1. Polish “vampires”
Across Poland and parts of Europe, we occasionally uncover burial practices that look like vampire lore. These graves date from the Middle Ages into later historical periods and were typically prepared by peasants. In several cases, a corpse was tied to the neck with a sickle or scythe as if to stop it from rising. Sometimes a stone was pressed into the teeth, the legs were bound, or even the head or limbs were amputated to prevent movement after death.
Archaeologists interpreting numerous finds have concluded that such measures were meant to stop a person from returning as a vampire and disturbing the living. The motivations varied: a person could be buried this way because of unusual dental features or a sudden, suspicious death. Medieval belief—shared in various forms across Europe and lasting in some places into the 19th century—held that someone who died suddenly or under strange circumstances might rise again and threaten their family or community.
When symptoms frightened neighbors, villagers sometimes buried those who died of disease in a “vampire-style” grave. Determining all the criteria for labeling someone a vampire is difficult, since this practice was more common among peasants and the poor than among the elite.
In short, these burials reveal cultural reactions to unexplained deaths and the fear of the undead, rather than a uniform religious ritual or a standardized medical practice. They illustrate how communities used grave postures and protective measures to cope with the unknown in life and death.
2. Dog walking
Ancient images from Shuwaymis and Jubba in what is now Saudi Arabia resemble the work of modern illustrators, as if drawn for a children’s book. About eight thousand years of hunting scenes show not only people with drawn bows but also dogs. With upright ears, short muzzles, and curled tails, these dogs are clearly domestic rather than wild wolves. In several scenes, dogs confront wild donkeys. In others, mountains goats and gazelles appear to bite necks and bellies. Most often, a dog is shown attached to a person—literally connected by a rope. The ropes stretching from dog to human probably indicate control or protection, though some scholars consider the linkage symbolic rather than literal.
From an appearance standpoint, these dogs resemble the modern Canaan dog, a breed still used today for protection and herding. The imagery underscores a long history of human-dog cooperation in harsh environments and hunting contexts.
3. With a bird in your mouth in a foreign land
In Tunnel Wielki Cave in southern Poland, a grave labeled as that of a girl from roughly three centuries ago stands out for the strange details. Burial in a cave is unusual for Europe since the Middle Ages. Most striking is the placement of two finch heads inside the girl’s mouth, a practice not seen before or since in European archaeology. The remains indicate the girl died at about ten to twelve years old and suffered from limited growth throughout life. There are no obvious injuries or common grave goods to explain the death.
DNA analysis has added a twist: the girl was not native to Poland. She appears to have been born in Finland or Karelia. In the mid-17th century, Swedish forces and their Finnish and Karelian allies operated in the region. Some theories suggest that soldiers traveled with families and, within Karelia’s beliefs, those who died in the forest might be laid to rest there. This context helps explain the unusual burial and the birds in her mouth, which may reflect a forgotten pre-Christian Karelia-Finn region ritual.
4. Ancient Greek magic
Classical Athens is remembered for poetry, philosophy, and sculpture, yet daily life carried its own superstitions. Recent excavations uncovered a site dating to the third and fourth centuries where bones of a decomposed chicken lay near a ceramic vessel. The vessel did not resemble a pet’s burial box or a simple offering. A nail embedded in the pottery and other signs pointed to magical intent.
Scholars decoded inscriptions on the ship fragment, finding fifty-five names and words that could be related to binding or curses. Nails were commonly used in ancient curses to immobilize or limit the victim, essentially serving as an “evil eye” mechanism. The prevailing view is that the objects functioned as a curse tool, possibly aimed at rivals or political opponents from Athens’s history.
5. Soldier humor
Ancient people lacked modern writing tools for insults, so some relics show crude humor carved into stone. An example comes from a Roman military site on Hadrian’s Wall. The wall complex protected Roman Britain from northern raids, and the inscriptions reveal a cheeky, defiant voice from the era. About seventeen hundred years old, the graffiti includes a cryptic line and a schematic drawing that mocks a colleague’s name and defecation joke. The phrases were not mere vandalism; they reveal everyday life, humor, and interpersonal dynamics among soldiers stationed far from home.
6. School penalty
Punishments for misbehavior have a long history, and this extends far back into antiquity. The practice continues to echo in modern classrooms as well. Archaeologists recently uncovered thousands of ostraca—ink-writ clay fragments—from the Nile Valley. These shards reveal Egyptian students repeatedly inscribing the same symbol as punishment, dating back to a time before paper and parchment. The repeated marks could have functioned as a form of discipline, but other ostraca record administrative notes, trade information, and name lists, showing a wider spectrum of everyday literacy and record-keeping in ancient education.