Someone reality check me if I’m overreacting or overthinking this, but it doesn’t feel very cool to me that we’re making food using Ötzi’s body.
I don’t know if it’s because my brain immediately jumps to things like the way Egyptian mummies were historically treated by Europeans, where human remains were dug up, bought and sold, ground into pigments, used in medicine, unwrapped at parties for entertainment, and generally treated as objects rather than people, and my brain is just connecting those dots and going “that feels wrong,” or if I’m actually noticing a broader pattern in how ancient human remains are often treated with less respect than we would extend to more recent dead.
Like, obviously nobody alive today personally knew Ötzi. He’s been dead for thousands of years. I understand that. I also understand the scientific value of studying ancient remains and the incredible amount we’ve learned from him about prehistoric life, diet, migration, disease, technology, and so on. I am not arguing that archaeological study is bad or that remains should never be researched.
But there’s something about crossing over from studying a body to making food and alcohol with it, using it and/or turning it into a novelty experience that makes me pause a little.
Maybe I’m applying modern ideas about bodily consent in situations where they don’t really fit. Maybe I’m being inconsistent and there are good reasons why this is viewed differently than other cases. That’s genuinely possible. I’m absolutely not married to this opinion and I’m open to hearing from people who know more than I do.
At the same time, I think part of what’s bothering me is that if someone died recently and scientists announced they had reconstructed their microbiome and were now using it to make food products, a lot of people would immediately find that unsettling. The fact that thousands of years have passed seems to change people’s reactions dramatically, and I’m not entirely sure where the line is between “enough time has passed that this is fine” and “this is still a human being we’re talking about.”
When I look at ancient remains, I don’t really stop seeing a person just because they’re ancient. My instinctive reaction is still “that was somebody.” They had a life, relationships, fears, preferences, things they cared about, things they loved, people they loved, people who loved them. They were not an artifact when they were alive. They were made one after death.
So when I see things that move beyond research and into entertainment, commercialization, or novelty, something in my brain starts setting off like, silent hill style warning sirens.
If this doesn’t bother anyone else and there’s context I’m missing that makes this a perfectly respectful and normal thing, I’m completely open to being educated on that. But if other people have had similar thoughts, I’d be interested to hear them too, because I feel like I’m struggling to put words to exactly what is making me uncomfortable here. It feels like there’s a distinction somewhere between learning from the ancient dead and using them, and I’m not sure I’ve fully decided where I personally that distinction actually lies.
