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To: Tax-chick
Well, I guess it doesn't worry me much because I took a lot of archaeology courses in school. Except in extraordinary circumstances, there's not much left after a hundred years or so. In acid soil, as in much of northern England and Scandinavia, you have to carefully peel off paper-thin layers of soil in burial mounds to detect the "corpse shadows" - a slight difference in soil color caused by the decomposition of the bones. It looks more like an X-ray than anything else.

And I was fascinated as a child by the preserved corpse of one Mr. Hogenboom, who died in the Philadelphia yellow fever epidemic in the 1790s and was buried in a corner of the graveyard that was saturated with limestone water . . . so he was saponified, i.e. turned to soap. They have taken him off exhibit in a fit of political correctness since I was a kid, though.

But if you don't get dug up, eventually you get excavated by a bulldozer or paved over for a subdivision . . . .

For I know that my Redeemer liveth, and in the last day I shall rise out of the earth. And I shall be clothed again with my skin, and in my flesh I will see my God. Whom I myself shall see, and my eyes shall behold, and not another: this my hope is laid up in my bosom.

20 posted on 10/04/2008 6:50:16 PM PDT by AnAmericanMother (Ministrix of ye Chasse (TTGC Ladies Auxiliary, recess appointment))
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To: AnAmericanMother

I want straight hair.


21 posted on 10/04/2008 6:51:03 PM PDT by Tax-chick ("I always expect the worst from the RATS and they always deliver." ~ rrrod)
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