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Porpoise unearthed in medieval graveyard


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I believe he is mistaken. Looks more like a family dog .

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The skull does resemble a dog head, but since I've never seen a skeleton of a porpoise I'll defer and wait for more info.

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maybe it saved someone life at the sea or was some sort of pet like friendship. The purpose was obviously to protect being eaten by scavengers or disrespected in any kind left alone. In the same time it could have been burried to prevent putrefaction or stank around a village ?

Edited by qxcontinuum
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There have been cases of dolphins who've helped sailors navigate difficult passages...maybe this dolphin did some special feat or service.

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Dolphins, the once true rulers! I knew my theories would prove themselves...time to move on to proving the flatness of the earth!

 

also for reference to the might be  a dog skull I looked for the closest resemblance a 5 min search could find. 

https://goo.gl/images/FZFNLY

Edited by Shouldthisexist
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19 hours ago, ROGER said:

I believe he is mistaken. Looks more like a family dog .

No. It's definitely a porpoise.

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9 hours ago, skliss said:

There have been cases of dolphins who've helped sailors navigate difficult passages...maybe this dolphin did some special feat or service.

It's a porpoise,

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The celebrated Northumbrian saint, Cuthbert, cast ashore on a Scottish bay, was said to have found three porpoises or dolphins lying dead on the beach, as if miraculously presented there for his sustenance. To the faithful, whales and dolphins were bounties from above. With the Norman invasion, they became the preserve of the aristocracy and the holy orders because, classified as fish, they could be eaten on fast days of Wednesday and Friday. The name porpoise is itself a contraction of the Norman French, porc poisson.

In 1324, this right was enshrined in medieval legislation regarding “Fishes Royal”, which claimed any stranded whale, dolphin, sturgeon or porpoise for the monarch and his or her favourites. The law still loosely obtains today, administered by London’s Natural History Museum. Some years ago a large sturgeon – a bony, antediluvian-looking fish – delivered to the museum was offered to Buckingham Palace. The offer was politely declined.

And in an even odder cyclic collision of science, culture and myth, scientists have proposed that mathematical examination of Pictish pictograms like the Pictish beast may enable us to understand the communication systems used by dolphins, whose squeaks and whistles appear to be aural versions of such images, conveying meaning that is, as yet, beyond us.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/sep/20/channel-islands-buried-porpoise-is-not-the-first-such-mysterious-find

Edited by Black Monk
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Perhaps it liked humans. Opo and Pelorus Jack were two dolphins in New Zealand which liked to spend time with humans in the early 1900s and in the 1950s. They became legends.

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9 hours ago, Black Monk said:

It's a porpoise,

I know but they are very similar....I assumed they would have similar characteristics.

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Very strange. There's an old superstition that dolphins carry the souls of drowned sailors. Maybe that has something to do with it.

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20 hours ago, PersonFromPorlock said:

Is there any porpoise analog to a selkie?

I am not sure threy differentiated much in the middle ages between dolphins and porpoises, so I reckon we could ascribe selkies to porpoises as well. 

 

Wow, actually your link (and wiki's page about porpoises) took me to a quite unexpected journey of old traditions and legends. 

Between female rape, slavery and forced marriages (selkies in a nutshell) and drive hunting, I see how things have changed on some topics.

And how traditions are important, but some of them are better left to history books.

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On 9/20/2017 at 1:31 PM, cathya said:

Maybe it was a pet.

That's what I was thinking.

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