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Illustration of Toraja walking dead
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Kayit No. 259 ci 446

Toraja walking dead

Ñu ngi koy wooye itam: Ma'nene, walking corpses of Tana Toraja
Léeb ak cosaanNéew yu dundaatDafay doxantuLiggéeyu dëmm2000 ba 2009

The Toraja of Sulawesi keep their dead close: bodies are preserved, periodically exhumed and paraded in the Ma'nene rite. Around this real practice a story has grown that Torajan corpses can walk home under their own power. Scholars who work in the region say the story is a distortion, spread as Torajans living in cities post photographs of the ritual online. The case shows how a zombie legend can form in the present day around an unfamiliar funeral custom.1

Xeexal ko
Jëkk a bindu
2009
The walking-corpse legend circulated online from 2009; it is attached to the much older Ma'nene ritual
Cosaan
Torajan (Sulawesi, Indonesia)
Endonesi
Lan moo ko waral
Liggéeyu dëmm
In the legend, the dead are made to walk back to their home villages.
Naka ngay doone benn
A person who dies away from home; in one telling, the fallen of an old war between West and East Toraja.
Naka lay yëngoo
Dafay doxantu
Xel
Amul xel

Kañ la jëkk a feeñ?

The walking-corpse legend circulated online from 2009; it is attached to the much older Ma'nene ritual

notu gëstu

Li sours yi wax

1

In the Ma'nene ceremony families exhume mummified relatives, wash them, dress them in new clothes and walk them through the village1

2

A legend tells of defeated Torajan warriors whose corpses walked home1

3

Photographs of the ritual have repeatedly gone viral as 'real zombies'1

4

Anthropologist Kathleen Adams calls the walking-dead stories a corrupted version of what the ritual involves1

5

Fact-checkers have traced specific viral claims to misread photos of Ma'nene1

Ndax mën nga ko raw ci daw?

Gaawaay bi jóge ci ni sours yi ko melale (dafay doxantu), du natt.

Toraja walking dead lu tollu ci 3 km/h (1.9 mph)
Yow, ci dox lu tollu ci 5 km/h (3.1 mph)
Yow, ci daw ndànk lu tollu ci 10 km/h (6.2 mph)
Mag bu am doole buy daw lu gaaw lool lu tollu ci 24 km/h (15 mph)
Ku gaaw ci welo lu tollu ci 37 km/h (23 mph)

Sours yi

  1. Did an Indonesian Woman Come Out of Her Grave? - Snopes

Xibaar bu nekk ci xët wii jóge na ci sours yii, te nu bind ko ak sunu kàddu. Gis nga njuumte? Wax nu ko ci [email protected].

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