the Self-same Bodies of the Dead Which Were Laid in the Grave
J ohn had been dead about four hours earlier his torso was brought into the funeral home. He had been relatively healthy for most of his life. He had worked his whole life on the Texas oil fields, a job that kept him physically agile, and in pretty skillful shape. He had stopped smoking decades earlier, and drank moderate amounts of alcohol.
Lately, his family and friends had noticed that his wellness – and his mind – had started to falter. Then, one common cold Jan morning, he suffered a massive centre assail, apparently triggered by other, unknown, complications, fell to the flooring at home, and died almost immediately. He was just 57 years old. Now, he lay on the metal tabular array, his body wrapped in a white linen sheet, cold and stiff to the touch, his skin purplish-grey – tell-tale signs that the early stages of decomposition were well under way.
Most of united states of america would rather non think most what happens to our selves and loved ones afterward death. Most of u.s.a. die natural deaths and, at least in the West, are given a traditional burial. This is a way of showing respect to the deceased, and of bringing a sense of closure to bereaved family. It besides serves to slow down the decomposition process, then that family members tin remember their loved one every bit they once were, rather than as they at present are.
For others, the cease is less dignified. A murderer might bury his victim in a shallow grave, or get out their body at the scene of the crime, exposed to the elements. When the body is somewhen discovered, the first thing that the constabulary detectives and forensics experts working on the case will try to establish is when decease occurred. Time of death is a crucial piece of information in any murder investigation, but the many factors influencing the decomposition process can brand it extremely difficult to estimate.
The sight of a rotting corpse is, for most of us, unsettling at best, and repulsive and frightening at worst, the stuff of nightmares.
Far from being 'dead,' still, a rotting corpse is teeming with life. A growing number of scientists view a rotting corpse equally the cornerstone of a vast and circuitous ecosystem, which emerges soon after expiry and flourishes and evolves as decomposition proceeds.
Nosotros still know very niggling most human decay, just the growth of forensic inquiry facilities, or 'trunk farms,' together with the availability and ever-decreasing toll of techniques such as DNA sequencing, now enables researchers to report the process in ways that were not possible just a few years ago. A meliorate agreement of the cadaveric ecosystem – how it changes over fourth dimension, and how it interacts with and alters the ecology of its wider environs – could have important applications in forensic science. It could, for example, atomic number 82 to new, more accurate means of estimating time of death, and of finding bodies that accept been hidden in underground graves.
Decomposition begins several minutes after decease, with a process called autolysis, or self-digestion. Shortly after the heart stops beating, cells become deprived of oxygen, and their acidity increases as the toxic past-products of chemical reactions begin to accumulate inside them. Enzymes get-go to digest cell membranes and then leak out as the cells pause downwardly. This commonly begins in the liver, which is enriched in enzymes, and in the brain, which has high water content; eventually, though, all other tissues and organs begin to interruption downward in this fashion. Damaged blood cells spill out of cleaved vessels and, aided past gravity, settle in the capillaries and small veins, discolouring the skin.
Body temperature likewise begins to drop, until it has acclimatised to its surroundings. Then, rigor mortis – the stiffness of expiry – sets in, starting in the eyelids, jaw and neck muscles, before working its way into the trunk and so the limbs. In life, musculus cells contracts and relax due to the actions of ii filamentous proteins, called actin and myosin, which slide along each other. After expiry, the cells are depleted of their energy source, and the protein filaments get locked in identify. This causes the muscles to become rigid, and locks the joints.
"It might take a little bit of force to interruption this up," says mortician Holly Williams, lifting John's arm and gently angle it at the fingers, elbow and wrist. "Unremarkably, the fresher a body is, the easier it is for me to work on."
Williams speaks softly and has a happy-go-lucky demeanour that belies the gruesome nature of her work. Having been raised in a family-run funeral home in north Texas, and worked there all her life, she has seen and handled dead bodies on an well-nigh daily basis since her childhood. Now 28 years old, she estimates that she has worked on something like one,000 bodies.
Her work involves collecting recently deceased bodies from the Dallas-Fort Worth area, and sometimes beyond, and preparing them for their funeral, by washing and embalming them. Embalming involves treating the body with chemicals that slow down the decomposition process, primarily to restore it as closely as possible to its natural state before expiry. Williams performs this so that family unit and friends can view their departed loved i at the funeral. Victims of trauma and violent deaths ordinarily need all-encompassing facial reconstruction, a highly skilled and time-consuming job.
"Virtually of the people we choice up dice in nursing homes," says Williams, "just sometimes we get people who died of gunshot wounds or in a car-wreck. We might get a call to selection up someone who died alone and wasn't establish for days or weeks, and they'll already be decomposing, which makes my piece of work much harder."
During the early on stages of decomposition, the cadaveric ecosystem consists generally of the bacteria that live in and on the human body. Our bodies host huge numbers of bacteria, with every one of its surfaces and corners providing a habitat for a specialised microbial customs. By far the largest of these communities resides in the gut, which is domicile to trillions of bacteria of hundreds or perhaps thousands of unlike species.
The and so-called gut microbiome is one of the hottest enquiry topics in biology at the moment. Some researchers are convinced that gut bacteria play essential roles in human health and affliction, simply nosotros still know very little about our make-up of these mysterious microbial passengers, let alone most how they might influence our bodily functions.
Nosotros know even less nigh what happens to the microbiome afterwards a person dies, but pioneering enquiry published in the past few years has provided some much needed details.
Most internal organs are devoid of microbes when we are alive. Shortly afterward death, however, the immune system stops working, leaving them to spread throughout the body freely. This usually begins in the gut, at the junction between the small-scale and large intestines. Left unchecked, our gut bacteria brainstorm to digest the intestines, and then the surrounding tissues, from the inside out, using the chemical cocktail that leaks out of damaged cells as a food source. Then they invade the capillaries of the digestive system and lymph nodes, spreading first to the liver and spleen, then into the heart and encephalon.
Terminal year, forensic scientist Gulnaz Javan of Alabama State University in Montgomery and her colleagues published the very first study of what they accept called the thanatomicrobiome (from thanatos, the Greek discussion for 'death').
"All of our samples came from criminal cases involving people who died by suicide, homicide, drug overdose, or in traffic accidents," she explains. "Taking samples this way is really hard, considering we have to inquire the [bereaved] families to sign our consent forms. That's a major ethical issue."
Javan and her squad took samples of liver, spleen, brain, heart, and blood from eleven cadavers, at between twenty and 240 hours afterwards death, then used two dissimilar land-of-the-art DNA sequencing technologies, combined with bioinformatics, to analyse and compare the bacterial content of each sample.
They found that samples taken from different organs in the same cadaver were very like to each other, just were very different from those taken from the same organs in other bodies. This may exist due partly to individual differences in the composition of the microbiome of the individuals involved in the study.
The variations may besides be related to differences in the period of time that had elapsed since decease. An earlier report of decomposing mice had revealed that although the animals' microbiome changes dramatically after expiry, it does so in a consistent and measurable fashion, such that the researchers were able to guess time of death to within 3 days of a nearly 2-calendar month period.
Javan'southward written report suggests that this "microbial clock" may also be ticking inside the decomposing human body, likewise. The first bacteria they detected came from a sample of liver tissue obtained from a cadaver just 20 hours after decease, but the earliest time at which bacteria were found in all samples from the same cadaver was 58 hours after expiry. Thus, afterward we die, our bacteria may spread through the body in a stereotyped way, and the timing with which they infiltrate beginning one internal organ and then another may provide a new style of estimating the amount of time that has elapsed since death.
"The degree of decomposition varies not simply from individual to individual just also differs in dissimilar body organs," says Javan. "Spleen, intestine, stomach and pregnant uterus are earlier to decay, but on the other hand kidney, middle and bones are later in the procedure." In 2014, Javan and her colleagues secured a Usa$200,000 grant from the National Scientific discipline Foundation to investigate farther. "We will do next-generation sequencing and bioinformatics to run into which organ is best for estimating [fourth dimension of death] – that's yet unclear," she says.
1 thing that already seems clear, though, is that different stages of decomposition are associated with a different composition of cadaver bacteria.
One time self-digestion is nether mode and bacteria have started to escape from the gastrointestinal tract, putrefaction begins. This is molecular death – the intermission downwardly of soft tissues even further, into gases, liquids and salts. Information technology is already under way at the earlier stages of decomposition, just really gets going when anaerobic bacteria get in on the human activity.
Putrefaction is associated with a marked shift from aerobic bacterial species, which require oxygen to grow, to anaerobic ones, which exercise non. These then feed on the body tissues, fermenting the sugars in them to produce gaseous past-products such as methane, hydrogen sulphide and ammonia, which accumulate within the body, inflating (or 'bloating') the abdomen and sometimes other body parts, too.
This causes farther discoloration of the body. As damaged blood cells continue to leak from disintegrating vessels, anaerobic convert haemoglobin molecules, which once carried oxygen around the trunk, into sulfhaemoglobin. The presence of this molecule in settled blood gives skin the marbled, greenish-black appearance characteristic of a torso undergoing active decomposition.
Every bit the gas force per unit area continues to build up within the body, information technology causes blisters to announced all over the pare surface, and so loosening, followed by 'slippage,' of large sheets of peel, which remain barely attached to the deteriorating frame underneath. Eventually, the gases and liquefied tissues purge from the body, usually leaking from the anus and other orifices, and often also from ripped skin in other parts of the torso. Sometimes, the pressure is so great that the abdomen bursts open.
Bloating is often used a marker for the transition between early and after stages of decomposition, and another recent study shows that this transition is characterised past a distinct shift in the composition of cadaveric leaner.
The written report was carried out at the Southeast Texas Applied Forensic Scientific discipline Facility in Huntsville. Opened in 2009, the facility is located within a 247-acre expanse of National Forest, which is endemic by the university and maintained by researchers at Sam Houston State University (SHSU). Within, a nine-acre plot of densely wooded land has been sealed off from the wider surface area, and further subdivided, by 10-pes-high dark-green wire fences topped with barbed wire.
Here, scattered among the pino trees, are about a one-half dozen human cadavers, in various stages of decay. The two most recently placed bodies lay spread-eagled near the centre of the small enclosure, with much of their loose, grey-blue mottled pare still intact, their rib cages and pelvic basic visible between slowly putrefying flesh. A few meters away lies another cadaver, fully skeletonized, with its blackness, hardened skin clinging to the basic, as if information technology were wearing a shiny latex accommodate and skullcap. Further still, beyond other skeletal remains that had evidently been scattered by vultures, lay another, within a wood and wire cage, this one nearing the end of the expiry cycle, partly mummified and with several large, dark-brown mushrooms growing from where an abdomen one time was.
In late 2011, SHSU researchers Sibyl Bucheli and Aaron Lynne and their colleagues placed ii fresh cadavers here, left them to decay nether natural weather, and then took samples of bacteria from their various parts, at the beginning and the end of the bloat stage. They then extracted bacterial DNA from the samples, and sequenced information technology to find that bloating is characterised by a marked shift from aerobic to anaerobic species.
As an entomologist, Bucheli is mainly interested in the insects that colonise cadavers. She regards a cadaver as a specialised habitat for various necrophagous (or 'dead-eating') insect species, some of which see out their unabridged life cycle in, on and around the body.
When a decomposing trunk starts to purge, information technology becomes fully exposed to its surroundings. At this stage, microbial and insect activity reaches its peak, and the cadaveric ecosystem really comes into its own, becoming a 'hub' not simply for insects and microbes, but also by vultures and scavengers, as well as meat-eating animals.
Two species closely linked with decomposition are blowflies, flesh flies and their larvae. Cadavers requite off a foul, sickly-sweet odour, made upwards of a complex cocktail of volatile compounds, whose ingredients change as decomposition progresses. Blowflies detect the olfactory property using specialised smell receptors, then land on the cadaver and lay its eggs in orifices and open wounds.
Each fly deposits effectually 250 eggs, that hatch within 24 hours, giving rise to small first-stage maggots. These feed on the rotting flesh and then molt into larger maggots, which feed for several hours before molting once more. Later feeding some more, these nevertheless larger, and now fattened, maggots wriggle away from the body. Then they pupate and transform into developed flies, and the wheel repeats over and again, until in that location's nothing left for them to feed on.
Under the correct conditions, an actively decaying trunk volition take large numbers of stage-three maggots feeding on it. This "maggot mass" generates a lot of heat, raising the inside temperature by more than than 10°C. Like penguins huddling, individual maggots within the mass are constantly on the movement. Merely whereas penguins huddle to keep warm, maggots in the mass motion around to stay cool.
Back in her office on the SHSU campus – busy with large toy insects and a drove of Monster High dolls – Bucheli explains: "It's a double-edged sword – if you're always at the border, you might get eaten by a bird, and if you're always in the centre, you might get cooked. So they're constantly moving from the centre to the edges and back. It'due south like an eruption."
The presence of blowflies attracts predators such equally pare beetles, mites, ants, wasps, and spiders, to the cadaver, which and then feed on or parasitize their eggs and larvae. Vultures and other scavengers, besides as other, big meat-eating animals, may also descend upon the torso.
In the absence of scavengers though, it is the maggots that are responsible for removal of the soft tissues. Carl Linnaeus, who devised the system by which scientists name species, noted in 1767 that "three flies could consume a horse cadaver equally rapidly as a panthera leo." Third-stage maggots will move away from a cadaver in large numbers, ofttimes following the same route. Their action is so rigorous that their migration paths may be seen after decomposition is finished, equally deep furrows in the soil emanating from the cadaver.
Given the paucity of human decomposition research, we nonetheless know very niggling about the insect species that colonise a cadaver. Just the latest published study from Bucheli's lab suggests that they are far more than diverse than we had previously imagined.
The study was led past Bucheli's former Ph.D. educatee Natalie Lindgren, who placed four cadavers on the Huntsville trunk farm in 2009, and left them out for a whole year, during which time she returned iv times a twenty-four hour period to collect the insects that she found on them. The usual suspects were present, simply Lindgren also noted four unusual insect-cadaver interactions that had never been documented before, including a scorpionfly that was found feeding on brain fluids through an dissection wound in the scalp, and a worm found feeding on the stale skin effectually where the toenails had been, which was previously simply known to feed on decaying wood.
Insects colonise a cadaver in successive waves, and each has its own unique life cycle. They can therefore provide information that is useful for estimating time of expiry, and for learning about the circumstances of death. This has led to the emerging field of forensic entomology.
"Flies will make it at a cadaver almost immediately," says Bucheli. "We'll put a body out and 3 seconds later at that place'll exist flies laying eggs in the nose."
Insects can be useful for estimating time of death of a badly decomposing body. In theory, an entomologist arriving at a crime scene tin can employ their noesis of insects' life cycles to approximate the fourth dimension of death. And, because many insect species have a limited geographical distribution, the presence of a given species can link a trunk to a certain location, or show that information technology has been moved from ane place to another.
In practice, though, using insects to estimate time of decease is fraught with difficulties. Time of decease estimates based on the age of blowfly maggots found on a body are based on the supposition that flies colonised the cadaver right after death, merely this is not always the case – burial can exclude insects birthday, for example, and extreme temperatures inhibit their growth or prevent it altogether.
An earlier report led past Lindgren revealed some other unusual fashion by which blowflies might exist prevented from laying eggs on a cadaver. "We made a mail service-mortem wound to the stomach [of a donated body] then partially cached the cadaver in a shallow grave," says Bucheli, "but fire ants made fiddling sponges out of clay and used them to fill in the cut and stop up the fluid." The ants monopolised the wound for more than than a week, and then it rained. "This washed the dirt sponges out. The trunk began to bloat and then information technology blew upward, and at that point the flies could colonise it."
Even if colonization does occur just later on death, estimates based on insects' age may be inaccurate for another reason. Insects are cold-blooded, then their growth rate occurs relative to temperature rather than to the calendar. "When using insects to estimate post-mortem interval, we're actually estimating the age of the maggot and extrapolating from that," says Bucheli. "Nosotros mensurate insect birth rate by accumulated degree hours [the sum of the average hourly temperature], so if you know the temperature and the growth cycle of a fly, yous tin can estimate the age of a fly inside an hour or two."
If not, time of death estimates based on data nearly insect colonization can be wildly inaccurate and misleading. Eventually, though, Bucheli believes that combining insect information with microbiology could aid to make the estimates more accurate, and maybe provide other valuable information nearly the circumstances of expiry.
Every species that visits a cadaver has a unique repertoire of gut microbes, and different types of soil are likely to harbour singled-out bacterial communities, the composition of which is probably determined by factors such every bit temperature, wet, and the soil blazon and texture.
All these microbes mingle and mix within the cadaveric ecosystem. Flies that land on the cadaver will not only deposit their eggs on it, only will also take upwardly some of the bacteria they find in that location, and leave some of their own. And the liquefied tissues seeping out of the torso let for the substitution of bacteria between the cadaver and the soil below.
When they take samples from cadavers, Bucheli and Lynne detect bacteria originating from the peel on the body and from the flies and scavengers that visit information technology, also as from soil. "When a body purges, the gut bacteria beginning to come up out, and we run into a greater proportion of them outside the body," says Lynne.
Thus, every dead body is likely have a unique microbiological signature, and this signature may modify with time according to the exacting conditions of the death scene. A better understanding of the composition of these bacterial communities, the relationships between them, and how they influence each other as decomposition proceeds, could one mean solar day assist forensics teams learn more near where, when and how a person died.
For instance, detecting DNA sequences known to be unique to a particular organism or soil type in a cadaver could help crime scene investigators link the body of a murder victim to a particular geographical location, or narrow down their search for clues fifty-fifty further, perhaps to a specific field within a given area.
"There have been several courtroom cases where forensic entomology has really stood up and provided of import pieces of the puzzle," says Bucheli. "Leaner might provide boosted data and could become another tool to refine [time of death] estimates. I hope that in virtually 5 years we can start using bacterial data in trials."
To this end, more knowledge near the human microbiome and how it changes across a person's lifespan – and after they have died – will be crucial. Researchers are decorated cataloguing the bacterial species in and on the homo torso, and studying how bacterial populations differ between individuals. "I would love to accept a data set from life to expiry," says Bucheli. "I would love to meet a donor who'd allow me to take bacterial samples while they're alive, through their death process, and while they decompose."
A decomposing body significantly alters the chemistry of the soil beneath, causing changes that may persist for years. Purging releases nutrients into the underlying soil, and maggot migration transfers much of the energy in a body to the wider surroundings. Somewhen, the whole procedure creates a 'cadaver decomposition island,' a highly concentrated area of organically rich soil. As well every bit releasing nutrients into the wider ecosystem, the cadaver also attracts other organic materials, such as dead insects and faecal matter from larger animals.
According to 1 estimate, an boilerplate human body consists of 50-75% and every kilogram of dry out body mass eventually releases 32g of nitrogen, 10g of phosphorous, 4g of potassium, and 1g of magnesium into the soil. Initially, some of the underlying and surrounding vegetation dies off, possibly considering of nitrogen toxicity, or considering of antibiotics institute in the body, which are secreted past insect larvae as they feed on the flesh.
Ultimately, though, decomposition is beneficial for the ecosystem – the microbial biomass within the cadaver decomposition island is greater than in other nearby areas; nematode worms also become more than abundant, and institute life more diverse. Farther research into how decomposing bodies change the ecology of their surroundings may provide a new way of finding murder victims whose bodies take been buried in shallow graves.
"I was reading an article about flying drones over crop fields to run into which ones would be best to plant in," says Daniel Wescott, director of the Forensic Anthropology Center at Texas State University in San Marcos. "They were imaging with near-infrared and showed organically rich soils were a darker colour than others."
An anthropologist specialising in skull structure, Wescott collaborates with entomologists and microbiologists to learn more than most decomposition. Among his collaborators is Javan, who has been busy analysing samples of cadaver soil nerveless from the facility in San Marcos.
Lately, Wescott has started using a micro-CT scanner to analyse the microscopic structure of the basic that are brought back to the lab from the San Marcos body farm. He also works with computer engineers and a pilot who operates a drone and uses it to take aerial photographs of the facility.
"We're looking at the purging fluid that comes out of decomposing bodies," he says. "I thought if farmers can spot organically rich fields, and then perhaps our little drone will pick up the cadaver decomposition islands, as well."
Furthermore, grave soil assay may eventually provide another possible way of estimating fourth dimension of expiry. A 2008 study of the biochemical changes that take place in a cadaver decomposition island showed that the soil concentration of lipid-phosphorous leaking from a cadaver peaks at effectually 40 days after expiry, whereas those of nitrogen and extractable phosphorous peak at 72 and 100 days, respectively. With a more than detailed understanding of these processes, analyses of grave soil biochemistry could i twenty-four hours help forensic researchers to estimate how long ago a body was placed in a hidden grave.
Another reason why estimating time of decease can be extremely difficult is because the stages of decomposition exercise not occur discretely, only often overlap, with several taking place simultaneously, and because the rate at which it proceeds tin vary widely, depending largely on temperature. Once maggot migration has ended, the cadaver enters the last stages of disuse, with just the bones, and maybe some pare, remain. These final stages of decomposition, and the transition between them, are difficult to identify, because there are far fewer observable changes than at earlier stages.
In the relentless dry rut of the Texas summer, a body left to the elements will mummify rather than decompose fully. The skin will speedily lose all of its moisture, then that it remains clinging to the bones when the procedure is complete.
The speed of the chemical reactions involved doubles with every x°C rising in temperature, so a cadaver volition reach the advanced stage after sixteen days at an average daily temperature of 25°C, and after 80 days at an average daily temperature of 5°C.
The aboriginal Egyptians knew this. In the pre-dynastic menstruum, they wrapped their dead in linen and buried them straight in the sand. The oestrus inhibited the activity of microbes, while burial prevented insects from reaching the bodies, and so they were extremely well preserved. After on, they began edifice increasingly elaborate tombs for the dead, in guild to provide even better for their afterlife, merely this had the opposite of the intended consequence, hastening the decomposition process, and so they invented embalming and mummification.
Morticians study the ancient Egyptian embalming method to this 24-hour interval. The embalmer would first launder the body of the deceased with palm wine and Nile water, remove most of the internal organs through an incision fabricated down the left-manus side, and pack them with natron, a naturally-occurring salt mixture institute throughout the Nile valley. He would utilise a long hook to pull the brain out through the nostrils, then cover the entire with body with natron, and leave it to dry for forty days.
Initially, the dried organs were placed into canopic jars that were cached alongside the body; later, they were wrapped in linen and returned to the body. Finally, the trunk itself was wrapped in multiple layers of linen, in training for burying.
Living in a modest town, Williams has worked on many people she knew, or even grew up with – friends who overdosed, committed suicide, or died texting at the cycle. And when her mother died four years ago, Williams did some work on her, too, adding the final touches by making up her face: "I always did her hair and make-up when she was alive, and then I knew how to do it just right."
She transfers John to the prep table, removes his clothes and positions him, and then takes several pocket-sized bottles of embalming fluid from a wall cupboard. The fluid contains a mixture of formaldehyde, methanol and other solvents; information technology temporarily preserves the body's tissues by linking cellular proteins to each other and 'fixing' them into identify. The fluid kills bacteria and prevents them from breaking down the proteins and using them equally a food source.
Williams pours the bottles' contents into the embalming auto. The fluid comes in an array of colours, each matching a different skin tone. Williams wipes the body with a wet sponge and makes a diagonal incision just above his left collarbone. She 'raises' the carotid artery and subclavian vein from the neck, ties them off with pieces of string, then pushes a cannula into the artery and small tweezers into the vein to open upward the vessels.
Side by side, she switches the machine on, pumping embalming fluid into the carotid artery and around the body. As the fluid goes in, blood pours out of the incision, flowing down forth the guttered edges of the sloped metallic table and into a large sink. Meanwhile, she picks upwardly one of his limbs to massage it gently. "It takes about an hour to remove all the blood from an average-sized person and replace it with embalming fluid," Williams says. "Claret clots can slow it downwards, and so massaging breaks them up and helps the flow of the embalming fluid."
Once all the blood has been replaced, she pushes an aspirator into John's abdomen and sucks the fluids out of the torso cavity, together with any urine and faeces that might still be in there. Finally, she sews upwardly the incisions, wipes the torso down a second fourth dimension, sets the facial features, and re-dresses it. John is now gear up for his funeral.
Embalmed bodies somewhen decompose too, only exactly when, and how long it takes, depends largely on how the embalming was done, the blazon of casket in which the trunk is placed, and how it is buried. Bodies are, afterwards all, simply forms of free energy, trapped in lumps of matter waiting to be released into the wider universe. In life, our bodies expend energy keeping their countless atoms locked in highly organized configurations, staying composed.
According to the laws of thermodynamics, energy cannot exist created or destroyed, only converted from i grade to another, and the amount of gratuitous energy always increases. In other words, things fall apart, converting their mass to free energy while doing so. Decomposition is i final, morbid reminder that all matter in the universe must follow these fundamental laws. Information technology breaks u.s.a. down, equilibrating our bodily matter with its surroundings, and recycling it so that other living things tin can put it to utilise.
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
This is an early on typhoon of a feature I wrote for Mosaic, republished hither (and also on Ars Technica, BBC Future, Business Insider, Daily Post, Digg, Detect, Disinfo.com, El País, Gizmodo, Huffington Post, Philly.com and Raw Story) under Artistic Commons licence.
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/science/neurophilosophy/2015/may/05/life-after-death
0 Response to "the Self-same Bodies of the Dead Which Were Laid in the Grave"
Post a Comment