The Strange and Bizarre Funerary Practices of Humans

We burn them. We embalm them. We bury them. We even eat them. As long as humans have walked the Earth, they've disposed of their dead in one way or another, some evolving into funerary practices that continue to range from typical to bizarre.

But what gave rise to these practices in the first place?

How humans handle the dead says a great deal about their beliefs. In fact, burial practices can speak volumes about culture, and ancient burials can tell researchers quite a bit about the past. From tombs and other burial sites archaeologists routinely unearth ancient artifacts that were once viewed as valuable, maybe even necessary for the afterlife. Even today, loved ones are often buried items that were once special to them.

Of course, funerary practices don't just involve burying the dead. Customs and tecnhiques are as varied as the cultures among various populations.

As an extreme example, one of these practices involves consuming the dead, a process known as endocannibalism. While eating human flesh and other body parts may make you feel squeamish, the practice isn't as uncommon as you might think. In fact, researchers recently unearthed bones from about 15,000 years ago that show our ancient ancestors may have broken the bones of and consumed the flesh of the dead. 

This practice isn't limited to the ancient past, either. As recently as the 1950s, the Fore tribe of the Eastern Highlands province of the southest Asia nation once ritually consumed the brains of dead tribespeople as a way of honoring them. The ritual was banned after the chronic wasting disease, called kuru, began to spread through the tribe. In fact, kuru was responsbile for wiping out entire generations of women in remote Papuan villages until this practice was halted.

While this practice may be more gruesome than what we might be used to, it's still relatively simple and straightforward in comparison to other burials. Take, for example, the burial practices found in Gongxian, Sichuan province in China.

Of course, "burial" perhaps isn't the correct term. The tombs in this region can be found suspended from the sides of cliffs in the form of coffins. Each coffin is made from a hollowed out single tree trunk and was originally protected by a bronze cover. With the "youngest" being about 400 years old, the coffins are the remnants of the Bo people.

"Some of the tombs are nearly 3,000 years old and the most recent date back to about 1500," said one local expert in an interview with The Daily Mail. "Nobody really knows why they dealt with their dead in this way. It is believed that they thought the gods would be able to reach them more easily like that."

While this practice is a bit more complicated than the norm, it's still more simple than the practices that can be found in Mongolia.

The Mongolian air sacrifice is particularly complicated. It involves divesting the body of clothes and placing a white silk veil over the face. Family members burn incense and watch over the corpse for several days, during which the naked body is flanked by men on the right side of the yurt while women are placed on the left. It's believed that the soul of the deceased can return, so the body must be safeguarded. The body is unclothed in order to resemble a state of birth.

When the time comes to remove the body, it must be passed through a window or a hole cut in the wall to prevent evil from slipping in while the door is open. The body is then taken and placed on open ground, where a stone outline is placed around it. Then the village dogs are released to consume the remains. If the body is consumed quickly, it's assumed that the soul has reached heaven where it can then be reborn.

And yet this isn't even the most complicated ritual. The ancient Egyptians placed a huge emphasis on burial practices. This was due largely to the cultural idea that for one's soul to have eternal life, his body must be preserved body on the Earth.

The key part of burial practices for ancient Egyptians was mummification, and the key ingredient was natron. This was a mixture of sodium bicarbonate, sodium carbonate, sodium sulphate and sodium chloride that occurred naturally in Egypt. This "divine salt" had both dessicating and defatting properties that aided in mummification. Organs were removed from the body and replaced with spices. Then the body was preserved with the salt.

Sometimes, though, an actual burial ceremony doesn't take place until years after a person's death. In eastern Indonesia, the dead are kept with the living. Funerals are huge affairs involving the whole village, and it may take families years to save up to pay for them. Until that time, the dead relative is laid in a special room in the family home. There, they are symbolically fed, cared for and even taken outside until their funeral.

Burial practices have ranged in size and scope throughout human history but two things remain constant through all of them: they're a way for the living to feel more connected to those that have passed on and a way that the living can ensure that they will be remembered when they eventually pass away.

"Perhaps the most painful thought we can have is that we will be forgotten when we cross over, that no one will remember us and what we have done," writes Kalila Borghini, LCSW, a therapist with Goodtherapy.org, as she explained about practices for honoring loved ones. "This notion of a legacy is behind the creation of art, children, and monuments, establishing chairs in a person's name at universities, funding the building of hospital wings and, in a dark disturbed way, committing violent crimes."

So why do we treat the dead the way we do? In the end, it seems to be a matter of honoring, respecting and remembering the individual who has died – we just don't all do that in the same way.

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