Wednesday, November 10, 2010

懸棺 - or Hanging Coffins

Never heard of these until today.  Apparently used by the Bo people of China but also in Indonesia and the Philippines.


I think my Maw just found a new feature.  What other wonders does the world hold that I haven't heard of?  These even have a Wikipedia page.  Another site offers this info:
"According to Cui Chen, curator of the Yibin Museum, hanging coffins come in three types. Some are cantilevered out on wooden stakes. Some are placed in caves while others sit on projections in the rock. All the three forms can be found in Gongxian where most of China's hanging coffins are located."



tipped off via Neatorama.

8 comments:

  1. cool. There's Tibetan Sky Burials as well

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sky_burial

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  2. Interesting. I wonder if the custom came about as a measure of protection against grave robbers and perverts? Or against vampire hunters...

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  3. thanks Dungeonmum, I had heard of that, but it makes me think a random chart of burial methods for cultures might be interesting to put together.

    ze Bulette, one article I read online mentioned hight as being prestigious. It sounds like these were put up in areas without a lot of people, and getting them up there was difficult. So the higher you got it, the more you cared about the deceased?

    Oh and grave robber got to most of them, though I think the artifacts they contained were meager.

    migellito, my pleasure.

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  4. I think a saw these before on the old "Proceedings of the Athanasius Kircher Society" web site (which is gone now there is a newer site that just collects places called "Atlas Obscura" which you would like, if you don't already know about it).

    BTW, I finally ran your Alabaster Tower and reported on it on my blog. It went pretty well.

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  5. Oh, and the old Proceedings of the Athansius Kirchner Society page is archived on the WABAC Machine:
    http://web.archive.org/web/20080122210507/http://kirchersociety.org/

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  6. This would be the most relevant Atlas Obscura link (I just went back to the site and it is a bigger than I remembered!

    http://atlasobscura.com/category/rites-and-rituals

    Sorry to clutter up your comments!

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  7. Thanks for the link mike, I know I've run across that site, but it's been a while. I 'll poke around there for other wierdities.

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