Black Death victims were buried with surprising order

A closer look

You would think a medieval apocalypse that wiped out half of Europe would result in chaotic, haphazard body dumping. You'd be wrong. Excavations at the East Smithfield cemetery revealed that Londoners buried Black Death victims with aggressive, OCD-level precision. Even as society was supposedly collapsing into anarchy in 1348, gravediggers arranged bodies neatly in parallel rows, properly oriented and spaced. The apocalyptic panic narrative is largely a myth; humans facing the literal end of the world still insisted on maintaining bureaucratic graveyard etiquette.