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Starting in ancient Greece -

Belief in the walking dead may go as far back as ancient Greece. Archaeologists have discovered countless graves where a skeleton is weighed down by rocks and other heavy objects. The most obvious conclusion is that someone was afraid they would rise up after death.

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Zombies in the Bible -

While zombies as we know them today aren’t mentioned in the Bible, there are multiple references to resurrection and reanimated bodies that may have inspired stories.

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The Book of Ezekiel -

In the Book of Ezekiel, the prophet Ezekiel has a vision where he walks through a graveyard scattered with bones. God speaks to him and as he repeats God’s words, the bones start to rattle and shake around him, before flesh and skin start to grow on them.

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The Book of Ezekiel -

Ezekiel describes them as reanimated bodies, but “there was no breath in them.” They remained in that zombie-like state until God breathed life into them, turning them into a walking army.

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The Last Judgment -

The concept of the Last Judgment is found in many religions, including Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. In Christianity, it’s believed that the second coming of Christ will trigger a day of judgment in the end times. God will summon all souls, dead or alive, and analyze their conduct on earth to decide if they should be sent to Heaven or Hell.

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The Last Judgment -

The resurrection of the dead to stand judgment before God at the end of the world may have inspired the apocalyptic setting for so many of today’s zombie stories.

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The origin of the word -

The origin of the word "zombie" is not known, but experts suspect it can be traced back to central Africa. The Mitsogo people of Gabon use the word ndzumbi for corpse, while the Kikongo language from the Congo region of Africa uses the word nzambi to refer to entities with superhuman powers.

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The origin of the word -

Certain languages in Angola and the Congo use the word zumbi to describe an object that is possessed by a spirit, or a person returned from the dead. Many different communities in this region believe that the spirit comes back after death.

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The zumbi -

This might sound ominous, but traditionally the Kongo people believed that the returned spirits of the dead could be housed inside objects to bring good luck and protection. Similar beliefs are held in various parts of Africa.

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The European invasion -

The Spanish and French invaded Africa and enslaved hundreds of thousands of people between 1517 and 1804. They brought them to work in Haiti and the Dominican Republic, where their African traditions mixed with those of the local authorities who were Catholic. This led to the creation of a new religion called Vodou, or Voodoo.

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Vodou -

According to certain Vodou beliefs, a person’s soul can be taken from their body and captured. The bodiless soul becomes a zombi.

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Protecting the dead -

A body must be tended to in a specific way soon after death in the Vodou tradition. Otherwise, there’s a risk that a sorcerer known as a bokor might get to it first and turn it into a soulless reanimated corpse that will do their bidding, also referred to as a zombi.

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Zombi laborers -

It was said that the captors would put these zombies to work as laborers because they didn’t need to sleep or eat, helping the schemer get rich.

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Zombi or slave? -

A common interpretation is that this process of “zombification” was representative of the enslavement and soul-crushing labor endured by many of the Haitian people during this period.

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Tortured souls -

Contrary to modern beliefs, zombies were seen as unfortunate creatures deserving of sympathy and help. They didn’t evoke the same fear we associate with zombies today, and weren’t endowed with evil or malicious qualities.

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The invasion of Haiti -

The US occupation of Haiti began in 1915. There was a wave of racism toward the Haitian people from the Americans, who looked down upon their culture and traditions and made no effort to understand them.

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The invasion of Haiti -

The US invaders produced a number of racist and false beliefs about black Haitians and their religious practices. They concocted stories about human sacrifices and devil worship, as well as exaggerating and misunderstanding the zombi.

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‘The Magic Island' -

A travel writer named William Seabrook released a book in 1929 on his travels to Haiti and what he learned about “Voodoo,” calling it ‘The Magic Island.’ Seabrook wrote about witnessing “Voodoo cults” and explained the concept of a zombi to his readers.

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'White Zombie' (1932) -

Americans became obsessed with the idea of raising the dead and using them for nefarious purposes. The American version of the zombie first hit the big screen in 1932 with the film ‘White Zombie.’ Many scholars believe it was inspired by Seabrook’s book.

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'White Zombie' (1932) -

The film was set in Haiti and told the story of a white hero who had to rescue his love from the clutches of an evil Vodou master who ran a sugar mill using zombi laborers. No sympathy is shown to the enslaved workers in the film, despite the fact that they too were victims of the Vodou master.

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The Westernization of the zombie -

Zombies continued to appear in films in the following decades, with increasingly loose references to Haitian culture, eventually standing on their own (undead) feet as a horror genre.

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'Night of the Living Dead' (1968) -

It was George Romero’s 1968 movie ‘Night of the Living Dead’ that made zombies a cultural obsession. The undead in the film are slow-moving, flesh-eating monsters who rise from the grave.

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Duane Jones -

Many found his choice of casting interesting. The lead character and hero, Ben, is played by black actor Duane Jones. Romero insists that he simply chose the best actor his budget allowed, but having a black hero added layers of meaning to the film that have given it a long-lasting appeal, whether intentional or not.

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Subversive cinema -

The film was released at the height of the civil rights movement, the same year Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. Jones was the first black male lead in a horror film, and is still counted as one of few more than 50 years later. Jones’ character Ben is a strong, capable, and comforting presence, who instantly takes the lead and protects Barbara, the white female lead. This role turned every stereotype about black men usually seen in cinema upside down at a pivotal moment in history.

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Audience interpretation -

In another apparent coincidence, Romero says that he never envisioned his monsters as zombies. It was the audience who identified them as such. From then on, zombies weren’t just walking corpses, they were walking corpses with insatiable cravings for human flesh.

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‘The Return of the Living Dead' (1985) -

This was specified further to include a taste for brains in the 1985 horror classic ‘The Return of the Living Dead.’ From this point forward, zombies can be heard moaning and growling the word “brains” in many different TV and film depictions.

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Evil monsters -

Zombie movies really took off in the mainstream in the 1980s, at which point a shift in perception became clear. Zombies were no longer mindless slaves controlled by evil forces—they themselves had become the evil force.

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Zombie virus -

As zombies continued to evolve in popular media over the decades, zombification was often portrayed as the result of mass contagion, as seen in films like ‘28 Days Later’ (2002) and ‘Dawn of the Dead’ (2004).

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The end of the road -

Some of the biggest hits in recent years, like the TV show ‘The Walking Dead,’ continue to center around zombies, but the undead creatures have remained completely disconnected from their cultural origins in the vast majority of representations.

Sources: (TED) (History) (NPR) (The Hollywood Reporter)

See also: Vlad the Impaler and the legend of Dracula

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