Ancient Corpses Ritually Dug Up, Torn Apart, Reburied

[Judi Lynn]

Ancient Corpses Ritually Dug Up, Torn Apart, Reburied
"Double burial" practiced for 4,500 years in what is now Mexico, experts say.
John Roach
for National Geographic News
Published March 9, 2010

According to the first known evidence of "double burials," ancient people in what is now Mexico routinely dug up decomposing bodies and took off their arms, legs, and heads, then reburied the bodies, new research shows.

Indigenous peoples of the Cape Region of Baja California Sur (see map) practiced these double burials for about 4,500 years, from about 300 B.C. to the 16th-century A.D, when Europeans first arrived in the region, anthropologists say.

To the native groups, death was "a motionless, painful state, from which the living could free" the dead by sectioning the limbs, physical anthropologist Alfonso Rosales-Lopez said in an email translated from Spanish."

The double-burial practice, he added, is consistent with beliefs in other cultures around the world that death isn't the end of life but rather a passing from one state to another.

More:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/03/100309-double-burials-mexico-graves/