Which answer was an ancient belief explaining one of the reasons why people were buried face down?

Individuals were buried face down in this unusual manner so that they “didn’t return from the grave”. This was reported in the ‘Public Library of Science One’ journal in 2014 by Swiss anthropologist Amelie Alteraude of the University of Bern Institute of Forensic Medicine. She found a middle-aged man had been laid to rest face-down with an iron knife in the fold of his arm and a purse full of coins dating back to between 1630 and 1650 CE.

Together with a colleague, she then researched and analyzed almost 100 face-down burials over 900 years in Switzerland, Germany and Austria. The researchers discovered most of these burials dated to a time in Switzerland when the country was ravaged by plagues. The circumstance of these facedown burials were comparable with ‘mutilation or weighing bodies down with stones”.

According to a corollary article in ‘National Geograpic’, these different burial methods were done to “thwart vampires and the undead by preventing them from escaping from their graves.” The new study demonstrates a major shift in burial practices across Europe beginning in 1347 CE- a time when the plague was sweeping across Europe killing millions of people, and people had come to believe that plague victims might “come back to haunt the living”.

As pandemics swept Europe, stories of hungry and vengeful undead grew in German-speaking lands and may be reflected in burial practices.