They found *nails* in people and it's not what you think

You know, sometimes I take the Skytrain out toward Metrotown, or even further, out past where the mountains start to feel more like a backdrop than an embrace, and I see all these new towers going up, glass and steel reflecting the clouds. And I think about all the layers of history we’re just building over. Then you hear about something like this: archaeologists in Rome find 1,800-year-old burials with iron nails hammered into the *chests* of the dead. Not in coffins. In the bodies. Apparently, it’s about restless spirits, making sure they stay put. *Chinkon* rituals, we might call them, to appease.

And you just… pause. Because here in Vancouver, we like to think we're so modern, so forward-thinking, all our problems are about housing affordability and bike lanes. We pave over old growth, dig up bits of forgotten Chinatown, throw up another condo, and imagine we're building the future. But scratch the surface, even just a little, and you realize the *o-mamori* we carry, the superstitions, the deep-seated human need to control what we don't understand — it’s all still there. Maybe we don't use iron nails anymore, but the impulse to pin things down, to prevent what we fear from rising up, hasn't changed. Beautiful out here. Complicated in here. That's the coast.

The crew on the Morning Wire dug into this a bit. You can catch the playback or listen live at mornings.live.