Your ancestors did WHAT with nails

Good morning from the wheat belt — five communities, strong roots, and stories worth your time.

You know, sometimes you read something, and you just have to blink a couple of times and read it again, eh? I was just looking through the Wildcard stories, and *oba nä*, this one about the Roman necropolis in Ostiense. They found three skeletons with iron nails on their chests, almost 2,000 years old. Two thousand years! And the archaeologists think it was to keep the spirits from getting restless. Can you imagine that? Putting nails on a person's chest so they don't, what, haunt the living? We have our old cemeteries around here, some of them with stones from the 1800s, but I've never heard of anything like that in our history books. My Oma would have just baked a zwieback and said a prayer for them. Much simpler, and probably less… pokey.

It just makes you wonder what people believed back then, doesn't it? Like, if you were a Roman, and your neighbour just passed on, would you be thinking, "Well, better get the hammer and nails, just in case"? I mean, we've got our superstitions too, I guess. Some folks won't plant potatoes until after the full moon in May, or you always hear about what the almanac says. But putting nails on a body to keep the spirit down? Well, that's something. Can't see that catching on at the Winkler Cemetery. Too much paperwork, probably.

Leah Fehr-Broesky, MiTL Sports Desk, Brandon.

Keith and the gang talk about all sorts of wild stuff on the morning show — you should listen once at mornings.live.