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Anatomy of a Zombie: The History of Zombies


Zombies are a proper trope these days in horror books, movies, and video games. In fact, I'm a zombie author myself and I love it. The first featured zombie flim was back in 1932, White Zombie. Do you remember that movie, because I don't? Zombies seem to come in all shapes and sizes. Not to mention not all zombies are human either, at least in popular culture and flims. However, don't you for one minute wonder what the origin of zombies really is? What started the talk about zombies? Well I did some research and I'll try to explain it the best I can in this blog post. I promise not to bore you either.

Historical documents show that the term zombie dates back all the way to the 8th century. The word ‘zombie’ is said to have come from nzambi, which in Kongo means ‘spirit of a dead person’, or zonbi, used in the Louisiana Creole or the Haitian Creole that represents a person who died and was then brought to life without speech or free will. That might also explain how voodoo started as well and why people are freaked out about the idea.

Believe it or not, voodoo is actually a good place to start when it comes to zombies because their rituals are considered necromancy by many people. I tend to be objective and prefer not to make any judgement on whether or not they do practice actual necromancy as I don't practice voodoo. Not to mention, voodoo is alot more invloved than what is shown in pop culture.

Legend says the voodoo priests possessed the ability to bring back the dead from the ground through the use of a powder called 'coup padre'. Coup Padre is a powder that is issued orally and it has a toxic substance that is found in the porcupine fish. Yes, there is a porcupine fish, look it up on google. Legend says that a zombie is a person who has annoyed his or her family and community to the degree that they can no longer stand to live with this person. So a voodoo priest would be hired to convert this person into a lifeless zombie. Sounds crazy I know, non-fiction can be creepier than fiction.

Once they had been issued the coup padre, the subjects being prepared for their descent into zombidom would appear to die as their heart rate would slow to a near stop, their breathing patterns would be greatly subdued and their body temperature would significantly decrease to the point where they would feel like an ice cube. People were fooled into thinking the person was dead and ended up burying the person. Then the 'dead' person would come back to life under the control of the voodoo priest who possesed him. Whoa! That sounds creepy as heck I know.

However, it gets even creepier than that, oh yeah it does! Some people say that the Mayans were destroyed by zombies. Reports of widespread cannibalism at the end of the Mayan civilization suggests something much more sinister than a simple drought or cross-tribal dispute. Evidence has even been found of children eating their parents, and entire villages devouring themselves within a matter of days. Oh, did I mention there was evidence of bones in former Mayan cities were violently ripped from thier sockets and chewed on the spot. If that doesn't creep you out then congrats on making it this far into the article. You deserve a medal for reading this without freaking out or voimiting your guts out.

In Syria, evidence suggests that the Stone Age heads were originally buried with their bodies intact, but then after several years they were dug up and their skulls were crushed and separated from the rest of the skeleton. No one knows why the face-smashing and careful removal of the heads took place. Some say it could have been because the people of the area were trying to prevent the dead from coming back to life. Did these people have an idea that the zombie apocalypse was real? It sure sounds like it and they excuted tasks similar to popular books and movies without the virus of course.

Finally, do you think we put tombstones over the dead just to glorify them and make their burial spot look a little better? Better think again, the act of putting tombstones really came from the fear the the dead could come back. The first tombstones were people placing a large amount of rocks over graves that were just dug to keep the dead six feet under.

So class what did we learn? Well, we learned a few things, one zombies are more of a myth than truth. However, there is a little bit of truth within all these crazy theories. Now whether voodoo is actual real or not is still up for debat so please don't ask me to answer anything related to this. All we know is because of these crazy legends is why we have authors and film makers making zombie media that we all enjoy. The final thing we learned is that sometimes zombie research based on true facts can be creppier than looking up the wiki for Resident Evil.

I hope you enjoyed this blog post, it will be the first of hopefully many. I'll try to release one of these Anatomy of a Zombie posts every Friday or bi-weekly. Enjoy your weekend and try not to get too scared after reading this.

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