Corpse Paths Worldwide
In the Arenal area of Costa Rica NASA surveys detected straight paths running considerable distances through the mountainous rainforest. Upon closer examination these routes were found to date from AD500-1200 and had been constructed as Corpse paths, along which bodies were carried to burial.
A straight Viking cult or Corpse road at Rosaring, Uppland, Sweden, was unearthed by archaeologists. The body of the dead Viking chieftains were drawn along it in a ceremonial wagon to the grave site. The Netherlands had the Doodwegen or Spokenwegen, the deathroads or ghostroads, converging on medieval cemeteries, some surviving in straight section fragments to this day.
During several dynasties of the imperial China, the pathway to the burial mound of an emperor or a high dignitary would be lined with the statues of real and fantastic animals and of the civil and military officials, and would be known as the shendao (spirit way) At major imperial mausolea, such as Ming Xiaoling in Nanjing or the Ming Dynasty Tombs near Beijing, the spirit way could be several hundreds of meters, sometimes over a kilometer, long.
Read more about this topic: Corpse Road
Famous quotes containing the words corpse and/or paths:
“Buzzards float upon the sky
Shrilling a metaphysic cry,
Machines hum, midgets play,
Another corpse is hauled away
Hauled away”
—Allen Tate (1899–1979)
“Now it is the time of night
That the graves, all gaping wide,
Every one lets forth his sprite
In the church-way paths to glide.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)