Filmmakers and pop artists are increasingly turning to the image zombies to hit the audience with scenes with walking corpses. how it turned out recently, our ancestors from the Iron Age also experienced fear of the risen dead and tried to protect themselves from them in a rather simple way – amputation of limbs.
Recently, a female skeleton was found in the British county of Wiltshire, dated to the early Iron Age, with traces of ritual burials. The discovery was made during excavations taking place in 64 kilometers from the pipeline connecting Dorset and Wiltshire. 
Photo from open sources According to researchers, in itself the discovery of the remains of the Iron Age is nothing unusual, but they were interested in the nature of the burial. The thing is that before the burial of a woman’s corpse, her legs were chopped off. In addition to amputated limbs, there were also goat carcasses in the grave and sheep, for unknown reasons, located on the head of the deceased. 
Photos from open sources Near the skeleton were discovered the remains of a child about ten years old and two men with knife injured. 
Photo from open sources “I think this cemetery was intended for special occasions: people were buried on its territory, dead under strange circumstances, – said in an interview British tabloid MailOnline an archeology teacher at University of Manchester, Melanie Giles. – Not the secret is that similar burials were discovered in communities, residents who were afraid of the resurrection of the dead, dead due to illness, complex childbirth or violence. People believed that those killed in such circumstances may revolt in order to pursue the living, and tried to protect themselves from this. In this case, our ancestors tried to avoid meeting with zombies by chopping off a woman’s legs. They are also left in the grave carcasses of animals so that the undead did not get out graves looking for food. It is very reminiscent of a rite whose purpose is protection from the walking dead. ” Archaeologists admitted that while it is difficult to name the exact circumstances of the death of all members found the group and described them as “something mysterious”. “Clustering bodies promises to be a pretty exciting process. It seems that they all prematurely passed away, ”added Melanie Giles.
Anna Romantseva
