Defleshing
Photo by Scott Smith Source: History.com
One of the oldest death rituals took place along the foothills of the Andes Mountains. As early as 200 B.C., people living in the area are believed to have practiced what has been deemed a “corpse defleshing,” wherein dead bodies were inserted into a cauldron of chemicals and quickly dissolved.
Ritually processed – first boiled, then defleshed – the bodies were rendered down to only bones. These would be left coated in a thin, white plaster by the cleaning process. Archaeologist Scott Smith discovered the site where this took place, present-day Bolivia, around 2006. “It would have been quite a visceral experience,” Smith said. “It would have been a process that was quite powerful at a sensory level.”
Photo by Scott Smith Source: Live Science
