this post was submitted on 27 Oct 2024
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Today I Learned

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top 17 comments
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[–] [email protected] 42 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Archeologists, ten thousand years from now.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 2 weeks ago

I'm guessing all the skeletons will be a clue.

[–] [email protected] 37 points 2 weeks ago

For anyone confused by the image, those are mostly crypts you're seeing.

... to be buried at the cemetery, one has to be interred inside one of the shared crypts in the cemetery.

Here's a picture with a bit more detail:

picture of wadi al-salaam graveyard picturing hundreds of above ground tombs, mostly only large enough for a single person's body. There is a path through the tombs receding into the distance

[–] [email protected] 36 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

6 million bodies over 1,400 years is on average almost 4,300 bodies each year, or a little less than 12 bodies each day.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Astounding! And of course, that's assuming that it has been in use at the same rate the entire time.

It could be that for 20 years, almost no one lived there so there were very few burials, but at another point there was a war or a plague and they were burying 100 people a day.

Edit: I forgot to mention that it's actually more than that now.

The cemetery saw heavy fighting during the 2004 Battle of Najaf. It is estimated that during the Iraq War, about 200 to 250 corpses were buried there daily; however, in 2010 this number had decreased to less than 100.[5] Approximately 50,000 new bodies are interred in the cemetery annually from across the globe.[14] This figure is an increase on the approximately 20,000 bodies, primarily from Iran, that used to be interred annually in the early 20th century.[15] Most Iraqi and many Iranian Shi'ites have a relative buried in the cemetery.[16]

[–] [email protected] 20 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

Sadly, Jimi and Janis are not buried there to be part of the entertainment.

Edit: On the other hand, I'm guessing they would appreciate Arabic love poetry over Me and Bobby McGee.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 weeks ago

The middle east was on a good path during the 60s/70s.

I'm sure a few musicians from that era are buried there and keeping everyone entertained.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

So places not to be during the zombie apocalypse.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

I've always thought of zombies as an infection of the living or recently living. Graveyards are more of an undead thing, you need necromancy to worry about they coming back to life.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 weeks ago

Who knows? Depends on the zombie. Before Night of the Living Dead, they were all supposedly raised from the dead by voodoo, which I imagine a lot of Haitians found pretty fucking offensive, but NOTLD was already in the '60s.

Also, I may be misremembering, but I'm pretty sure one of the Return of the Living Dead movies (not to be confused with Night of the Living Dead movies) featured zombies coming out of graves.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

If there is necromancy afoot though, I'd suspect it might be at the world's largest cemetery.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 weeks ago

Perhaps but I feel like with necromancy you gotta start small.

Rome wasn't raised in a day, after all.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago

Maybe, but starting with sanctified ground is planning to fail. I pity the necromancer whose army or love or whatever is burried here.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Yes, space is certainly a premium in the Arabian desert.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago

It would be funny if they discovered oil underneath.