‘4,200-year-old Zombie grave’ discovered in Germany

Archaeologists excavating in East Germany have found a 4,200-year-old grave near Oppin in Saxony-Anhalt containing the skeleton of a man believed to be at risk of becoming a “zombie”.

A supposed zombie grave, dating back thousands of years, shedding light on the superstitious practices of Bronze Age Europeans.

The deceased was pinned under a large stone to prevent him from rising from the grave to wreak havoc on the living. The slab was four inches (10 centimeters) thick, 20 inches (50 centimeters) wide, and roughly three feet (one meter) long. Its intended function was to stop the deceased from excavating his own grave, as zombies—or, more accurately, revenants—have been known to do.

The tomb of the suspected zombie was uncovered during excavations that have been launched along the route of a planned long-distance, underground power line known as the SuedOstLink, which will transmit electricity from Saxony-Anhalt into Bavaria.

“It is an adult man, about 40 to 60 years old. He is lying on his left side with his legs bent and facing east,” excavation manager Uwe Moos said at the excavation site. “A large stone, about one metre long, 50 centimeters wide and ten centimeters high, lies across his lower legs.”

According to Moos, the deceased may have been unloved or suffered from a serious illness. “The heavy stone was intended to prevent him from coming back,” said Moos. The man may have come from the Bell Beaker culture – making it the first such revenant grave from this period in central Germany.

Although stories about vampires, zombies, and other undead ghouls were particularly prevalent in Europe during the Middle Ages, little is known about how deeply the idea of the revenant permeated Bronze Age mythology.

The fact that a zombie burial was found in eastern Germany indicates that the legends were known in the area as early as the third millennium BC, indicating that they may have originated even earlier in prehistory.

“We know that even in the Stone Age, people were afraid of revenants,” said archaeologist and Project Manager Susanne Friederich, in an interview with the German public broadcasting outlet MDR. “Back then, people believed that dead people sometimes tried to free themselves from their graves.”

A common theme in many ancient mythologies, particularly those of the Celtic and Norse people, was the revenant or zombie. Ancient Greeks also had a genuine fear of revenants, as evidenced by their custom of weighing down entombed bodies.

The Romans believed in revenants, and putting stone blocks in the mouths of the dead prevented them from rising and devouring the flesh of the living, according to a wealth of literature.

To stop the evil dead from rising, one way was to lay a large stone across the body. However, it wasn’t the only one.

“There are graves where the corpse even lies on its stomach,” Friederich said.  “If it lies on its stomach, it burrows deeper and deeper instead of rising to the surface … there are also dead bodies lying on their stomachs who were also pierced with a lance, so they were practically fixed in the ground.”

The excavations are taking place in the run-up to the grid expansion of the direct current line SuedOstLink. The approximately 150-kilometer-long section through Saxony-Anhalt will be archaeologically investigated until 2025. The skeletal remains have been recovered from the Neolithic grave and are being transferred to a laboratory in Halle for further study.

A sculpture of a snake-bodied Roman-German deity was discovered in Stuttgart

A sculpture of a snake-bodied Roman-German deity was discovered at the Roman fort in Stuttgart, Germany.

Since the beginning of the year, excavations have been taking place at the Roman fort on Altenburger Steige in Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt under the expert supervision of the State Office for Monument Preservation (LAD) at the Stuttgart Regional Council. Archaeologists examine the construction site for the extension of the municipal Altenburg School.

In Roman times, from around 100 to 150 AD, there was initially a fort for an equestrian unit, which was followed by an extensive civilian settlement until around 260 AD.

During the excavations, a stone figurine from the Roman world of gods was found, which can be linked to finds from over 100 years ago.

An employee of the executing company ArchaeoBW noticed an inconspicuous, mud-smeared sandstone. Upon closer inspection and after initial cleaning, the find turned out to be a 30-centimeter tall kneeling figure with a human head.

Despite the weathering of the stone, you can see how her arms rest on the sides of her upper body and her hands rest on her hips and legs. However, the latter does not have a human shape, instead merging into a kind of snake body.

The chief archaeologist of the LAD, Dr. Andreas Thiel, explained: The figure is a hybrid creature from the Roman-Germanic world of gods, a ‘giant.’ As comparable finds show, the figure was part of a Jupiter-Giant column. These monuments combine classical antiquity with presumably Germanic beliefs: The thunderbolt-wielding Jupiter rides his horse over a crouching figure on the ground, usually naked and bearded, as can be seen, for example, in a group from Hausen an der Zaber, in the Heilbronn district.

However, the figure beneath the horse is often depicted in a pose that seems to hold up the horse. These groups of figures topped tall stone pillars erected in public squares. It is presumed that Jupiter is represented here as the god of weather and lord of the forces of nature, Thiel says.

In addition to its scientific significance, the new find also has another highly interesting aspect, according to Thiel: ‘Every archaeologist is delighted when a beautiful find is made. Every excavation on the Hallschlag brings pieces of the puzzle of the Roman past of the state capital to light. In this case, we are in the fortunate position that our giant fits in with other finds that came to light in Bad Cannstatt over a hundred years ago,”.

‘We have many artifacts from Roman Bad Cannstatt in our depot. When we heard about the new discovery, we immediately thought of another part of a Jupiter Giant column: its base usually included a so-called four-god stone. In the depot of the Württemberg State Museum there is a badly damaged four-gods stone with depictions of the Roman gods Mercury, Juno, Hercules, and Minerva,’ explained Dr Astrid Fendt, Head of the Department of Archaeology and Head of Classical and Provincial Roman Archaeology at the Württemberg State Museum in Stuttgart.

And Andreas Thiel added: ‘This very four-god stone comes from a well (which was located on the edge of the currently excavated area) and was found during the excavations in 1908. The inconspicuous giant could also have been lying there, but probably escaped the attention of our colleagues at the time, which is not surprising if you imagine the stone still dirty.’

Overall, it is a great stroke of luck that the recently discovered giant can be linked to a fragment that has long been stored in the Württemberg State Museum’s depot.

This allows for the reconstruction of a Jupiter giant column, which was once erected near an important road junction in the Roman settlement of Bad Cannstatt. Archaeologists see this as another piece in the puzzle of Stuttgart’s rich Roman past.