If this doesn't make your eyes a little moist you might be devoid of human emotion:

On the Danish Island of Sjaelland a burial about 6000 years old was discovered.

As told by Scottish Archaeologist Neil Oliver:

"Whenever I wonder how we got to where we are now I find myself, in my imagination at least, standing by one graveside in particular. I have thought about its occupants, off and on, for about a quarter of a century and when I began thinking about where the Vikings came from I ended up back there again.

That grave contained the skeleton of a young woman. I like to imagine she was lovely. Around her neck was a string of red deer teeth--collected from as many was 40 separate kills, speaks a great and skillful hunter. It is not much of a leap to see it as a gift given only to the most important person in his world, his daughter or his wife. Buried beside her is a newborn baby laid upon the wing of an adult swan, the bones as light as a bundle of straws. By the baby's hip was a little knife knapped from a piece of flint.

We cannot ever know but it seems at least likely the woman died in childbirth and her baby with her. The passing of 6000 years does not lessen the tragedy, or its impact. Someone grieving for them saw to it that they went to their grave together, she was wearing the necklace he had made for her, and their baby nestled on the wing of a white bird. For hunters--of all people the most sensitive to the way of animals -- the comings and goings of great flocks of migratory birds might have captured their imaginations like nothing else. They represent the journey, the voyage without end".

Savell's thread about ancient religions got me share this little segment out of a book on Vikings I'm currently reading.

What today could have been a simple medical procedure was unimagined then and ends up a major disaster. How sad.

still an easy and common way for a perfectly healthy and fit woman to end up very dead. If not for a Mi-8 medevac with crazy military pilots willing to fly through a snowstorm, a crowd of doctors with a century of medical training, combined, and very fancy medical equipment they used to pour back the gallon of blood that I lost, I would be in a grave now, and so would my son. Without the deer teeth necklace

Wow Tatiana!

A poignant testimonial to the fact that lives are still lost in that manner. I'm very happy that there were some crazy military pilots around to spare you that fate.

Kudo's to those pilots and doctors, but there was something greater flying with you in that snow storm and unfortunate situation, that ultimately saved you two....Glad you & your son survived!

A good description of those dust off drivers!

Love Lost & Grieving ~ Nothing Deeper

BP, great post! Reminds me of a walk through a cemetery in Cades Cove; head stones listed mother and child with the same death date would believe from childbirth.

Any pioneer cemetery I've been to has graves like that. It was apparently a fairly common death of child bearing age women.

My own maternal great-grandfather George Stewart lost two wives this way.

I use to mow a cemetery and in the old section it was surprising the amount of died at birth.

My several greats grandfather had 8 kids by his first wife, she died delivering the 8th child. He married his maid and she died delivering her first child. He then married his maid's sister and she died delivering her first child. He married a 4th time and this wife survived delivering 10 children. Twenty kids in all.

Some of my many great grandparents in Jamestown ended up losing 3 husbands or 3 wives before marrying each other. Often I am descended from both halves of what became a married couple, but from their earlier spouses. During the Dying Years and and again during the Powhatton Massacre, around 90% of the population died. The survivors of both are mostly many great grandparents, uncles, aunts or first or second cousins of mine, many times removed.

My ancestors in Plymouth and the surrounding areas, who came over in the 1620s, often remarried many times after their spouses died too.

That time period is the only period in my history where most of my ancestors died young. It was an exciting, but terrible time to live in America.

Many of my many great grandfathers from that time period were sea captains. They mostly made an amazing number of trips between England and Europe and from South of Jamestown far up to the East Coast of Canada. Some even sailed down to raid the Spanish colonies. They were much tougher and more adventurous than almost anybody now.

Keith

One of my great great uncles was a sea captain out of Sweden. My Dad found a diary of his and had it translated. Most of the entries were very brief. A ship blew up in a French harbor. A few sailors lost. The two most interesting to me was when Krakatoa blew up they had to sail only in the daytime so they didn't run into any floating blocks of pumice. The other was that they knew when the transit of Venus crossed the sun. So in 1882 while in Australia they made sure to see it and commented the next transit would not be for another 121 years and everybody alive then would be dead before it happened again on 8 June of 2004. Inspired me to take the family to view it in 2004. I was really surprised a captain of a ship hauling guano from the south pacific to England and Sweden would be so read in to astronomical happenings.

Good stuff there both Keith and Starbits. In many ways it is nothing short of a miracle that we are here at all with the fickledom of life.

Those old ships captains were well versed in astronomical, math and other aids to navigation....very smart men...and usually well read

As an aside I once met the last ships captain that was licensed in all waters, according to him, started out in sail...very interesting guy..

That study was very popular in the mid 1500's starting with Galileo.

Good thread.

the thing with kids is you can't even get life insurance for them till they are 7 days old so you have to bear the cost of burial on your own , many hospitals offer free infant cremation and many cemeteries have an infants grave and a church takes on that expense.

we have reduced mother deaths significantly with pre-natal care and trained people to react as well as monitoring. Kids a lot more make it but they have to make it do days first. we lost 2 kids before delivery , my cousins lost twins hours post delivery , that still happens quite a lot. you don't see it so much because it typically doesn't have a funeral service or not one of any size like a person who has a lot of colleges , friends and such.

before this year I would tell you the hardest day was going to the hospital with a pregnant wife and leaving with no baby.
the next hardest day was telling my kids there mother was going to die in months not years.
the one after that was when they visited and she couldn't speak hardly a coherent thought to them and then the hardest was days later when she passed.

Here's an artist's reconstruction of the burial in the OP.

Wow, very nice K. Where ddi you find that?