zombies, real or not? 0.0 Options

[tv with legs]

its been coming to my attention that the fact that zombies mite exist may be more true than we thought.
just facts and stooph i read just make is seem, well, possible.
i have read bible phrases from the internet sayins that zombies do exist and or will exist. (i plan to check this out myself)
and the fact that mummies had there organs and brains taken out. (thus to kill a zombie the nervous system must be destroyed.)
idk, it just seems......wierd?
im sorta for the conspiracy thing (tho not much) so it may be possible that the government blacks out zombies?


who knows?!

[pixie]

Dead people stay dead.

But the living.. There are a good few methods for making zombies out of them I have heard of, some illnesses that could explain it too. I think the mythology comes from things done to the living personally. Corpses just stay where they are left and rot.

Egyptian mummies had their organs removed and preserved so that they would not rot and be able to be used in the afterlife. That was the whole point of mumification, as well as burying people with all their belongings, wives, slaves and gold. They thought they could take it all with them, brains and spleens included.

One piece of jewish mythology that is worth reading about is the Golem, which is a basically a zombie made out of dirt rather than corpses. Much more interesting than that voodoo inspired hollywood nonsense.

p.s. Removing the brains also kills living things. So it is no co-incidence that doing this might stop a 'zombie'.

[Mata]

I did hear of a professor who had some slightly unusual death and, as the authorities do in such cases, an autopsy was performed. On doing this they discovered that he only had a thin layer of brain matter around the inside of his skull, the rest was a fluid-filled cavity. It's amazing how little brains you actually need to get by with. There's a photo somewhere on the internet of a guy with literally half his head missing. I don't know how he got that way, but he's alive and well. Also, there is grey matter along the spinal column. Although the purpose of this hasn't been figured out yet I'm guessing that it handles automatic physical reactions to things.

My point is this, it's possible that people with incredibly severe head injuries have survived in the past when all other people would normally have died. Resulting brain damage may have made the people less able to comprehend the world around them, but they could remain alive. This kind of thing could give rise to zombie myths.

There is evidence from prehistoric times of trepanning (drilling holes in the skull). Obviously we don't know why people did this, perhaps it was a migraine treatment, an attempt to release 'evil spirits' from schizophrenics... we'll never know. Again, it's possible that resulting brain damage could have set up a cultural memory of lobomised people who apparently acted in zombie-like ways. Humanity has always been afraid of what is different, and it's reasonable to assume that mental illness has always been with us since we became conscious enough to suffer problems, so the mythologising of difference as equating to evil is not surprising. Given the existence of cannibalism rituals in many early cultures, it's not surprising that difference became linked with eating human flesh and brains in particular.

The link between zombies and brains does suggest some cultural memory of brain damaged individuals. I might not know the physiological history of our species very well, but I do know about story telling, and so I know that when you are telling a story about someone who has lost something you base it around their desire to get it back. If this is a story about something you fear then it will be obvious that the things that are desired will be at the loss of innocent strangers.

Zombies hold fear because of their mindlessness. They remind us of our animal desires. I really do think that they are probably the oldest horror stories that we have. I can imagine homo habilis meeting the neanderthals and creating proto-myths about these animalistic creatures that look-like-us but not-like-us.

As for zombies being real... Well, I hear Celebrity Big Brother is still getting high ratings, so I can only assume that you are right.

[Spacehappy]

Big fan of the George A Romero movies, so when i think of Zombies these shambling things spring to mind.

http://zombies.monstrous.com/voodoo_zombies.htm

Delves into some of the zombie myths, but also gives some information on Voodoo zombies.

[Kitty]

Going into a totally fictional area.... Infact, fantasy. I read the His Dark Materials series (great books, if you're into fantasy) And basically, it had a really strange take on humans/zombies/dimensions. At any rate, there's this stuff called "dust" in the book, and its basically concious matter, and it makes up part of what every concious (animal) thing is. One group of people in the book practiced trepanning (sp?), like mata mentioned, to let in extra concious matter. It made them well.... intelligent. They were able to determine things that people that didnt have the trepanning done couldnt grasp.

Also, in one of the worlds all the humans had seperate souls, almost. They were called 'daemons' and they took the form of an animal, and were connected to you by some sort of bond. There was something else to do with concious matter here too, but I really cant remember what. At any rate, someone in the book invented a way of seperating daemons from people and it basically created a zombie child. They were still living and basically functioning, but they werent really there anymore.

Yay for soul cutting.... o.0