During the 17th-18th centuries, very unusual burial methods became widespread throughout Poland, which were the result of a massive outbreak of the fight against "vampires".
From large stones placed directly under the chin of a corpse to sickles crossing the chest, as in the photo above, archaeologists have uncovered ample evidence of how people by all means tried to prevent some of the "dead" from rising from the grave.
However, historians have never been able to understand what was so unusual about those people, what exactly made others afraid of them and believe that they were vampires.
There are many theories to explain these unusual burial practices, known as apotropic (disaster-averting) rituals, but one of the most common assumptions is that would-be vampires were simply strangers, strangers from outside the village who aroused suspicion among local residents.
Until 2014, no one tried to find out if there was anything chemically unique in the remains of those unfortunate people who were buried as vampires. The study, conducted by scientists at the University of South Alabama, was the first of its kind. It made it possible to establish that the "vampires" were not strangers at all. In fact, all the remains that they were able to examine belonged to residents of the same area where they were buried.
The researchers examined in detail the skeletons of six people who were buried as vampires in northern Poland, as well as hundreds of bodies buried in the usual way. To find out where these people come from, a team of scientists measured the ratio of strontium isotopes in their chewing teeth, and compared them with that of 54 ordinary local residents buried nearby.
Strontium is an element found in most rocks, but the ratio of its isotopes present in some rock samples varies depending on where they come from. This means that the study of strontium isotopes in each specific sample provides information about its geographical origin.
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Once scientists obtained the ratio of strontium isotopes in the teeth of local residents, both those who were buried in the usual way and those who were buried as vampires, they checked the results on the remains of local animals.
The results of their research, published in 2014 in PLOS ONE, showed that all six vampires were locals. In other words, this means that they were not strangers, and therefore, there was something special in their social status or the way of death, which made them so suspicious of their relatives.
In their article, the authors of the study put forward an alternative theory according to which vampires may have died from a cholera epidemic that was common in Eastern Europe in the 17th century. They explain that the first person to die from an outbreak of an infectious disease was believed to have returned from the dead to take others with him, that is, a vampire.
“The people of the post-medieval period did not understand how the disease spread, and in the absence of a scientific explanation for these epidemics of cholera and the deaths to which they led, they believed in supernatural causes, in this case, the machinations of vampires,” - said lead researcher Leslie Gregorichka in press release.
The study opens the way for a deeper chemical analysis of the remains of vampires and brings us closer to understanding, finally, what was unusual about these people, and what made others so much afraid of them.
This will provide a deeper insight into the cultural and social practices of the communities of the time, as well as shed light on other strange funeral rituals that existed in different centuries and help explain such mysterious phenomena as the burial of the "witch girl" discovered in Italy.
And, who knows, maybe one day science will once and for all put an end to the vampire myths that have survived to this day.
Igor Abramov
