March 16, 2011
New Death Ritual Found in Himalaya—27 De-fleshed Humans.
In high cliffside caves, explorers find 1,500-year-old bones.
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When they found similar, even more ancient evidence of defleshing skeletons in Europe they were quick to implicate cannibals. Glad to hear that they've come up with other, more high-minded explanations now the same practice has been found in Nepal <:(!)
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Maybe that's the way they chose to go: really nekkid and totally high.
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Actually, when you think about it, the worst part of the death process is the putrification of the flesh. Even in our modern high-temp crematoriums, there are quite a few pieces of bone remaining. Takes a lot of fuel to do a funeral pyre. I'm wondering just how they figure the Sky Burial is thought to have originated several hundred years later? Leaving the flesh to scavengers or feeding it to animals (isn't that the same thing--unless you have pet lions?) could have been something the Zoroastrians incorporated into their religion via these people. History is strange.