- Why do some folks long
for the post-mortem embrace
of Mother Tree Root?
Let's find out.
(upbeat trance music)
Earlier this month the wind blew
over a 200 year old beech tree in Ireland,
revealing the ruint little skeleton
of an 11th or 12th century corpse.
A team of Irish archaeologists
made the discovery
near the town of Collooney
but the morbid details
soon spread their way
across the Internet
like the roots of a
corpse-grinding doom tree.
Not only did the fallen
beech pull up a skeleton,
it ripped it in half,
Mortal Kombat style,
leaving its lower bones in the earth,
and raising its skeletal torso
up for all to see.
Initial investigations identified the body
as that of a male
between ages of 17 and 25,
who bore the marks on his bones
indicating he had been violently killed
with some kind of blade.
According to initial
radio-carbon analysis,
he likely gasped his last
between the years 1030 and 1200 CE,
a span of Irish history containing
more than enough bloody
battles and murderous vendettas
to account for his shallow grave.
But of course it's hardly the
first time a tree has grown
from the corpse-sown
soil of human conflict.
For example, the stump of
a famous Pensylvanian tree
located at Duffy's Cut
once held human bones
and old coffin nails,
stemming from an 1832 burial
of Irish railroad laborers.
Tree roots just have the goulish tendency
to pilfer our burial plots.
Root systems grow and expand
through the soil to anchor the plant
and absorb water and
nutrients from the ground.
If some corpse compost
should get in the way,
so be it.
More nutrients for a growing tree.
Just consider the case
of 17th century Protestant
theologian Roger Williams,
the founder of Rhode Island.
His survivors buried him on
his own property in 1683.
But the exact location was
forgotten for centuries.
Upon the rediscovery of
his grave-site in 1860,
an apple tree root occupied the grave.
It apparently entered the coffin,
pierced William's skull,
and twisted down through his torso,
steadily consuming nutrients
from his corpse soil,
and according to some,
assuming a stick-man shape.
Now I'm not sure I buy that last part
but the root in question currently resides
in Providence in John Brown House,
so go see it.
Now perhaps this notion disturbs you
but plenty of folks in
the Green Burial Movement
find the idea of re-absorption
into a root system quite appealing.
Why seal your chemical-pumped cadaver
away in a pricy casket when
you can have it recycled
into the ecosystem.
Become a tree,
become some worms.
Join the soil microbiome.
More and more green burial concepts,
really a continuation of
pre-modern burial concepts,
continue to gain traction,
from biodegradable urns
and liquid nitrogen shattered bodies,
to the elegant capsula mundi,
a proposed biostarch egg
containing your dead body
curled into a fetal position.
Once buried, your survivors plant a tree
on top of it.
The body composts,
and the roots dive down for a meal.
So how do you want your
corpse disposed of?
Sealed away in a steal container?
Burned into dust and air pollution?
Or perhaps served up to a hungry tree.
Let me know in the comments below
and be sure to like and subscribe
if you want more corpse-gobbling
now science goodness.
(chime)
