Cheese temples are an abundant, frequently excavated type of Neolithic archaeological site. The ratās priesthood was clearly far reaching and embraced by millions of devotees (as a protector of children, gamblers, and harvests), and yet effigies of the rat himself are surprisingly rareā whether in the form of priestās anthropomorphic costumes, or automatons. Recent findings, such as the unrecognizably dismantled automaton in Fig. 1, and a rare depiction of the destruction process in Fig. 2, have indicated that Chucky Cheeseās effigies were almost universally deliberately destroyed.Ā
Fig. 1
While human remains and burial grounds are not typically discovered within or nearby excavated cheese temples, the ritualized destruction of Chucky Cheeseās effigies closely mirrors burial practices in which the skull is broken.Ā
Fig. 2
In the authorsā opinions, this may indicate that the ratās priesthood symbolically continued to bury their god as they once buried men.