These coffins can fully decompose a body in just 40 days.
The ancient city of Assos in Turkey was once the site of a peculiar phenomenon, initially reported by the local inhabitants. According to their accounts, the stone coffins in the Assos cemetery could decompose corpses at an unusually rapid rate.
Stone coffins in Turkey can turn a body into a skeleton in 40 days. (Illustrative image).
Due to this strange ability, they are referred to as σαρκο φαγοσ (‘sarko fagos’) in Greek, meaning “flesh eater.” This term is also the origin of the word sarcophagus.
Historically, Assos was a small, historically rich town in the Çanakkale province of Turkey, established around 1000 to 900 BC by Aeolian settlers from Lesbos.
These settlers built a Doric temple for the goddess Athena on the mountaintop in 530 BC, where Hermias, a student of Plato, governed the area. This brought prosperity to the kingdom, making Assos a gathering place for many of the greatest philosophers of the world.
The “golden age” of Assos came to an end a few years later when the Persians invaded, only to be expelled by Alexander the Great in 334 BC. Subsequently, the region fell under Roman control.
By the 5th century BC, the first coffins began to appear. They were carved from volcanic stone (andesite), featuring smooth surfaces without elaborate decorations. These coffins measured approximately 2 meters in length, with widths and heights of 80-90 cm. Each weighed around 3 tons.
The insides of the coffins may have contained special materials that accelerated body decomposition. However, scientists have yet to identify this compound.
Notably, the most peculiar characteristic of these coffins is their ability to decompose any body placed inside within a record time. It has been recorded that an adult human body takes only about 40 days to fully decompose.
Faced with this strange and somewhat terrifying phenomenon, scientists have dedicated considerable time and effort over many centuries to uncovering its cause, but no clear conclusions have been reached.
Some hypotheses suggest that the ancient residents of Assos may have discovered that aluminum could burn skin, leading them to add this material inside the coffins to expedite the decomposition process.
However, this conclusion remains unproven, and the scientific community today is still largely “in the dark” about this unique mysterious phenomenon.
