deleted]
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| 1) You're making a category error; comparing HN to Reddit
| makes as much sense as comparing a scalar to a vector.
|
| 2) People have been saying this since approximately day one
| of HN; it's this site's equivalent to social decay / "kids
| these days", which is a sentiment that dates back to
| antiquity.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| No humor allowed, let's instead talk about how to use Rust
| (the language) to prevent the newly interred to rise again.
| mikrl wrote:
| Hey! Here that's called 'enshittening'
| snoth wrote:
| Yes, and it's getting worse.
| fodkodrasz wrote:
| Every website has become reddit since the recent reddit
| controversies. Hell, even 4chan is flooded by reddit style
| comments...
|
| I'm rooting for the fediverse, hopefully it (and youtube) can
| contain the effect.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| the_only_law wrote:
| > and youtube
|
| Yea, because YouTube comments are famously a bastion of
| intelligent, relevant discussion.
| blamazon wrote:
| If this is not a satirical comment, can I ask you to justify
| this position? What is disturbed by having a bit of humor
| alongside our intellectual curiosity? I could have missed it,
| but don't see anything discouraging humor (referential or
| otherwise) in the HN guidelines[1] or FAQ[2] with regard to
| commentary.
|
| [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
|
| [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html
| callahad wrote:
| Nothing wrong with humor, but on a completely personal
| level, it _does_ frustrate me when the top comment is
| entirely superficial, since it adds nothing to the
| conversation. And subjectively, it feels like there 's been
| an uptick in joke / meme / information-free comments _and
| their ranking_ in the wake of recent Twitter and Reddit
| turmoil.
|
| But hey, I've been here for 15 years, and forum cultures
| change over time. I wouldn't overindex on my feelings.
| krapp wrote:
| What's ironic is the tangential threads complaining about
| humor on HN throw far more noise and entropy into these
| threads than the jokes themselves. People could have just
| ignored it, or downvoted it and moved on, but no, someone
| made a joke and now we need to stop the car and have
| _discourse_ about how HN is turning into Reddit. Knuckles
| must be rapped. Fingers wagged and pearls clutched.
| Again.
| WeylandYutani wrote:
| It disturbs people's autism apparently.
| johnnyworker wrote:
| The keyword is "alongside intellectual curiosity". If you
| can make a point in a funny manner, do it. But if just
| making jokes becomes accepted, jokes drown out everything
| else, simply because they are infinite. Like all those
| gaming subreddits that consist 99% of "funny thing that
| just happened" or "this reference to a thing that occurs in
| the game, which you can recognize as occurring in the game
| to confirm that you have, indeed, played that game". You
| can call that socializing but to me it's just turning
| everything into everything/nothing forums. If HN becomes
| soft on that, we need a new HN.
| vlunkr wrote:
| I'd rather read a joke than a debate about whether jokes are
| acceptable.
| jjkaczor wrote:
| Heh... Logic!
|
| Well - now they no longer need to hide themselves away, they
| are hiding-in-plain sight...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young_blood_transfusion
| veave wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSVqLHghLpw
| gowld wrote:
| Be careful about interpreting artifacts:
|
| https://onlinecampus.fcps.edu/media2/Social_Studies/WHGII_20...
|
| https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Literature/MotelOfThe...
| ragazzina wrote:
| If anyone is interested in the subject I can suggest "Vampires,
| burial and death" by Paul Barber. It's repetitive but good. In
| fact I have discovered this book on HN.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| It is on its second edition, I believe.
| TheAlchemist wrote:
| They mention the coin placed in mouths - but as far as I know,
| this has nothing to do with protection against vampires. It's to
| pay Charon to cross the river :)
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charon%27s_obol
| etiam wrote:
| Not that I know the details of medieval vampire lore, but
| doesn't it sort of follow that if the deceased has crossed to
| far side of Styx they'd be much less eligible for
| walking/flying/crawling/whatever around as one of the restless
| dead?
|
| It seems like the practice could well share inheritance with
| ancient Greece, but I'd be surprised if the motivating
| mythology would be quite the same. Wonder what the story was in
| ancient Poland..
| smcl wrote:
| You probably want to cover your bases, IMO. If they're a
| vampire, ok no worries we have the little sickle over their
| neck. If they're not - a couple of zloty to help them on
| their journey in the afterlife.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| It's like anticonception; more measures means a lower
| chance of the undead running amok. I mean they're already
| consecrated and buried, it won't hurt to also add padlocks,
| stakes, coins, sickles, and (another thing I haven't seen
| in the article) a cage around the grave.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _a cage around the grave_
|
| I suspect this one may have more to do with countering
| _external_ threats.
| Timon3 wrote:
| As far as I'm aware, the common understanding is that a
| vampire doesn't have a soul anymore, they are undead. This is
| why they supposedly can't see themselves in mirrors.
|
| https://scifi.stackexchange.com/a/38468
|
| This would imply that helping the soul cross the river
| doesn't prevent "vampirification".
| dspillett wrote:
| Another common thought for how the not-seeing-in-mirrors
| thing came about is that silver was seen as something that
| harmed or warded off evil, hence its use against werewolf
| and such in many myths. Way-back-when, the reflective
| backing of mirrors, at least those owned by the rich or
| well-to-do, was often achieved with a thin coat of silver.
| Of course that doesn't explain other evil creatures having
| a reflection in the same mirrors, but as the various
| mythologies have different mixed sources we can't expect an
| awful lot of consistency.
| cultofmetatron wrote:
| I heard its due to the silver. vampires are weak to silver
| and silver was used in both in the reflective backing of
| old mirrors and photographic emulsion.
| krapp wrote:
| Bear in mind that prior to Bram Stoker and Universal
| Studios basically codifying the modern vampire archetype,
| what "vampires" were (vaguely, any demonic or malevolent
| spirit that drank blood) and how they behaved was a
| matter of folklore and might differ greatly from place to
| place. All of these beliefs and more were probably true
| at the same time.
| akomtu wrote:
| Addressing a vampire as "they" may be in fact dangerous,
| for most of the vampires are from the pre-internet age.
| cududa wrote:
| I just want you to know, you're not getting downvoted by
| the "woke mob", you're getting down voted for making an
| idiotic joke and insisting on making some random
| conversation on history about "woke politics".
| akomtu wrote:
| What's the use of karma points if not spending them to
| make fun of the dogma? Those points don't buy bread, and
| you can't even put them on your resume.
| cududa wrote:
| I feel bad for you.
| akomtu wrote:
| We can discuss your feelings, if you want.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| What are you trying to say here? Can you elaborate? As
| far as I'm aware English predates the internet.
| alexeldeib wrote:
| I think it's alluding to "they" being non binary/woke to
| refer to a single person
| r2_pilot wrote:
| Using "they" to denote genderless singular has been
| common in English for more than a century.
| alexeldeib wrote:
| I'm not agreeing or disagreeing, just answering the
| question as I saw it :)
| chc wrote:
| The singular "they" is in fact about as old as the
| singular "you" (which was also strictly a plural before
| then).
| eigenket wrote:
| Some vampires may even be as old as the 14th century,
| which is when people first started using "they" as a
| gender neutral third person pronoun.
|
| Some 18th century people didn't like it because they
| thought it was too colloquial but its been a part of
| English for a fairly long time, roughly 10 times as long
| as the "Internet age".
| seabass-labrax wrote:
| If you haven't already, listen to Chris de Burgh's sublime _Don
| 't Pay the Ferryman_: 3 minutes and 44 seconds of sublime high-
| octane pop-rock music which conjures up images of this very
| nugget of folklore.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| To bring it full circle, that low-spoken bit from The
| Tempest? Some of that is Anthony Head, of Buffy the Vampire
| Slayer.
| tptacek wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nachzehrer
| btbuildem wrote:
| Charon didn't get as far north, his jurisdiction was mostly in
| the Mediterranean
| H8crilA wrote:
| It seems that this practice didn't spread to Slavic Europe,
| with the possible exception of Ukraine around the Black Sea.
| This region had been under Greek/Byzantine influences for
| millennia. Also, back then this area was partly Turkish, for
| example Crimea was controlled by the Crimean Khanate. The wild
| steppes of Zaporizhia separated it from "proper Slavic
| civilization". Ironically this is exactly where the current
| ruso-ukrainian frontline is.
| TheAlchemist wrote:
| Not sure if it was really practiced, but I definitely heard
| about it when I was a kid (in Poland).
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| > Ironically this is exactly where the current ruso-ukrainian
| frontline is.
|
| I think it's quite common to see front lines and new borders
| form around ethnic or cultural borders, instead of existing /
| established country borders. Or that there's clear cultural
| differences on old borders, like for example where the Roman
| empire's borders were, or the borders between England, Wales
| and Scotland in the UK.
| eigenket wrote:
| Wallsend (where Hadrian's Wall stopped) is about 100km
| South-East of Berwick-upon-Tweed where the border between
| England and Scotland has been for a long time.
|
| There has been a lot of history since the days Roman
| empire.
| kstrauser wrote:
| I'm thinking about this in the context of marking nuclear waste
| dumps. We want to leave a message saying "this is dangerous; stay
| far away!" to last 10,000 years. Meanwhile, the ghosts of our
| ancestors from just 400 years ago are screaming "do you think we
| did that for giggles?!"
|
| It makes me appreciate how hard it'd be to craft messaging that
| can survive hundreds of generations without merely piquing the
| interest of that day's archaeologists.
| gowld wrote:
| https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/ten-thousand-years/
|
| > Bastide and Fabbri came to the conclusion that the most
| durable thing that humanity has ever made is culture: religion,
| folklore, belief systems. They may morph over time, but an
| essential message can get pulled through over millennia. They
| proposed that we genetically engineer a species of cat that
| changes color in the presence of radiation, which would be
| released into the wild to serve as living Geiger counters.
| Then, we would create folklore and write songs and tell stories
| about these "ray cats," the moral being that when you see these
| cats change colors, run far, far away.
|
| _10,000 - Year Earworm to Discourage Settlement Near Nuclear
| Waste Repositories (Don 't Change Color, Kitty):_
|
| http://emperorx.bandcamp.com/album/10000-year-earworm-to-dis...
| ramblenode wrote:
| > They proposed that we genetically engineer a species of cat
| that changes color in the presence of radiation, which would
| be released into the wild to serve as living Geiger counters.
|
| This would seem to fail as a long-term plan due to genetic
| drift and natural selection.
|
| Presumably, there is no reproductive advantage to the cat in
| expressing fur color that indicates radiation. In the absence
| of selective pressure, the phenotype will gradually disappear
| as the radiation expressing cats mix with non-expressing
| cats. Since humans won't be actively maintaining the
| phenotype in the population against genetic drift (the
| opposite, in fact, since they avoid the cats) then over
| hundreds or thousands of years there will be no indicator cat
| phenotype.
| kstrauser wrote:
| Not arguing against your point, just clarifying: the idea
| is that you'd _want_ to have a ray cat around. When your
| ray cat changes color, you'd leave the area and take it
| with you.
| kstrauser wrote:
| Catchy little horror story!
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