I was rambling on the issue of museums and human remains and how certain populations are more likely to have their bodies put on display to be gawked at and then went “well I guess the Pompeii casts were of Europeans. there are bones in there right?” and Googled it to make sure, at which point I confirmed that yes there are bones in there, but more interestingly DNA testing revealed that a cast of an adult holding a child everyone assumed was a mother and child were, in fact, a man and a kid entirely unrelated to him. Honestly that’s more moving to me. Maybe they were connected in a way other than blood, but maybe a stranger saw a child when the world was ending and thought the one thing he could do was hold them.
While this is very touching, I am wondering somewhat how people get the idea that Europeans are less likely to have their bodies displayed. Medical history museums exist, and they’re not just chock-full of (European) skeletons, but also of a vast number of specimens stored in alcohol, plastinated remains, wax models etc.
The point here is that poor people were more likely to end up in these collections because 1. they were more likely to suffer from ‘medically interesting’ health conditions and 2. more likely to not be able to afford a proper burial (and keeping their loved ones out of the hands of anatomists etc).
The Federal Pathologic-Anatomical Museum in Vienna, Austria with wax models on display.
However, the market of display bones is actually covered primarily by churches, particularly catholic and eastern orthodox ossuaries. And far too many skeletons and body parts are used as relics. You can’t enter any decently sized catholic church without basically falling over a few bones.
We can accuse the Europeans of many things, but that they were somehow reluctant to put their own mortal bodies on display is certainly not one of them.
amhrancas 